Former U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Dan Foote said the United States’ latest efforts to “re-establish security” and “build security conditions conducive to holding free and fair elections” in Haiti is part of the “same tired playbook that has failed” to bring order and reform to the Caribbean country for decades.
On September 5, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with interim Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where the pair discussed a peacekeeping mission in the Caribbean country authorized by the UN Security Council in an effort to reform the country and reclaim it from violent gangs.
However, Foote said Haitians do not want a UN-led mission in their country, due to prior experiences with similar missions.
“The U.S. has found the same tired playbook that has failed at least the last five times we’ve tried it over the last 50 years, and that playbook is we wait until things get so bad in Haiti that it’s almost impossible to go in and do anything,” Foote explained on Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“Then we come in too late with a peacekeeping mission. You’ll notice that Secretary Blinken went to Haiti. Yesterday, the U.S. and Ecuador filed something with the UN to start the process for a UN peacekeeping mission. Haitians don’t agree on much. They do agree that they do not want the UN back there because the last time from around 2006, for 15 years, the MINUSTAH peacekeeping mission was involved in atrocities, massacres, sexual exploitation of women and children, and they reintroduced Cholera in the 80s. They don’t want a UN mission,” Foote added.
