 Hi. Today we are talking about Haiti. We'll be looking with three experts about the unique manifestations of fragility in the country. They will be discussing all of the different structural challenges the country faces and some possible solutions for the way forward. Joining me today is George Foreo, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Welcome, George. Pleasure to be here. I've read some of your recent work and you've done an amazing job at going down into the very detailed contextual specifics of insecurity and instability. I guess I would just ask you to start today by describing your diagnosis for the problems and where we find ourselves in this very troubling time for the country. Thank you, Andrew. Haiti is a country that faces profound governance problems. Now, that sounds like a simplistic idea, but as a practical matter for the last two presidencies of Haiti since 2011, in effect, we've had two national leaders who really did not provide much national governance. And in fact, during those years, we saw at one point at the end of the previous president's term, no elected successor. And then more recently, with the late president, General Moise, a parliament that was not reelected, in effect, since 2019. So he spent the last 18 months of his life, in effect, with no structure to govern. And that has an impact on the ability of people to see government deliver, not even talking about democratic governance, but simply deliver something. And it also has side effects on issues of economy in terms of jobs. The pandemic, the COVID, did not certainly help in that regard. And then more recently, we, in fact, have really not in the last six months, particularly over the last year or so, a wave of sort of disintegration out in the streets, in effect. So a wave of violence, the most notable one being probably sort of industrial scale, kidnapping. But that's really in some ways just a symptom of a broader problem. I know you've thought a lot about the political process and what it would take to bring a political settlement to Haiti. Can you tell us more about the sort of preconditions that you've spoken about and what would be necessary for a way forward for the government? So the irony of the Haitian crisis, in effect, is that there's been a fairly active civil society movement. So this is not a society that is completely disintegrated. Governance isn't being delivered, but civil society remains quite active. Now it has diverse views. So the challenge, in effect, now has been in the last six to nine months, has been to come up with a consensus among these differing views that civil society sort of represents. That's not been easy. I think to some degree international mediators or other actors could perhaps at least encourage a greater push in that direction. So this consensus really needs to be established fairly quickly in order for the political process to move forward in a positive way. That really is a precondition to any notion of trying to address violence. Because otherwise, if you do it in the reverse, you end up with sort of an artificial structure that only cannot sustain any efforts, any progress that is made in the security arena. Could you tell us more about the various constituencies beyond civil society and the existing political actors? More details about how they break down within civil society, within the political constituencies. So you have what is often rather exaggerated, described as elites, and I think this is not a particularly helpful notion. You do have an active small portion of society, particularly in the urban areas, that lives sort of half in Haiti politically, culturally, and financially, and half elsewhere in effect, their ability to move back and forth in and out of Haiti. I don't think that's particularly a bad thing. The problem, however, is that that constituency itself is not particularly united at times. It represents different political views and ambitions. You also then have at the other extreme a large portion, particularly in the rural areas, but also in urban slums in effect, really no other way to describe it, a constituency of individuals who have yet to benefit from any sense of governance, let alone economic development over the last two or three decades. And that constituency is not being addressed properly. It is growing in size, and it is in some ways one of the sources for the violence. They have nothing else to in some ways look at and do, and therefore they ultimately fall into the trap, if you will, of a cycle of violence, and that's easy to sustain under present circumstances. You then have a third constituency in some ways, which is a educated sort of merchant class, small merchants, that constituency in some ways is the one that provides, if you will, a heartbeat in some ways of Haiti, but is the one that pays the price for all of the deficiencies, both of governance and violence. So I understand what you're saying about this precondition of a political settlement that is inclusive and lasting, and before we can ever make any real security gains. I understand you have a lot of thoughts about how we approach the security situation, both now as you work towards a political settlement, but then thereafter. And I'm very interested in this conceptual precondition that you talk about with the term gangs and how we think of criminal gangs versus militia in some other context, could you please tell me more about that? Yes, so I think when we talk about gang violence in some ways, it's a term that doesn't really describe the sheer scope of what we're talking about in the case of Haiti now. They're not just gangs, if you will, neighborhood gangs. There's a competing set of coalitions of gangs, the result of which is that large parts of the capital city, metropolitan area, is in fact under the control of these gangs. Now this is not a united group, as I said, this is a series of competing feasts if you will, competing for whatever they can extract out of the local community. There's violence out in the rural areas, plus there's violence also out in the larger cities outside of the capital, particularly in the north. These constituencies, in effect, leave me to suggest that when you just describe gang violence, that actually is a much, it sounds like a localized effort when it effected is a national issue. It is also one that is tied very closely to Haiti's sort of open drug trafficking sort of market, if you will, particularly coming in from the rest of the Caribbean and the northern part of South America, that usually moves either to the Dominican Republic, to the Bahamas, or frankly directly to the United States. And there's also arms trafficking. And here the United States has a particularly kind of tricky issue here because most of the weapons that are made into the hands of Haitians are somehow legally, illegally coming from the United States. So a combination of all of that therefore leads me to conclude that the