Dilemmas of Humanitarian Intervention (CCGL9036) Second Semester 2013-2014
Dr. Ian Holliday
Haiti Essay
Essay Question 10
The international community has paid very little attention to the
views of local people in shaping humanitarian intervention in Haiti. Give examples of the lack of interest in local views. Why have
external agencies and actors been so unconcerned about what local people think? Is there a case for saying that external agencies’ work in Haiti is illegitimate?
Word Count: 2425
By: Jon Andre Pedersen (u3511238) 1-5-2014
There is a long history to the international community’s, and particularly the U.S.’
domination of Haiti (U.S. Hand in Haiti’s Agony, 2004). 1 This paper will focus on the US interventions in Haiti in recent times, with focus on the years of 1994, 2004 and 2011 to show how the international community, predominantly lead by the US, has paid little
attention to the views of local people in shaping and implementing their interventions.
These actors have been unconcerned about local people whenever they have run
counter to their own national interest. It will also briefly touch upon the legitimacy of
these interventions with the focus on two precautionary principles of Responsible to
Protect to evaluate its legitimacy: that the primary purpose of intervention is to halt
human suffering and second, that military intervention is to be used as a last resort; and thirdly, another criteria, that it is imposed multilaterally. The author acknowledges that
the three cases are significantly distinct in nature, time, and context, which cannot be
explored in full detail in this paper. Therefore, for a full-depth analysis on all three cases one would need to seek other sources, and arguably look into separate articles as this is, to the author’s knowledge, a unique analysis that has not been undertaken in the
literature of Haiti before.
Despite the frequency with which the phrase “international community” is invoked, its
precise meaning has been of great debate (Rocard, 2013). 2 However, this paper will
use the following definition by Macmillan Dictionary (N.D.) in that international
community refers to influential “political leaders and important organizations from all
parts of the world” . In the context of Haiti and this paper, “international community” will mainly refer to Canada, France, the US and the large international organisations. In
addition, what “humanitarian intervention” constitutes is also highly contested, but will
here refer to humanitarian intervention as a state’s use of force, whether it be force
through other means or, predominantly, “military force against another state when the
chief publicly declared aim of that military action is ending human-rights violations being perpetrated by the state against which it is directed” (Boundless, N.D.) .
1 These include mainly: the U.S. Marines invading Haiti in 1915 and occupying the country for 19 years; and then propping up of the dictators of Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier by U.S. power for the four following decades.
2 For some, an international community simply does not exist. For others, the term refers, more pragmatically, to all countries when they decide to act together.
1994 intervention
The 1994 intervention in Haiti is a prominent case of an intervention being largely
conducted based on national self-interest albeit being shrouded on humanitarian
grounds. On the night of September 29, 1991, Haitian army officers launched a coup
d’état against the country’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (Hallward, 2007). As a result, in September 1994, the U.S. invaded Haiti – a move which had been
authorized on July 31 by the Security Council (Murphy, 2006, p. 268; Avakian, 2011).
The invasion, officially called “Operation Uphold Democracy” restored the presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide within a month (Kretchik, Baumann & Fishel, 1998; CJA, 2011). 3 4 However, the U.S. and U.S.-allied military forces remained to enforce so-called
“peace-keeping” and “nation-building”, and did so until 2000 (Chossudovsky, 2010).
In the longer term the international community hoped the invasion would help ensure Haiti’s democratization and its economic development (Boutros-Ghali, 1999, p. 219).
Among others, the restoration of constitutional government in 1994 was conditional
upon the acceptance of what Chossudovsky (2009) refers to as “the “deadly economic therapy” : the United States, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter-American Development Bank devised ambitious economic plans, which emphasized private
enterprise and free trade, and stressed a neo-liberal agenda (World bank, 1998). 5
Haitian opposition to the occupation and to these US-backed economic reforms was
highly significant, as they increased political instability and undermined economic
development (Girard, 2004). For many, an intervention was against the will of the
Haitian people as it arose from the same logic as the previous coup d’état, namely to “legitimize, under international cover, its principal achievement: the total erasure of the Haitian people from the political scene of their own country” (Wilson, 2011).
Although the 1994 invasion was relatively free of collateral damage, in the sense of
killings and beyond, the Haitian people experienced another form of collateral damage.
