By OSV News - OSVNews

By Tom Tracy

MIAMI (OSV NEWS) | A U.S.-based Haitian American pastor here said he agrees with a U.N. specialist that international special forces along with a weapons embargo are needed to stop Haiti’s further slide as a failed state. 

U.N. human rights expert William O’Neill, who was appointed to assess the situation in Haiti in April, said late last month that a “specialized international force” is needed to help fight gang violence in that impoverished Caribbean nation. 

O’Neill told reporters that the absence of a functioning government there along with a lack of response by officials is affecting people’s access to water, food, health, education and housing. 

He added that while Haitian authorities face “immense challenges,” the government has a duty to respond within its limited capabilities.

“I found a country bruised by violence, misery, fear and suffering,” he said, adding that all types of human rights are being violated. “It is urgent to take action. The survival of an entire nation is at stake,” O’Neill told the Associated Press.

Gangs are now estimated to control up to 80% of Haiti’s capital during a period that has seen a surge in killings, rape and kidnappings, with sexual violence against girls and women used by gangs as a way to control the population, according to the U.N. report. 

In Miami, Father Reginald Jean-Mary, longtime pastor of Notre Dame d’Haiti Mission and a leading Haitian American priest in the U.S., told OSV News July 10, 2023, that despite the community’s objection to an outright foreign military intervention, he supports the idea of a tactical armed force to support the local military and law enforcement, not unlike the U.S. support for the war in Ukraine. 

“It has been for a long time that leaders in the community along with myself and many others have been requesting this because we felt the national police force in Haiti is not well equipped to fight the gangs,” Father Jean-Mary said.

He noted that he has not personally felt safe enough to travel to Haiti in the past five years, especially given his standing as a member of the clergy, who have been vulnerable to kidnappings and attacks. 

“There are not only many gangs in Haiti but they are equipped better than the police force. And the gangs are in the countryside, the mountains, and in the capital and the highways that lead to other big cities in Haiti,” the priest said. 

Situated in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood north of the city’s downtown, Notre Dame d’Haiti attracts some 5,000 or more for its weekly Sunday Masses and for generations has been at the crossroads of the Haitian American community. 

Father Jean-Mary said that he has been seeing the country’s youth and educated professional class turn up at his parish looking for assistance — a sign that the people are giving up on Haiti to a degree not seen previously. The nation is losing its small business class, who have been the backbone of the Haitian economy. 

“The insecurity reaches a level where the people and small businesses cannot move about as they need to take care of their families. Those are the people trying their best to survive but you cannot imagine now the level of poverty and suffering now in Haiti; it looks like a country at war but we are not at war — we are enslaved by our own people,” the priest said. 

He added that the international community must not only help to fight the gangs but also to build infrastructure, development projects, so that young men and women are not attracted to the gangs in the first place. 

The government of Haiti has been asking for armed police force vehicles to help battle the gangs which it has not received from abroad, according to Father Jean-Mary. At the same time, he worries that most of the gang weaponry is sourced in the U.S. and shipped through his own state of Florida. 

On July 7, 2021, Haitians at home and abroad were horrified to learn of the assassination of that country’s embattled president. A small group of unknown, heavily armed mercenaries had attacked President Jovenel Moise and his wife, Martine, in the early morning hours. Martine Moise was injured and flown to Miami that same day for medical treatment but her husband didn’t survive the assault. 

Mario Russell, executive director for the New York-based Center for Migration Studies, told OSV News by phone that his agency can’t comment on the need for an international police intervention in Haiti. 

But he said he has seen firsthand that this is a crucial moment for Haitians at home and in the diaspora following so many natural disasters, hunger, a failing economy and the presidential assassination. 

Russell, who has previously served in leadership positions for immigrant and refugee services at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York as well as holding academic positions related to refugee-asylum litigation with St. John’s University School of Law, said that domestically it is our nation’s duty to protect the migrants who are here and to consider extended temporary protected status for Haitians. 

“That has to be a priority. The second thing is stopping the expulsions and deportations: There were over 30,000 Haitians at the U.S. border in the first quarter of this year,” he told OSV News.

This article has been modified since its published. Father Reginald Jean-Mary clarified his quote regarding the intervention of special forces so as to not appear to be speaking for Archbishop Thomas Wenski.