Global Policy Forum

By Dario Montero

"For me, to be accused of being overly cautious is a thousand times preferable to being accused of murdering women and children," says Brazilian General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, military forces commander of the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Heleno Ribeiro was responding to the repeated pressures for the troops he commands to adopt a more aggressive stance in curbing the unrest that continues to plague this impoverished Caribbean nation.

The problem is that the U.N. peacekeeping forces are frequently obliged to play a policing role against the violent armed gangs who operate among the thousands of innocent people crowded into the slums and narrow alleyways of Port-au-Prince and other Haitian cities. The thin line between peacekeeping and indiscriminate repression can become dangerously blurred in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods of Bel-Air, Cité Soleil and Carrefour or the northern city of Gonaives, the most turbulent zones in the country.

Numerous incidents have erupted in the capital and northern Haiti where a blind eye has been turned to the excessive use of force, MINUSTAH officials told IPS. Relations between the U.N. troops and local residents in these areas of the country are less than amicable, they admit. Nevertheless, Heleno Ribeiro stresses that calm and caution have prevailed despite the chaos confronting the military contingent of the U.N. mission, made up of 6,700 troops from 12 countries. "I have been accused of not being aggressive enough, and now I have been labelled as timid. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that I am prudent, thank God, because imprudence can lead to a court martial," the Brazilian general told a Uruguayan media delegation, which included IPS.

The journalists were invited to Haiti by the Uruguayan MINUSTAH contingent, which is stationed in the country's southwest region. "A lot of people ask me to take more violent action against the gang members, in Bel-Air or Cité Soleil, but this does not bother me, because I am not going to sway from my line of conduct. I have a whole lifetime of experience that has shown me that these things end up exacting a very high price," he noted.

In fact, even the interim prime minister of Haiti, Gerard Latortue, insinuated in a press conference with the Uruguayan delegation that there is a need for greater force on the part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission. But he was careful not to state this openly, and merely commented that he would ask the U.N. Security Council to redistribute its troops or increase its presence in the most violent areas of the country.

Heleno Ribeiro acknowledged that the troops under his command operate in places "where gang members resort to underhanded measures, like using children or women as human shields in their attacks." But he stressed that the U.N. mandate to respect human rights is very clear and will be followed to the letter. As a result, he emphatically refuted the claims made in "Keeping the Peace In Haiti?", a report co-authored by the Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights and the Brazilian non-governmental organisation Centro de Justií§a Global (Global Justice Centre), which was released in March.

The report accuses MINUSTAH troops of failing to effectively guarantee respect for human rights in Haiti, through acts of omission and even of commission in some cases. "Every time I hear accusations about abuses committed by the (U.N.) troops, I reject them outright," he declared, adding that the condemnatory report, written by "some people who were here and said they were from Harvard University," was ungrounded and written with malicious intent. "No one could ever accuse us of human rights violations. Our entire contingent has respect for basic freedoms foremost in their minds as a top priority," he maintained.

The profusion of armed groups, political factions and criminal gangs operating in Haiti - and the frequent blurring of the dividing lines between these sectors, in terms of motivations and actions - makes the U.N. mission's mandate to promote disarmament, stability and peace an extremely complicated task. In Haiti, there are no precisely defined forces with whom it would be possible to negotiate, unlike other countries beset by internal conflicts, explained veterans of other U.N. peacekeeping missions.

After decades of bloody dictatorship under the Duvalier dynasty (1957-1986), Haiti has been ruled by a succession of fragile democratic governments, marked by frequent military coups, each of which has left behind a legacy of paramilitary groups, in addition to criminal gangs of drug traffickers and scattered members of the armed forces dissolved in 1994. This explosive cocktail of armed, violent factions came to a head on Feb. 29, 2004, with the overthrow of president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who is now living in exile in South Africa.

The practical absence of the state in Haiti today is most acutely reflected by the diminished police force, made up of around 5,000 poorly armed officers, while experts say that at least 100,000 are needed to maintain law and order in this country of roughly 8.5 million inhabitants, half of whom are crowded into Port-au-Prince. "We have ended up playing a policing role because of the inadequacy of the local police force, and this is a function we were not trained for," stressed Heleno Ribeiro. The weakness of the Haitian police force - further saddled with a decades-long history of brutality - and an unreliable justice system have forced U.N. troops to intervene in order to prevent lynchings, an all-too-common practice in Haiti, according to Uruguayan officers who have faced this harrowing experience.

Members of the Uruguayan contingent based in the southwestern city of Jeremie were obliged to step in when enraged local residents got hold of a police officer who had broken a detainee's legs with his baton. Although the townspeople pelted the soldiers with stones when they retrieved the police officer to turn him over to the proper authorities, they profusely apologised the following day, recalled the participants in the incident.

In addition to the military contingent, MINUSTAH also encompasses civilian personnel, including representatives of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, electoral advisers to assist in the elections scheduled for October and November, and 1,622 police officers from 17 countries. The task of the civilian police or CIVPOL mission members is to restructure, organise and supervise the Haitian National Police force, to ensure that it adheres to international norms and effectively contributes to serving justice, with an emphasis on teaching respect for the human rights and basic freedoms of the civilian population, noted a Uruguayan police captain posted to Port-au-Prince.

Up to now, the U.N. mission members have only managed to attract 600 new recruits, including 200 former soldiers, to the police academies set up in local police stations, some of which are in abysmal condition, as IPS saw in Les Cayes, the main city in southwest Haiti. CIVPOL is accompanied in the task of promoting human rights by U.N. experts sent to help strengthen Haitian legislation, which is fraught with shortcomings. Their goal is to prevent "actions that can work against the population," as has occurred in the past, Colombian expert Juan Miguel Osorio told IPS.

But the task of creating a well-trained, professional police force to bring an end to vigilante justice, among other objectives, is hindered by a lack of local resources, noted Osorio. He himself has been designated to assist in this endeavour in Jeremie, where there are 161 police officers, who have just one car, two motorcycles and seven bicycles available to serve 30,000 inhabitants scattered across a mountainous area.

It is for this reason, among others, that Heleno Ribeiro believes that this "country in a state of coma," where 80 percent of the population lives in poverty and the average life expectancy is barely over 50, can only survive it receives the external financial assistance promised to boost the economy and create real jobs. Eighty percent of Haitians do not have regular or secure employment. Many of them, especially women, work in the informal economy as street vendors, but this is not a job, merely a means of survival. Seventy percent of Haitians eat only once a day. "This is a task for the multilateral organisations. And if they really want to do it, they can," he stated bluntly.

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