Humanitarian aid in Haiti must deal with gangs, says Caribbean leader

“If someone wants to provide humanitarian aid to Haiti, they will have to deal with the gangs,” Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and current president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), said in an interview.

He did not give any further details on how the bands should be dealt with.

Gonsalves will travel to Brussels for an EU-CELAC summit on July 17-18, which is expected to address the volatile security situation in Haiti, where powerful gangs are fueling a crisis that has displaced more than 160,000 people, according to United Nations calculations.

Among those who have fled the violence are local activists, while international aid organizations such as Doctors Without Borders have shut down their operations, saying they cannot guarantee the safety of their patients or staff.

“There are gang leaders who are also political operatives, who control important communities,” Gonsalves said, warning that “you have to be careful not to engage with the gangs in Haiti and give them some legitimacy.”

Gonsalves said that it is likely that people linked to the gangs were present at talks this week in Jamaica between representatives of Haitian civil society and the government, in which Prime Minister Ariel Henry promised to expand the country’s transitional council. for the government to be more inclusive.

Since October, Henry has called for an international force to help police restore security and set the conditions for the long-awaited elections, but no country has offered to lead such a force.

Meanwhile, according to Gonsalves, Haitian emigration threatens the security of neighboring Caribbean countries. (Reporting by Robertson Henry in Kingstown; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing in Spanish by Aida Peláez-Fernández)