Haiti on Edge

February 15, 2019

The Miami Herald is reporting: “Haiti is once again on edge, and humanitarian aid groups debate whether to go or cancel.”

JAKE JOHNSTON, via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net, @JakobJohnston
Johnston is a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He has been following Haiti’s growing #PetrocaribeChallenge anti-corruption movement since last fall, and wrote the New York Timesop-ed, “Is Haiti Awakening to Change?” He is also quoted at length in this piece from France 24 on Thursday: “Haiti government silent as deadly protests show no sign of ending.”

“You can draw a pretty straight line from the last electoral process to the current unrest in Haiti. Building for months (and frankly years), the country has now been shut down for five days as tensions — and violence — increase, threatening [President Jovenel Moïse’s] mandate,” he tweeted this week.

“I believe what we are witnessing is the collapse of a system. A system that has failed the Haitian people. There are no more quick fixes; there are no more internationally devised compromises to paper over the reality,” he concluded in an article for The Haitian Times.

KIM IVES, kives15 at gmail.com, @kimives13
Ives is an editor at Haiti Liberté, the Editor in Chief is Fanfan Latour, and the Director is Berthony Dupont. And just wrote the piece “How Trump’s attacks on Venezuela triggered a revolution in Haiti” and just appeared on The Real News segment “How Haiti’s Spontaneous Uprising is Connected to Venezuelan Solidarity.”

ETANT DUPAIN, etant.dupain at yahoo.com, @gaetantguevara
Dupain is the founder and director of Kombit Productions and a Haiti-based freelance journalist and producer. He’s worked as a producer for international news media outlets and on documentary films including Al Jazeera, BBC, Vice, Discovery Channel, Raw TV, CANAL+, and the award-winning film “Where Did the Money Go?”

He said today: “This government has proven itself incapable of addressing the demands and needs of the people. Without concrete action the crisis is sure to continue.”

EMMANUELA DOUYON, emmanuela.douyon at gmail.com, @emmadouyon
Douyon has worked in Haiti across a range of sectors with different organizations in international cooperation, data analysis, monitoring and evaluation. She holds a master’s degree in development economics from Paris 1 Sorbonne University and wrote her master’s thesis on the political economy of the allocation of aid using the 2010 earthquake in Haiti as a case study. In 2019, she joined other young people across the country in the Petrocaribe Challenge movement to pressure the government to address the scandal.

She said today: “The people are protesting on the streets because they are experiencing the unprecedented consequences of corruption and bad governance that has been going on for the past 10 years.”