Haiti: UN Evacuates Non-Essential Personnel From Port-au-Prince
Non-essential UN personnel have been evacuated from Port-au-Prince this week as gang violence has further escalated in the capital of Haiti over the past few days....
Facts
- Non-essential UN personnel have been evacuated from Port-au-Prince this week as gang violence has further escalated in the capital of Haiti over the past few days.[1][2]
- They were transported by helicopter — 14 people at a time — to the northern city of Cap-Haïtien, where some personnel assigned to the UN Integrated Office in Haiti took humanitarian flights to Panama on Tuesday and Wednesday.[3][4]
- A UN spokesperson said on Tuesday that essential personnel would stay in Port-au-Prince and that humanitarian assistance would continue to be delivered outside the capital. As of Monday, 1,527 out of 1,725 UN staff reportedly remained in the Caribbean nation.[2][4]
- This comes as a US Air Force C-130 aircraft landed on Sunday in Port-au-Prince's international airport, which remains closed to commercial flights after gangs opened fire at flights this month, to evacuate American diplomats.[1][3]
- US humanitarian aid organization Mercy Corps announced on Monday that staff would be relocated to regions outside Port-au-Prince, while Doctors Without Borders halted its operations in the capital last week citing police threats and even an attack.[4][5]
- According to the latest figures, Haiti has seen over 4.5K gang-related deaths this year amid surges in violence in Port-au-Prince. On top of that, an estimated 700K people, half of them children, are currently internally displaced in the country.[6][7]
Sources: [1]Al Jazeera, [2]UN News, [3]New York Times, [4]Reuters, [5]CNN, [6]The Haitian Times and [7]France 24.
Narratives
- Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Voice of America. Haiti is at a crossroads. Time is running out for the international community to avoid a complete collapse of security and state authority in Haiti by either making good on its commitments to help the multinational security force operating in the country or transforming it into a UN peacekeeping mission. Otherwise, the country will head to a civil war.
- Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Liberation News. None of the US-sponsored neocolonial interventions in Haiti have been particularly successful, including the Multinational Security and Support mission currently on the ground. Neither this occupation nor a potential UN peacekeeping mission will address the plight of the people — only Haitians can achieve that.
