At thinktanks, in newspapers we call for whatever it takes to regain control of the streets

Hail Kenya. Where is the U.S.? By the Haiti Democracy Project in the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin America Advisor, August 17, 2023. Kenya is to be widely applauded for its offer to lead an international force in support of the Haitian police. Where is the United States? Full article

 

Get Help to Haiti Now, May 27, 2023. The Biden administration has been slow-walking while Haiti burns. We have sent forces there three times since 1994 with Security Council approval, but if we don’t want to send them now, we will have to negotiate seriously with Russia and China who never got anything from us for approving those earlier missions. Full letter

 

What must Be Done for Haiti to Survive? Written for the Inter-American Dialogue, January 24, 2023: “Much worse is to come if Haiti is bereft of international solidarity . . . The Biden administration is still trying to slough off the job to Canada. Thousands of malnourished children will be thrust into cholera’s death maw . . . Washington needs to get on with the job.” Full article

 

Boots on the Ground Now October 12, 2022. “Our organization advocated in this space five years ago that the United Nations not leave. Would that the Haitians could handle it, but they cannot. International errors helped create this situation; only international solidarity can solve it now.” Full letter

 

Gangs Reflect Intra-Elite Struggle Inter-American Dialogue, May 22, 2022. “Gangs are the shadow-play of Haiti’s latest power struggle at the top. They won’t be wished away by a chaste ‘Haitian-led solution.’ Only a full peacekeeping mission can get rid of them.” Full article

 

 

Resend the U.N. Inter-American Dialogue, February 18, 2022. “This mission would not usurp Haitian state sovereignty. The gangs have already done that.” Full article

 

Retain the U.N. April 22, 2017. “The mission’s end, cholera guilt notwithstanding, will expose Haiti to the ambitious spoilers who deride electoral results and have the armed gangs to back up their words.” Full letter

 

 

Retain the U.N. Inter-American Dialogue, October 12, 2017. “The withdrawal is based on wishful thinking. The U.N.’s ounce of prevention has prevented a ton of headaches.” Full article

Restoring Stability Through Elections

A Retrospect of our Observer Missions

2016 Election Rerun

Election-deniers had overthrown the 2015 election. To protect this repeat election, we took photos of the returns in 392 polling places, 4 percent of the national total, and compared them to the central board. They all matched

 

2015 Election

Election-deniers were on the warpath. They had no evidence, but they had violent mobs on the streets, vandalism, and arson in the polling places. We took detailed reports from 208 accredited observers. They found few or no problems in most of the polling places. These results jibed with those of the European Union and OAS. Jovenel Moïse got 33 percent of the vote, as against 25 percent for the runner-up. Nevertheless, the election-deniers succeeded in throwing the election into the dumpster. Below, we publish photographed copies of our observers’ full reports. Our findings were borne out in the 2016 rerun a year later (see above), when Moïse improved to 56 percent.

Correcting the 2010 election

Unlike the two elections mentioned above, the 2010 election was plagued by false tabulation. We first found it in discrepancies between the returns in the field and the numbers posted on the central board. We posted a side-by-side comparison on the web. The electoral commission was forced to take down many of the fraudulent votes and the candidate falsely advantaged lost the race. We then learned that the election commission had, on the president’s urging, secretly reactivated more than fourteen thousand fraudulent votes for the president’s son-in-law.  We obtained the database of the presidential vote and tracked down these reactivations. The State Department followed up and the electoral commission was forced to take most of them down. This eliminated the son-in-law.

On Behalf of Haiti, in Retrospect

As we pass our twenty-year mark, we here resurrect our pre-WordPress home page which links to all of our activities from our founding in 2002 to 2017.  First, since economic ruin is the underlying reason for all else, we attempted to stimulate the economy by getting Washington to support Haitian business owners. They and their workers are responsible for such modern sector as exists in Haiti. Click on Delegations to see the doors we opened for them with the aid of Lionel Delatour, a business leader and founding member of our organization.

Under Seminars you’ll find the meetings we held at the Brookings Institution for upright election commissioners who fled Haiti for their lives when powerful criminal/politician types didn’t like the way they counted the votes.

Some of the Americans who know Haiti best are former ambassadors. Three of them were founders of the Haiti Democracy Project twenty years ago. On this page you can find Amb. Lawrence Pezzullo’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2004 on the dynamics of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s hasty departure. And Amb. Timothy Carney’s 2005  report on a Haiti Democracy Project trip of all three ambassadors to Haiti to survey the aftermath. After completing this report Ambassador Carney temporarily returned to his post in Haiti. Amb. Ernest Preeg then led the Haiti Democracy Project until 2017, and his book, The Haitian Dilemma, and frequent articles are sourced here.

Under Conferences you’ll find one we held in 2009 in Santo Domingo with Haiti’s best and brightest to chart a “strategic plan for national salvation.” It will take a lot of cleaning up first, but we still hope to put that plan into effect.