Around 5,000 people have been killed this year in Haiti, including 184 massacred last week. A Kenyan police officer, part of a UN-backed multinational force, patrols a street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Dec. 5.Odelyn Joseph/The Associated Press
In October, gang members armed with automatic weapons marched into the town of Pont-Sondé, shooting indiscriminately. When a resident made a desperate plea for help from a community leader living about 15-kilometres away, it took officers four hours to arrive. At least 115 people were killed, one more episode in the indiscriminate violence that has become all too familiar in Haiti.
Following a catastrophic 2010 earthquake and the 2021 assassination of its President, Haiti has become the grimmest place in the Americas. Around 200 gangs dominate the capital. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been displaced internally or northward, where refugees become pawns for political point-scoring. One in six children are on the brink of famine. Around 5,000 people have been killed this year, including 184 massacred last week.
The help that Pont-Sondé‘s residents sought is even harder to come by these days. After three decades, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) suspended operations in the country last month when threats by the Haitian National Police culminated with an attack on an MSF ambulance and the execution of two patients inside, though it has since partially resumed service.
The UN’s Multinational Security Support Mission, aimed at helping police confront gangs, has only deployed around 400 of 2,500 promised troops. Most of those are from Kenya and largely do not speak French or creole. The United States and France are almost certain to stay out of the nightmare they helped create, given current political shifts and a history of colonialism, occupation and debt exploitation.
Canada, then, has a duty to step up in this vacuum, using what Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has touted as this country’s strengths in “convening” to array the world in a determined mission to stabilize Haiti and give its political systems a fighting chance.
This is not an ideal path, given Haiti’s colonial past and the troubled ensuing interventions. Peacekeepers with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, the last major UN mission there, brought the deadly cholera epidemic to the country and some were accused of abuse, sexual and otherwise. Suspicion is understandable.
But a domestic political resolution isn’t close. The formation of a Transitional Presidential Council in April was a positive step, but the council has selected three different prime ministers since. Worse, three of its seven voting members have been accused of bribery, tainting efforts to rebuild systems long marked by trust-eroding corruption.
Elections have been promised for February, 2026, but what’s the point if Haitians lack faith in their institutions? Transparent governance, the rule of law, a democracy they can believe in – only these things can truly help Haiti and sustainably empower its people. There is no obvious way to achieve them, as misery compounds and spreads.
Additional targeted intervention is the best remaining option. Support among Haitians appears to be growing. Three 2023 polls found a majority would welcome a foreign force.
Canada can help to marshal the international consensus and collaboration needed for such a mission. This country has a substantial stake in the crisis, as the home of the third-largest Haitian diaspora and a leader in La Francophonie. It has the capacity to better support microfinance and microcredit programs for everyday Haitians – which new Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé has called for – as well as the effort to fund the U.S. $674-million UN Humanitarian Response Plan, which is not even half financed. Ottawa should also prioritize claims from Haitians seeking to join their families in Canada, within the current humanitarian immigration stream.
What Canada does not have is military capacity. For years, Ottawa has shimmied out of pressure to lead a multinational peacekeeping mission and, with a recruitment crisis, a NATO-supporting battle group in Latvia and just 31 peacekeepers stationed around the world, the Canadian Armed Forces can’t put boots on the ground.
Still, adequate funding could, for instance, allow Canada’s navy to offer more than two small ships for three weeks to patrol for drug- and gun-trafficking. That the CAF is under-resourced is a problem for Canada’s credibility and contributions, mostly limiting Ottawa to soft-power approaches such as police training and aid funding.
For Canada’s soft power to find purchase, it must be backed up with hard power. And if we hope to truly help Haitians, it will require leadership, not lectures.