UN migration head calls conditions in Haiti 'brutal,' wants to talk to US about aid

As more than a half-million Haitians continue to face the threat of expulsion from the United States and the Trump administration sent another deportation flight to the violence-wracked country, the head of the United Nations’ migration agency said engaging with the U.S. government on the matter is high on the list of her priorities.

“You look at the proximity of Haiti to the United States and the likelihood that the violence spills out,” Amy Pope, the director general of the International Organization for Migration said in an interview shortly after visiting Haiti on Tuesday. “The people who come home are not reintegrated; are not able to stay home, so then, they try [to leave] again.”

The Trump administration returned 40 Haitians on Tuesday, the administration’s third deportation flight this year. Three other flights — two from the neighboring Turks and Caicos and another from The Bahamas, sent back 56 others. They are among more than 65,800 Haitians who have already been deported or who have returned on their own this year, most coming from the neighboring Dominican Republic, according to U.N. figures.

“The Haitian people are the ones who are suffering right now because of the inaction and at some point... suffering doesn’t stay contained,” she said. “So whether it’s about migration, whether it’s about disease outbreaks, whether it’s violence, arms trafficking, human trafficking, drug trafficking, none of this is going to stay in Haiti. And so investing in better outcomes, investing in support for communities, investing in security for Haitians, is not an investment just in Haiti. It’s an investment in regional security.”

Earlier this week, Haiti’s transitional government and ruling presidential council announced they had adopted a revised $2.5 billion budget “designed to respond to national emergencies while supporting economic recovery.” While it reallocated more money to social programs, which rose from $639 million to $688 million, the long awaited so-called “war budget” only added an additional six million gourdes — $45,831 — to what officials initially approved for this fiscal year. Critics say the money falls short of addressing the needs of the nearly 6 million Haitians with humanitarian needs or the more than 1 million who have been forced to flee their homes because of the violence.

“There is the need for the government to step up, and most importantly, there’s a need for the international community to see the government stepping up, especially at this moment of decreased funding for humanitarian needs,” Pope said.

She is the latest in a string of high-level U.N. officials to visit the country, and her message about the government needing to do more echoes that of others who have made the trek despite the difficulties of flying into Port-au-Prince.

The visits come as the humanitarian crisis worsens amid relentless attacks by gangs.

“The first issue is, can we get some level of peace and stability? The second is, if people are returned home, how can we, given the current situation, provide some level of support for them so that they don’t immediately turn around and leave again, or aren’t immediately attacked, or can’t get access to food, or can’t get access to a safe place to sleep at night,” Pope said.

As she prepared to board a return flight to Miami, something caught her eye and drove home the challenges Haiti faces, she said — one of the groups of deportees.

Until recently, U.N. staffers in Haiti would have joined their Haitian colleagues at the Office of National Migration in helping the deportees get home by providing them with bus fare. But recent cuts in funding by the Trump administration has left the agency able to assist only those being returned across the land border with the Dominican Republic, which last year pledged to send back approximately 15,000 Haitians a month.

The ongoing deportations, which reached nearly 200,000 last year, is only a part of the problem in what Pope describes as the world’s most complex crisis.

In the past year alone, the number of Haitians forced out of their homes by criminal gangs has tripled. The violence is also fueling extreme huge: Half of Haiti’s populayion does not get enough to eat and two million face catastrophic levels of hunger.

Meanwhile, there are fewer humanitarian aid groups able to help because of budget cuts.

“There is, without question, donor fatigue; a sense of, ‘Well, we keep investing money, but what’s the outcome? What’s the difference that we’re making right now?” she said. “For us, the number one pressure is making the case that the people of Haiti are the ones who are suffering, and that their needs are acute. Their needs are real, and it’s not as if we ignore them, that things are going to get much better. In fact, things are getting far, far worse.”

Last week, armed gangs took control of two cities, Saut-d’Eau and Mirebalais, both northeast of the capital in central Haiti. On Sunday the State Department and the Caribbean Community warned gang leaders and their allies against trying to take the government by force. The next day, armed gang members commandeered several private trucks and forced their drivers at gunpoint to take them to Mirebalais, where they looted markets and other businesses, and on Tuesday video circulated on social media networks showing gang members destroying the Mirebalais police station.

Gangs’ rapid expansion into new territories, Pope said, is squeezing Haitians into smaller and smaller communities with high instability and likelihood of violence.

“That also applies for our staff,” she noted. “Our staff expressed concern to me about getting back and forth to the sites where we work or to the office. We’ve had staff who’ve been kidnapped. We’ve had staff who have had to shelter because of gang violence. So it’s being felt, the money, the financial pressures, the lack of partners.”

Her visit showed her conditions in Haiti are “as brutal as any I’ve ever seen,” Pope said.

The U.N. migration agency has a presence in half of the country’s regional departments as well as in metropolitan Port-au-Prince.

The people she spoke to during her visit, Pope said, especially women and girls, “have no hope for their future. They don’t know what’s coming next…. It’s really bleak.”