3 The operation is also interchangeably referred to as Operation Restore Democracy.
4 The 1994 US intervention in Haiti was initially supposed to be, strictly speaking, an “invasion”, but, due to a last-minute agreement, Haitian soldiers decided not to fight and the intervention turned out to be what one may call a relatively “peaceful invasion.”
5 The neo-liberal agenda stressed improved tax collection, privatization of public companies, a leaner, more effective government, the use of non-governmental organizations to channel funds, and lower tariffs
The Haitian people paid a steep price for this U.S.-imposed “democracy” and “peace”
which went contrary to local opinions. Among others, the harsh dictates of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) lead to public services mostly turned over to foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (Chossudovsky, 2009; Avakian, 2011), and in general led to a loss of control. 6 Reluctance to comply fully with the demands of foreign capitalists became cause for denunciation and punishment. For instance, when Aristide lowered import tariffs as demanded, Haiti was suddenly flooded with rice from the
subsidized U.S. agribusiness that quickly devastated Haitian agriculture (Oxfam, 2010).
7 And when the Haitian government fined U.S. rice exporters for evading custom duties, the U.S. government retaliated by withholding tens of millions of dollars in aid to Haiti
(U.S. Hand in Haiti’s Agony, 2004). This was extremely detrimental to the Haitians as
over 75% of the population were engaged in agriculture at the time. This further led to a more profound economic devastation for Haiti (Chossudovsky, 2003) – that made it even harder to cope and to follow the strict proposed implementations – which eventually led to foreign governments cancelling aid pledges, removing remaining troops and
abandoning Haiti to its fate (Girard, 2004).
The intervention had largely been cloaked on humanitarian grounds. 8 However, as
Wilson (2011) summarizes: there was simply little or no focus on bolstering Haiti’s
grassroots social justice, human rights and environmental organizations. Overall, the
fundamental problem of the 1994 intervention was that it was implemented strongly on shallow national self-interest rather than the interest of Haitians themselves (Girard,
2004), and while carried out under the auspices of an intergovernmental body, the IMF reforms simply supported US strategic and foreign policy objectives (Chossudovsky,
2009; Hallward, 2007). 9 However, although, it can hardly be said that it was actioned to
6 Among others the IMF imposed requirements for further budget cuts in almost non-existent social sector programs such as healthcare and education, and also demanded a freeze/lowering on wages to control inflationary pressures, and removing the minimum wage of 25 cents an hour.
7 By the end of the 1990s Haiti’s local rice production had been reduced by half and rice imports from the US accounted for over half of local rice sales. In matter of a few years, Haiti had become the world’s fourth largest importer of American rice.
8 A prominent example includes how Bill Clinton in his address to the nation explained that the decision for the intervention was because of the concern by the vast number of human rights abuses.
9 Another arguably self-interest reason for the intervention was that during the violent years of 1991-1994, tens of thousands of
Haitians crowded into boats to seek asylum in the United States (CJA, 2011). However, after the intervention and restoration of the elected Aristide, Haitian boat people, now coming from a democratic Haiti, could easily, and legally, be turned away. Others also
point to the geographic location of Haiti as one of the core reasons that the international community is interested in intervening, namely that it is geographically placed between Venezuela and Cuba.
mainly halt human suffering, its swiftness and ability to break a deal with the junta
before an military escalation took place, and that it was a multilateral agreed
intervention by the Security Council, has made the intervention to been seen as
legitimate by most today, except by the locals themselves who went into a more dire situation ever since.
2004 Intervention
The 2004 intervention followed relatively the same lines as the previous one in 1994 , an intervention based on self-interest rather than the people it is supposed to aid, and led to a worsening situation in the country. Opposition to Aristide’s rule, partly as a result of the implementations put in place by the Haitian government and as a result of the
growingly dismal situation for the nation, fed a growing rebellion movement that would, with U.S. support and training, topple him in February 2004 (Avakian, 2011). 10 Again
the international community, headed by the US, intervened in Haiti. Aristide, was
overthrown on February 29th by a small but well organized and funded opposition
movement backed by the most powerful members of the international community – the U.S., Canada, and France (Hallward, 2007; Chossudovsky, 2009). In March 2004,
Aristide was airlifted out of the country by the U.S., voluntarily, by some accounts –
against his will, according to the majority today (Farmer, 2004; Khan, 2008). As a result, as of May 2004, Port-au-Prince was once again patrolled by foreign peacekeepers
(Girard, 2004), and they set up a puppet regime which was occupied by Western ‘technical assistants’ and Western-friendly ‘technocrats’ (Fenton, 2009).
