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Haiti: A Future Beyond Peacekeeping?
What is the role of peacekeeping in a country that suffers from extreme poverty, political instability, and deep social divisions? That’s the question a group of students from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) are working to answer. What they found so far: an uphill battle against corruption, rampant manipulation of the urban poor, and a lack of coordination among the agencies charged with helping out.
In January 2009, the six students left Columbia and New York City, bound for the tumultuous Caribbean nation of Haiti. “It’s an opportunity for students to experience the realities of a United Nations peacekeeping mission,” says Professor Elisabeth Lindenmayer, faculty advisor and director of SIPA’s United Nations Studies Program. “We want to help students move from the classroom and academic theory, to the actual workings of a real peacekeeping operation on the ground.” to the practical realities on the ground."
Since 2004, the United Nations Stabilization Mission, also known as MINUSTAH, has worked to keep the peace in Haiti. (MINUSTAH is an acronym of its French translation Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haiti.) This international peacekeeping force consists of thousands of uniformed and civilian personnel, working to protect the Haitian population from bands of armed gangs, all against the backdrop of a hungry nation.
In April 2008, deadly riots erupted in Haiti over the price of food. Six people were killed and the Haitian Prime Minister resigned. MINUSTAH stepped in to provide essential law and order in the capital to keep the Presidential Palace from being overrun, while President Préval ordered a mandatory decrease in rice prices. The problems compounded in late summer of 2008 with a string of hurricanes and tropical storms that pummeled the nation. Hundreds of people were killed in the storms, and as many as 80,000 people were left in desperate need of help.
“Rising prices and hurricanes hit other nations in the Caribbean – Cuba, the Dominican Republic – but you don’t see their governments falling,” said Sean Blaschke (MIA ’09). “We want to describe why this is the case in Haiti, why the security gains made by the United Nations haven’t been enough to prevent this.”
In the wake of these crises, the students set out for Haiti: Blaschke, Andrew Cramer, Marcy Hersh, and Leila Makarechi from the United States, Carina Lakovits from Austria, and Alejandro Gomez Palma from Mexico. Their mission? To understand how a peacekeeping operation is structured and works on the ground; its limits in the context of Haiti; and the effect of the food crisis and hurricanes on the work, priorities and strategy of the peacekeeping operation.
“Once we got to Haiti, the biggest revelation for us was this key link between governance and state legitimacy,” said Blaschke. “MINUSTAH, because it is providing the security, found itself expected by many Haitians to fill the role of the government, including providing basic services and creating the necessary conditions for socio-economic growth. Transferring back this authority to the state is crucial to the mission’s success.”
The students got a close-up look at Port-au-Prince and interviewed officials at all levels of MINUSTAH, the Haitian government and many non-government organizations. They also worked in a trip to Cité Soleil, a recent hotbed of Haitian violence and former gang stronghold. The students had already learned just how pervasive gangs had become in Haiti, and how Cité Soleil was one of MINUSTAH’s success stories. “Much effort was focused on areas like Cité Soleil,” said Andrew Cramer (MIA '10). “After the 2006 election, UN forces were able to arrest many of the gang leaders and, to a large degree, prevent gangs from reforming in other cities.”
But gender based violence remains a significant problem. “The use of rape as a political tactic is prominent in Haiti’s history and continues during times of political upheaval,” said Marcy Hersh (MIA ’09). “The lack of available employment opportunities for women means that women will attempt to have children with multiple men to ensure that men will stay with them, protecting and providing for them.”
These ongoing problems are why the students are seeking to describe the circumstances that led Haiti into such a precarious position. Beneath the gang and gender violence, the food shortages and the storm damage is an extremely fragile peace. “There’s a perception that Haiti is constantly buried in intractable crisis, which does it a major disservice,” says Hersh. “There are so many major things happening in the international arena, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Gaza, the financial crisis, there are so many reasons Haiti doesn’t receive the attention it deserves.”
The United Nations Study Program at SIPA worked in collaboration with Columbia’s Institute of Latin American Studies to secure funding for the trip. The findings will be presented in a paper at a conference on April 7.
Read Marcy Hersh’s (MIA ’09) first-person account in Communiqué.
Watch the panel discussion featuring representatives from the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and other branches of the UN.
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View more photos here.
Learn more about Haiti from the U.S. State Department here.
Read the United Nations Studies Program's final report: Haiti: A Future Beyond Peacekeeping.
08/17/2009