Haïti à Travers les Pages

  In Haiti, naming the war to better end it By Patrick Prézeau Stephenson * (Le français suit) PORT-AU-PRINCE — At dawn, the streets open or close to the rhythm of rumors: such and such a road has held, such and such a market has folded, such and such a school will not open. Daily life seems to be confined to corridors that are lit intermittently. In a country where the "crisis" has been described so much that it has almost lost words, one thing is clear: Haiti is at war — an asymmetrical war against the very routine of living. This truth, long diluted in the euphemisms of the "transition", invites us to make a simple and radical choice: stop entrusting the future to arrangements of continuity that replay the same play, and instead bring together all the forces willing to build a fairer and more republican nation, breaking with political dependence and the parody of democracy that only gives birth to contested elections. The question is no longer rhetorical:...

Haiti’s Roadmap: The State is Hollow, the Private Sector is Perceived as Predatory — Can Civil Society Hold the Line? By Patrick Prézeau Stephenson (Le Français suit) PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti’s transitional “feuille de route” promises three pillars: security, elections, and constitutional reform. On paper, these are state functions. In practice, after years of crisis and capture, the state is brittle. The private sector has the money and the trucks. But the actors who can make or break legitimacy are neither ministers nor magnates. They are Haiti’s unions, peasant networks, women’s groups, human rights organizations, youth movements, and community radios — the stubborn infrastructure of Haitian civil society. The choice is stark: either civil society becomes the guarantor of trust, or the roadmap collapses into another elite arrangement.   Security: Corridors Only Work if Communities Own Them Haiti’s private operators can help unblock “protected service corridors” — po...