The new Presidential Council offers a Haitian-led path out of the country’s security crisis and toward a better future.
Editors’ Note: This article was updated after reports that Haiti’s Presidential Council decided to reconsider its nominee for prime minister.
Despite obvious distractions from crises in other corners of the world, Haiti’s deepening disaster is belatedly drawing wider international attention. Critics of U.S. policy toward Haiti are emerging from all corners of the political spectrum — and there is much to be critical of, particularly if the timeframe is stretched to cover Haiti's political experience since the late 1980s and the transition from the Duvalier dictatorships. But in the here and now, these assessments short change the admittedly tough odds of the most recent Caribbean Community (CARICOM) managed mediation efforts from which has emerged Haiti’s Presidential Council, a transitional governance structure for the country.
There is no doubt that this fragile structure will benefit from the international community’s energetic support, particularly from the U.S. Still, no amount of support will be effective unless Haiti’s new leaders put aside personal ambition and partisan aspirations and cooperate.
“Fragile” is the key word here, if not a profound understatement. Haiti has been embroiled in political turmoil since the beginning of late President Jovenel Moïse’s term in 2017. His assassination in July 2021 quickly pushed the country into a profound governance crisis. What ultimately ensued was a shaky interim government led by Ariel Henry, who was increasingly despised at home as his survival in power was widely viewed as possible only because of international support — a dynamic increasingly disconnected from the reality in the streets of Haiti.
Several competing political transition plans emerged over a period of two years, but none generated conclusive outcomes. Instead, popular frustrations with a declining economy, a significant rise in violence and, in effect, a collapse of the Haitian state, translated into generalized pandemonium by the summer of 2023. By early 2024, competing armed gangs controlled an estimated 80% of Port-au-Prince.
The Presidential Council’s Implausible Emergence
That the Presidential Council even emerged from what has been lethargic multilateral diplomacy and a frozen Haitian political process is remarkable and, more significantly, potentially impactful. The storyline of the last 45 days resembles an implausible movie plot line, with an interim prime minister (Henry) flying to Jamaica to participate in a mediation effort endeavoring to engineer a successor regime to his own tenure. He then travels to Kenya to resuscitate efforts toward a Multilateral Security Support (MSS) mission response to Haiti’s crisis.
Yet, upon his attempted return to Haiti he ends up being marooned in Puerto Rico because a network of gangs has taken over large portions of the capital city and shut down access to the international airport. At which point, there is a dramatic shift in U.S. diplomatic support for Henry, and he is somewhat unceremoniously forced to pass Haiti’s political baton to the successor political arrangement negotiated in Jamaica with a cross-section of Haiti’s political and civil society community.
All of this has generated a lot of hemming and hawing among Haiti’s diverse political factions. Nonetheless, the Biden administration’s attention now appears more focused, and much is happening behind the scenes among key U.S. actors, the Department of State, the National Security Council, USAID and Southern Command. This focus centers on recognizing that the Presidential Council — installed as of this past week — offers a possible path out of the country’s security crisis. Building on that, a multilateral response should include practical attention to humanitarian, social and economic regeneration needs, attention to national infrastructure deficiencies (including a likely rethink of Haiti’s law enforcement and security realities) and a sustainable timetable toward national elections and a transition in early 2026.
Supporting the Presidential Council
This is an ambitious effort, and its chances of success are initially dependent on addressing seven key issues. These include:
1. Credibility with the Haitian people
The new council will need to quickly establish its legitimacy and effectiveness with the Haitian people, lest it be met with a “here we go again” eye roll or, even worse, with outright resistance. In fact, the council’s botched initial decision to choose its coordinator (or president), as well as a prime minister, toward the end of the first week of its existence, underscored some of that public skepticism.
The Presidential Council’s decisions and its subsidiary governing apparatus will need to translate into politically legitimate actions within Haiti that are diplomatically sustainable internationally. This includes, for example, some quick wins for the council’s social and economic development priorities, including immediate attention to Haiti’s food insecurity and reopening some portions of the nation’s school system. The transitional council will require up front technical support and funding to simply function, and that will be severely tested unless it is able to deploy timely and clear public communications.
2. Functions of governance
Over the medium to long term the council will need to ensure an effective governing structure and manage operational issues despite the fragility of the transitional government. The most pressing necessity may in fact be related to the need for the council to swiftly draw up what amounts to a baseline needs requirement that captures the scale of the challenge for Haiti’s new government and for the international community. This should be followed by an international donor’s conference with a functional on-the-ground donor coordination mechanism that ensures those asks are met.
