The situation in Haiti has run wild, with gangs creating “nightmare” conditions for residents. For this reason, his High Commissioner UN for Human Rights yesterday again appealed to the international community to “urgently consider the development of an international specialized support force”.
“The Haitian police need immediate international support”said Volker Turk during a press conference in Port-au-Prince, calling “the international community to urgently consider the deployment of a time-bound international specialized support force.”
Concluding a two-day official visit to the Caribbean country, the UN official highlighted extreme gang violence and gross violations of Haitians’ human rights.
“The world has been persecuted and terrorized by criminal gangs for months without the state being able to put an end to it” in this condition. “This can only be described as a real nightmare”Volker Turk also emphasized in a press release published by his services in Geneva, referring to the use by gangs of “snipers, who shoot indiscriminately at anyone who enters their field of vision”.
The Austrian lawyer emphasized, in his statements at the airport of the Haitian capital, the fact that “over 500,000 children live in gang-controlled neighborhoods,” so they are unable to “access education”also reminding that since the beginning of the year “at least 18 police officers have been killed due to gang violence”.
In the Brooklyn neighborhood of Cite Soleil alone, a poor, densely populated community in the capital’s Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, at least 263 murders and at least 57 gang-rapes of women and girls were attributed to gangs in the second quarter of 2022, according to figures released yesterday the United Nations.
The gangs, which control more than half of Haiti’s territory, commit daily kidnappings of citizens and demand tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from relatives as ransom. for their victims, many of whom are sexually assaulted during their captivity.
In October, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres relayed Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henri’s appeal for help, asking the Security Council to deploy a multinational, armed special-purpose force to assist the police.
There has been no result since then: although some countries have hinted that they would be willing to participate, none have appeared to be willing to take the initiative and lead it. The governments of the US and Canada, which have been the focus of most attention, seem very cautious.
Wrapping up his visit to Haiti, Mr Turk yesterday also criticized the mass repatriations of Haitian migrants and called the treatment meted out to many of them “humiliating”.
“The multiple crises” that are forcing many residents to flee the country “do not allow for a safe, dignified and sustainable return of Haitians to Haiti,” he said. And yet, he added, “176,777 Haitian immigrants were repatriated last year.”
“Let me underline this again: international law (…) prohibits refoulements and mass deportations without a case-by-case assessment of international protection needs before return” to the country of origin, Volker Türk insisted.
Source: News Beast
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