Monique Clesca Reflects on Haiti’s Overlapping Crises

At the Sept. 23, 2021 Human Rights Workshop, Monique Clesca described the origins of what she considers to be “a deep, profound, almost existential crisis” that has afflicted Haiti for years. In her presentation, titled “A Human Rights Conundrum: The Crisis in Haiti and the Need for Haitian Solutions,” Clesca recounted the first riots that catalyzed the crisis in July 2018, the government’s failure to act, and the coalition-building that has emerged as a result. Clesca is serving on the Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis, after a career of more than 25 years specializing in high-level policy dialogue, human rights, youth and women programming, development, and crisis communication and writing.

Clesca argued that Haiti’s long-term crisis reached a turning point in July 2018 with a series of youth-led protests objecting to hikes in gasoline prices. The scope of the protests quickly expanded beyond the price hikes, Clesca explained, as protesters demanded healthcare, education, and professional schools. Weeks after these initial protests, the movement grew into a struggle against impunity and corruption, said Clesca. She indicated that the shift was catalyzed by the publication of an audit revealing the disappearance of $4 billion from the Petrocaribe program intended for development projects.

But the government didn’t listen, Clesca said. “In Haiti,” she said, “nothing was done. Nobody was listening. Nobody said, ‘we understand you,’ let alone, ‘we hear you.’”

WATCH: Monique Clesca at the Sept. 23, 2021 Human Rights Workshop

The situation worsened, Clesca said, when late Haitian President Jovenel Moïse dismissed the Parliament, refused to hold elections, and announced the creation of a new constitution. At this time, roughly half of the Haitian population faced food insecurity and lacked access to healthcare. The country was menaced by widespread gang violence; gangs had become the “proxy arms of the government,” controlling 40 percent of the country’s territory and inciting massacres, rapes, and kidnappings. Haiti now faced a constitutional crisis, an inequality crisis, and a security crisis, according to Clesca..

Over the last three months, Clesca said, this nationwide crisis has worsened under international pressure. The United Nations and American, Canadian, and French governments, according to Clesca, have been urging Haiti to hold elections at all costs and have ignored Haitians’ immediate needs under Moïse’s repressive government. She recalled a U.N. Security Council meeting at which Haiti was pressured to hold elections when basic services could not be met and people feared being kidnapped or killed.

“It is time that Haitians resolve Haitian problems,” she said. Over the past six months, her commission has begun the task of helping Haiti “escape the cycle of dependency” by building a coalition of civil society groups, political parties, and everyone that has “something to say about the future [of Haiti].” Over 900 groups have signed onto the coalition.

She said that her work aims to disrupt the narrative that Haiti is “the poorest country” with only gangs and refugees. “Nobody says that we are also the country that sent troops to help in the Battle of Savannah. Nobody is saying that we are the country that gave money, arms, and ammunition to Simon Bolivar to fight Spain to claim independence for Colombia, Venezuela, and the rest of Latin America. Nobody is saying that we are the country that provided a safe haven for European Jews who were persecuted. We offered them citizenship when a lot of other countries did not. And nobody is saying that we are the country that won over Napoleon’s mighty army and declared slavery illegal before a lot of other countries, before the United States.”

“The United States,” Clesca said, “is a little bit like the policeman’s knee on George Floyd’s neck, and we feel that the American and international community has its knee on the neck of Haiti.” She explained that the priority for Haiti is to determine its own future and for its people to determine its own leaders. “This is, in essence, a Haitian solution that we are proposing: that we become that strong, unifying force trusted [by the Haitian people], and we can move forward and reclaim our sovereignty.”