For example, efforts to restore security will quickly imply attention to transitional justice mechanisms, let alone a sustainable strategy to address the socio-economic underpinnings of gang violence. This can avoid the alternative of a disjointed, piecemealing, costly and ineffective political management of Haiti’s crisis over the next several months. This is critical to achieve the planned governance transition in early 2026.
To be sure, the Presidential Council is a Haitian political process; nonetheless, what can key international actors, such as the U.S., commit to ensure that the council achieves its mission?
3. Council security
In tandem with the above, there is an immediate need to address the council’s security-related priorities. This is framed by two imperatives: (1) ensuring the physical survival of the Presidential Council, whose daily operations are in jeopardy unless a related security structure is in place immediately and (2) working actively to provide the political agreements that are essential to the deployment of the MSS since the latter requires a Haitian governmental partner to operate.
The first does not imply having U.S. “boots on the ground” but can instead rely on a mix of specialized security arrangements, including vetted international security contractors, and a repurposing of some of the better elements among Haiti’s own large community of private security groups. At a minimum, this can be viewed as an interim measure anticipating the deployment of an initial MSS contingent within the next few weeks.
4. Citizen security
Although the administration has been creative in finding workarounds, and other international actors (notably Canada) have pledged funding support, the MSS’s sustainability beyond its initial deployment remains an open question. This implies action from Capitol Hill, namely the need for a significant funding package to support the above policy imperatives. Concern in Washington that Haiti is a lost cause will likely be overcome once it becomes obvious that an imploding Haiti generates more immediate national security implications.
The U.S. political and budgetary calculus remains manageable if the odds of success of the Presidential Council are enhanced through actions in Washington. The alternative scenario entails not only an imploding Haiti but the surfacing of related dangerous tensions throughout the Caribbean, beginning with Haiti’s immediate neighbor, the Dominican Republic.
One thing that will help is to enlist actual engagement from Latin American and Caribbean countries — some like Brazil and Chile have played key roles in previous multinational security missions in Haiti, an experience that can be put to good use in Haiti’s current crisis. Aside from several CARICOM members, El Salvador and Argentina have expressed an interest in contributing to the MSS. But this likely requires a greater demonstration of U.S. diplomatic hemispheric leadership.
5. Weapons control
At the more aspirational and longer-term level, U.S. policymakers and a wider community of political leaders need to begin to demonstrate greater concern with the U.S. flow of weaponry to Haiti. To be clear, cutting off the flow of illegal weapons to Haiti will on its own not resolve the country’s high level of violence. But the unimpeded trafficking of guns from the United States has fueled an epidemic of gang violence throughout the hemisphere. Governments in the region, from Ecuador to El Salvador to Mexico, are paying a high price with varying outcomes. At minimum, this issue requires more concerted attention.
6. Long-term focus
An important platform of U.S. government programmatic engagement already exists for Haiti in the form of the Global Fragility Act. This should be incorporated into the mid- to long-term thinking required to bolster Haiti’s institutional, community level and governance resiliency. This also has the virtue of reaching out to Haiti’s diverse civil society actors, particularly at the community level, which despite severe violence has remained vibrant and have tested institutional capabilities.
7. Draw out the diaspora
Develop a more intensive dialogue with Haiti’s growing U.S. diaspora (numbering an estimated 1.2 million and growing). That community is politically and economically diverse but remains very much engaged — and concerned — with Haiti’s on-going crisis, and potentially provides a large reservoir of talent to address Haiti’s crisis. Arguably, the burden falls on key diaspora groups to ensure that there is a simple and convincing message, particularly to Capitol Hill and the administration. Groups such as the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy and others have taken up the challenge but need more effective outreach.
By the end of the first week of the Presidential Council’s existence, it chose Edgard Leblanc as coordinator and Fritz Bélizaire as prime minister. But the weakness of a council that had been formed through Zoom negotiations and whose members had never met in person until the week they were sworn in was quickly manifest as it was revealed that only four members of the council had made the selection and some of the others threatened to walk away. The council continues to work through the selection process but hopefully now from a place of more direct and face-to-face communication, where positions and disputes can be better managed.
The council’s bungled opening act is not reassuring but the quick course-correction hopefully suggests the needed foundations of trust. At the end of the day no amount of international support will be able to overcome the petty infighting among political actors that has frozen governance and led to the current crisis in the first place. Clearly, the hard work begins now, by both the international community but especially by the Haitian leaders, who will need to set aside pride, personal ambition and partisan positions and provide leadership and inspiration to their people.