Following its 1994 precedent, the Security Council approved a mandate for a new more permanent occupation force, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti
(MINUSTAH). This “peacekeeping force” soon provided its own collateral damage with numerous innocent getting injured and killed in their operations. In general, contrary to many official claims, according to various reports, thousands of Haitians – civilians,
militants and non-violent activists – lost their lives to conflict during this period (Hutson &
10 In the months leading up to the 2004 Coup d’état, US were training death squadrons composed of the former Tonton Macoute of the Duvalier era.
Kolbe, 2006; Fenton & Jay, 2006; World Socialist Editorial Board, 2004; Khan, 2008)
and over 35,000 rapes occurred (Lancet Medical Journal as cited in Engler & Shaw,
2006). The stability sought by the foreign interveners did not arrive; nearly five years of UN-sanctioned occupation did not improve life for most Haitians; and still, a large
popular movement still existed calling for the return of exiled former President Aristide
(BBC, 2008). The international community acted against the Haitian’s will in that
Aristide, who had won a landslide victory in elections in 2000, was supported by the
vast majority of the population. 11 The overthrow and subsequent occupation in 2004
had been justified, the international community reasoned, by the “Responsibility to
Protect” doctrine (Engler & Shaw, 2006; Seymour, 2010): to end human rights
violations. Nevertheless, for some authors, the sole reason was regime change, which had been planned by the U.S. for several years (Khan, 2008; Chossudovsky, 2009). But this “regime change” by force did not bring security to Haiti, and resulted into a more
pervasive “insecurity” reaching the boiling point (Khan, 2008).
The military intervention was a last resort as the international community had exhausted a vast amount of other means leading up to the intervention. 12 However, the proclaimed goal of halting human suffering is of more dispute. Because, if the international
community – led by the US – were really motivated by humanitarian considerations, then it should not have supported and financed the FRAPH death squadrons and activists to topple Aristide and kill his supporters. Its objective then is simply not to prevent the
massacre of civilians (Chossudovsky, 2009) which makes this intervention relatively
illegitimate as it is partly a problem, and causer of, what it is destined to stop if one were to follow the definitions of R2P and humanitarian intervention (Engler & Shaw, 2006).
However, this intervention too was multilateral, and has thus been seen to have been
legitimate by some, although it should be overshadowed by the fact that it did not halt
human suffering and rather escalated it, making it by others, an illegitimate intervention.
11 At the time of 2002 Aristide had over 70 % support from the population.
12 As Fenton (2009) put forward there were numerous examples of preventive measures taken prior to the intervention. These
include: political and diplomatic efforts such as “friends” and discussion groups (Friends of Haiti) or problem-solving workshops
(Ottawa Initiative on Haiti). There were also more direct and coercive measures taken such threats of trade and financial sanctions, withdraw support, and curtailment of aid among others.
2011 Intervention
Everything so far discussed had quite a devastating impact on Haiti, which would in turn intensify the horrible impact and aftermath of the 2010 earthquake (Chossudovsky,
2009). The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010 killed nearly a quarter million (Wilson, 2012), and development efforts suffered severe setbacks
because of political violence, lawlessness, corruption and natural disasters (Global
Security, 2011). The Haitian state, weak as it was before the earthquake, became
“bloodless and poly-traumatized” greatly due to that over the years the international
community’s NGOs had constituted themselves into a state within a state making the
Haitian government without sufficient capabilities and capacities (Bourjolly as cited in
Haiti Grassroots Watch, 2013).13 14 The vivid scenes of trauma led to a further massive influx of NGOs on behalf of the goodwill of the international community (Edmonds,
2013), and much like aid to Haiti before the earthquake, the majority of money bypassed the Haitian government and ended up directly in the hands of private contractors or NGOs (Haiti Grassroots Watch, 2013; Schuller, 2007).15
And once again, this humanitarian intervention and the civilian functions of rescuing an impoverished population was overshadowed by a large military component – of the U.S. mission (Chossudovsky, 2010) – consisting of about 10,000 U.S troops. In fact, there
were no reports of negotiations between the two governments regarding the entry and
deployment of US troops on Haitian soil. The decision was taken and imposed
unilaterally. The total lack of a functioning government in Haiti was used to legitimize, on humanitarian grounds, the sending in of a powerful military force, which has de facto
taken over several governmental functions, as well as the Port au Prince airport (Joseph as cited in Chossudovsky, 2010; Global Security, 2011), giving the US and the rest of
the international community the opportunity to exercise greater control over Haiti (Haiti Grassroots Watch, 2013).
