No short term fix for Haiti, says Canada’s ambassador as he prepares to bid adieu

Haiti’s president had been assassinated three months earlier, leaving a cloud of uncertainty not only over who did it, but over the future of a country overrun by gangs and with no elected leader, working judiciary or functioning Parliament.

It’s the kind of powder keg that would make some foreign diplomats think twice about wanting to be posted to Haiti. But for Sébastien Carrière, Canada’s ambassador to Port-au-Prince, whose previous experience involved working on the Haiti desk in his country’s foreign ministry, it was quite the opposite.

He was all in.

Two years later, with the president’s murder still unsolved and gangs running amok as they become increasingly more powerful and independent, Carrière is now leaving.

His tour of duty is up, and though the country today is even more chaotic than when he arrived, he said, there is reason to be optimistic, even if so much seems bleak.

“My Brazilian counterpart asked me a few weeks ago, are you more optimistic or pessimistic now than you were when you when you arrived in 2021?” he said. “I’ve been reflecting on this question ever since.”

The short answer is that it’s not a simple yes or no. There is a lot, he says, that gives him hope. There’s the different dynamic, he says, that is taking shape in the international community’s response to the Haitian crisis, and “the resilience, the courage and the dignity of the Haitian people that I admire and will cherish... for the rest of my career.”

But there are also the unfathomable horrors that have come with a country on the brink of anarchy, struggling to overcome one of its most challenging periods in histories.

“It’s really hard not to be pessimistic,” he concedes, “at least for the short term, living here and seeing how the Haitian people are suffering.”

Gang-orchestrated kidnappings, killings and sexual violence have escalated and tens of thousands of Haitians —195,000 according to a recent Human Rights Watch report — have been internally displaced from their homes in just the last two years.

Last month, increases in gang violence led the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince to order the departure of non-emergency personnel and the evacuation of U.S. citizens. Both the U.S. and Canada also reissued travel warnings, reminding citizens to avoid all travel to Haiti.

“The security situation,” the Canadian government said, “remains volatile.”

“The things that are happening in the lawless areas around the capital are unfathomable,” the ambassador said. “Seeing that every day and seeing that actually get worse... all of these things make it very hard to say that ‘I’m more optimistic.’ This situation is on a downward trend and the Haitian people are suffering because of it more and more.”

Canada has almost doubled its assistance in the last year, earmarking more money for humanitarian projects as the number of people in need of assistance rose from 4.6 million in 2021 to 5.2 million today, Carrière said. There is also more money being set aside for the Haiti National Police, which Canada helped rebuild along with the United States, France and the United Nations after it was decimated during the last political crisis about 20 years ago.

In March, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government would provide 100 million Canadian dollars, about $74 million U.S., for the Haiti National Police.

Trudeau’s announcement came on the heels of U.S. pressure for Ottawa to lead a multinational force into Haiti — a request the government of Kenya said it’s now considering taking on after Canada showed no public interest in doing so.

“One thing we’re trying to do is work with the HNP to augment their capacity to train recruits. But that’s not something you can do overnight,” Carrière said.

“We’re exploring all kinds of scenarios with the HNP, so that they can they can turn out more police officers and keep them,” he said. “We have to stabilize the [Haiti National Police] and I think if this Kenya initiative can materialize, that will go a long way toward that goal.”

On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres wrote to the Security Council offering options on how the global agency could help Haiti return to law and order. His options involve the deployment of a multinational force and Haitians reaching a political accord that could eventually return the country to democratic order.

Carrière says Guterres’ proposal is among the examples of how the international community, including Canada, is working differently to respond to the Haitian crisis. They’ve realized, he believes, that the heavy-handedness from Ottawa or Washington doesn’t pay off in Haiti in terms of results on the ground.

“I don’t think there’s a short-term fix here,” Carrière said. “I think a lot of us have come to the realization that we need to do things differently when talking about this.”

Welcoming the Kenya consideration, Carrière, 49, said he appreciates the “sincere quest for a new model for assisting Haiti, with its security problem.“

“The next four weeks are going to be very important for Haiti. We have the Kenyan delegation coming next week, I’m told. Then, after Labor Day, we’ll be headed into the U.N. General Assembly, and Security Council debates in-between the mission and the high level week,” he said.

With Guterres calling for countries to contribute military and police to the multinational force, it remains unclear if or how Canada will contribute. Ottawa is first waiting to see what the mandate of the security mission will be, should Kenya agree to lead it, and then what kind of support it will need.

“We’ve offered to play a role in terms of coordination,” Carrière said. “We’re already doing that with about 20 countries, and having monthly virtual meetings to better coordinate everybody’s assistance to the HNP... because one of the problems we’ve had here is not great donor coordination when it comes to Haiti. So we can offer some value with that.”

One frustration has been the lack of a political accord in Haiti, which Carrière has long argued is needed to instill confidence in foreign governments that want to help. Prime Minister Ariel Henry and opposition groups have been negotiating for more than 10 days, and while Carrière says he is encouraged that discussions are continuing, it is still unclear if the talks will end with a deal.

“Haiti will have to change; its political class will have to change, its economic elite will have to change, they’ll have to change the way they do business,” Carrière said.

With no elected officials in the country, and elections that haven’t been held since 2017, Carrière said he isn’t sure Haitians can lose another opportunity.

But regardless of what’s decided by Kenya or the Security Council, he said, there needs to be a sense of urgency among Haiti’s political class.

“The whole world is going to be looking at Haiti and if what the whole world sees is... negotiations going round and round and no progress, no accord, then the world may take a step back,” he said.

Canadian sanctions

Similarly to the U.S., Canada’s foreign policy toward Haiti has changed. It has focused in recent months on the issuance of sanctions against prominent Haitians believed to be supporting gangs.

The Canadian list, which includes a former Haitian president and two former prime ministers, has brought criticism from Russia’s representative to the U.N, and some Haitians that Ottawa and Washington are trying to clear the political field for candidates of their liking. Carrière said nothing can be further from the truth.

“The sanctions are not politically motivated,” he said. “The objective of sanctions is to change behavior in the economic elite and parts of the political class that are corrupt and that have worked against improvement of democracy when it gets to impunity.

“I frankly don’t care who the next president of Haiti is,” he added. “But what I do care about is making sure there’s a level playing field in which people can run, and people can actually win an election as opposed to buying an election.”

He believes that the Haitian political class and some of the international partners, including Canada, have come to realize “that going all in with whoever won the latest election or whoever has the most chance of winning the next election and just supporting them, has not really yielded great results.”

In his next job, Carrière will be posted in Ottawa. He will be chief of protocol for the governor general and the prime minister, while continuing to represent Canada with the International Organization of La Francophonie.

“It’s diplomatic work,” he said of his chief of protocol post. “It’s visits, events, receptions, meetings, but you get to sleep in your own bed every night.”

Still, there has been nothing like living and breathing the Haiti experience in his country’s imposing embassy on a busy street in the Delmas neighborhood of metropolitan Port-au-Prince.

His one regret is not being able to visit more Canadian projects around Haiti.

“We have multiple small projects, scattered all over the country,” he said. “Those visits are always important for the community and they really like having the ambassador come and spend time with them.”

He said he will always cherish his time in Haiti.

“It’s been an honor and a privilege to walk among Haitians in the last two years. The resilience, the courage and the dignity of Haitian people, is something I admire and I will cherish having had the chance to be Canada’s ambassador here,” he said. “I will continue to follow closely from my new job in Ottawa.”