Latin American leaders approved on Saturday the declaration of Santo Domingo, which contains five points that include the need to promote a financial structure, the environmental charter and a plan to achieve food security.
During the twenty-eighth edition of the Ibero-American Summit held in Santo Domingo, the delegation of the Dominican Republic raised the need to solve the crisis facing neighboring Haiti, indicating that in order to activate an aid plan, the country must first be pacified.
This is how Dominican President Luis Abinader expressed it: “I want to say with all the firmness and respect of the Dominican Republic that the only way to act with Haiti is to pacify Haiti,” said Abinader, when requesting the international community to act urgently in the face of the situation of violence that the Haitian population is suffering.
“Now with the situation as it is, aid cannot arrive, a development plan cannot arrive. It is essential to pacify first,” said the president when asking the United States, France and Canada to assume the leadership to achieve the pacification of Haiti.
During a press conference at the end of the summit, Abinader ruled out the possibility of the Dominican Republic participating in any military action to pacify the neighboring country.
The host of the summit acknowledged that Haiti is “infested with gangs” that cause “violations of human rights and the integrity and dignity of the poorest level of the Haitian community.”
Abinader made the statement by seconding his counterpart from Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, who during his speech made a strong call to the United Nations to provide an immediate response to the crisis facing the poorest country in the region, which he assured has degenerated into a “failed state.”
“The world is once again looking the other way and to me as a Costa Rican it does not seem fair to tell the Dominican Republic to send armed forces,” said Chaves, stating that the Haitian crisis is a “global responsibility” that is not being addressed.
The president of the Spanish government Pedro Sánchez also expressed his solidarity with Abinader and offered him Spain’s support in the face of the crisis in Haiti.
Powerful gangs have infiltrated once-peaceful communities in and around the Haitian capital, and experts estimate they now control roughly 60% of Port-au-Prince. They have looted neighborhoods, raped adults and children and kidnapped hundreds of victims, from American missionaries to a traveling hot dog vendor, in a bid to control more territory. Violence has worsened since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
The Haitian National Police has barely 9,000 active officers in a country of more than 11 million people, and authorities say the department still lacks sufficient resources and personnel despite international aid. The violent crisis has so far left at least 78 police officers dead at the hands of gangs, which have seized control of police departments in some areas and burned others, according to human rights activists.
The uptick in violence has also left tens of thousands of Haitians homeless and sparked mass migration to the United States and other islands in the Caribbean, with more and more trips on flimsy boats proving fatal. Meanwhile, officials in countries such as the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands have restricted migration and have expressed frustration with the pressure that increased migration is causing on public services.
In this context, the Dominican government has hardened its policies towards its neighbor with the construction of the first phase of a fence on the border and the deportations of thousands of Haitian refugees, which has provoked international criticism, including that of the High Commissioner for UN for Human Rights, Volker Türk.
[Con información de AP y reporte de la periodista Francis Zabala, desde República Dominicana]
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