concept of simply saying gang violence and kidnapping is not enough. We need to think of this in much broadly. It implies a number of other tools, policy tools and policy instruments that a regular law enforcement approach would absolutely not address effectively. You've touched on something that you know way better than myself. This idea of the role of international assistance and international actors as part of the problem specifically, lots of discussions around this. But we all know about the various incidents there, the cholera issues and other issues. What are your thoughts on this as far as whether or not the international assistance has been in fact a driver of instability? Yeah, I actually tend to be careful about the analysis of the international community. I think as a general statement it's fair to say that it hasn't delivered what international actors thought would happen in Haiti. There's no doubt about that and one should not have any second thoughts about it. Haitians are frustrated. And I think it could lead to the argument obviously that international actors not alone their assistance ultimately becomes the driving force of a lot of the instability because they in effect drive the projects, they drive the outcomes, they're responsible for it, but somehow at the end of the day they're no longer around. I'll give you an example of something that could be done differently even though maybe controversial. The UN had a peacekeeping operation after 2004 until 2017. In some ways it did provide some degree of stability. The violence came down dramatically including gang violence which is not a new development. But there was no leave behind if you will. After all of these years of effort and funding and training there was nothing really behind that was memorable that dealt not only with security issues but also with governance corruption. There was an example of that even though it's a controversial one which is the outcomes of the peace process in Guatemala. Ultimately over a period of ten years did generate a commission if you will that had sort of a connection to the United Nations system that dealt with corruption. It has fallen under hard times but at least it was an indication of a commitment by the international community as well as by local political actors that corruption was an issue impunity was unacceptable and they put together at least a process that at least could attack the problem. The irony in the case of Guatemala is probably almost too successful and local politicians shut it down in effect. In the case of Haiti it could be done in the context of a more regional initiative. People often forget that Haiti is a member of the Caribbean community. Doesn't benefit from it very much. But Karakam for all of its flaws is made up primarily of countries that abide by democratic standards and the rule of law. It has in fact an interest in limiting issues of corruption throughout the region and could probably be potentially a partner if you will for Haiti and other actors on this issue of corruption impunity. But that to me is a more positive aspect of what the international community can do. But all these efforts by the United States is included to have a mechanism by which something gets left behind and is sustainable by Haitians themselves. Not some artificial mechanism that ultimately falls apart the day international actors leave the country. What do you think the best effort forward to this long-term plan would be in the immediate, short, medium and long term? So four sort of phases. Well in some ways the broader part of the answer is that the United States now has in place the Global Fragility Act of which Haiti in fact is potentially one of the beneficiaries. The major virtue of the Global Fragility Act is its time span. It's not so much the dollar issue which is important. It's the fact that it has at least a ten year time frame. And that I think would be a key issue in any solution if you will to Haiti's crisis which is not something that gets put together and has sort of a timeline of 24 months or where this level of success is based on an outcome as to how quickly the United States gets out of the environment. Instead it has a ten year timeline. And I think that to me would be the point of departure now. It is not dependent on individual congressional appropriations if you will or particular political differences. It obviously has to be a commitment on the part of the Haitian authorities. So it's a two way street. But once that is in place I think there are a lot of interesting possibilities both in the law enforcement area, the Haitian National Police does need support or broadly in the area of corruption and impunity as I mentioned just a moment ago. A third area is in some ways a major reconstruction project. As I said better than what happened after the 2010 earthquake. But there are ways of doing that. And I think if the Global Fragility Act provides a broad framework that all these sort of various pieces can be sort of attached to if you will and provides a strategy rather than sort of haphazardly trying to do different things at different times. How do you think we best go about bringing in that humanitarian relief that is so needed alongside these longer term development thinking towards the long term? So both paying attention to the short term most immediate needs but not letting that distract you for the longer term. This is where I would return actually to the earlier part of our conversation which is unless there is in fact a political consensus, a political compact that somehow is able to have a timeline attached to it and therefore a set of responsibilities of what it tries to achieve or a period of nine months or whatever it is, 18 months perhaps leading to elections. That framework, that consensus is what you attach to the kind of assistance you're talking about because then you have actors in society that have an incentive in effect to participate in the process and they know where this is going and they know that there's commitments behind it. So it's in some ways, humanitarian assistance in this case if you're only limited to preventing deaths and further violence you in fact have a kind of an open ended scheme where nothing is going to change dramatically in fact it's going to get worse. So the political consensus becomes important because that's the structure that only is able to manage and direct and provide in effect credibility to any form of assistance including humanitarian assistance that is delivered from the outside. Short of that you in effect have a continuation of what we see in other countries a further disintegration of society and governance disappearing altogether and in fact a completely chaotic situation where humanitarian assistance is basically designed to prevent more deaths or further movements of people but that's not a sustainable solution. Absolutely. Thank you so much for being with us today. My pleasure.