13 Before the 12 January 2010 earthquake, Haiti had the most privatized social-service sector in the Americas, with over 80 percent of the country’s basic services provided by non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
14 The plurality of NGOs have led Haitians to mockingly label their own country as the “republic of NGOs” .
15 In fact, according to Associated Press (2010), only one percent of emergency aid went to the Haitian government.
Similar to the cases of the 1994, and the 2004 interventions, there has been revealed
strong national interest on the reasoning to interfere. Among others it has been revealed that Canada’s [and the US’] deployment of troops after the earthquake was not simply
for humanitarian causes, rather, it was because they feared a popular uprising in Haiti
(Canadian Press, 2011; Herz, 2011). Moreover, the reconstruction process has been
shown to be a very lucrative undertaking for many private organizations which are
benefiting from the extreme privatization of the Haitian state, resulting in a system of
services which are unaccountable to the Haitian people (Edmonds, 2013; Lee, 2011). In fact, as Schuller (2007) argues: The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Committee, led by Bill Clinton, seeks to entrench the same neoliberal policies which laid the foundation for
much of the pre-earthquake poverty and dependency, which is diametrically opposed to the goals of the Haitian people (Edmonds, 2013). For the case of the post-earthquake
humanitarian intervention the intervention itself is quite legitimate in that it gives people much needed emergency relief aid, and it too was decided multilaterally by the UN.
However, the large deployment of military personnel and equipment and taking over
government control is not necessarily legitimate as there are no reasons to provide
such. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of the post-earthquake intervention will prove itself in the future as to whether the international community is able to build sustainable
solutions for a nation that has been made greatly dependent on the “goodwill” of the international community over the last two decades.
Self-Interest
Indeed, the label “humanitarian” is regularly applied to the international community’s
actions in Haiti (Seymour, 2010). However, the international community almost always have mixed motives for intervening and are rarely prepared to sacrifice their own
soldiers overseas unless they have self-interested reasons for doing so (Bajoria &
McMahon, 2013). The powerful only intervene when it suits them to do so and are more likely to be guided by calculations of national interest than what is best for the victims in whose name the intervention is ostensibly being carried out (HI Centre, 2013). For this reason, interventions motivated by short-term political interests, even when its
promoters drape themselves in an idealistic mantle, are unlikely to succeed, unless
these poor, divided nations also present a real strategic value, as was not the case in Haiti (Girard, 2004).
Conclusion
To summarize, the objectives, through these three distinct interventions, have hardly
been consistent with local views and opinions. Shortly put, the 1994 intervention was
against the will of Haitian people from the onset and the harsh dictates after the
invasion and ongoing foreign control devastated the country. In a similar vein, the 2001 US-supported coup d’état and subsequent foreign control, also went contrary to the
domestic population’s views; the majority supported Aristide who was toppled, and their daily life got worsened as a result of the intervention. Thirdly, the 2011 post-earthquake humanitarian intervention has followed the lines of the previous ones , albeit being a
natural disaster relief; the majority of money bypassed the Haitian government and local organizations, and it was overshadowed by a large military component who took control over several governmental functions giving the US and the international community the opportunity to exercise greater control while being unaccountable to the local
population. All three interventions have been multilaterally agreed and imposed by the
international community, which Finnemore (2002) argues is key for a humanitarian
intervention to be legitimate. However, for the 1994 and 2001 interventions whether
these were actioned mainly to halt human suffering is highly debatable. Especially the
2001 intervention is in this sense illegitimate as it escalated what it was supposed to
stop, human suffering. However, both were able to follow the logic of exhausting non-
military solutions, albeit with the latter having to extend to that. This leads the author to conclude that the 1994 intervention was legitimate, the 2001 intervention barely so, if so at all. Whereas for the 2011 intervention, more time would be needed to be able to
further evaluate its legitimacy as it depends fairly on the long-term goals, actions and results of such a disaster relief intervention. Whether they were legitimate or not; they all have paid little attention to the local population’s wants and needs when being
shaped and implemented.
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