A Geopolitical Catch-22? The Future of Foreign Intervention in Haiti
May 07, 2025 - Written by Raphael McMahon
Introduction
Chaos reigns in the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The former president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021, a gang coalition called Viv Ansanm controls approximately 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and violence and poverty have risen as state control has diminished. Over a million Haitians have been internally displaced by the violence. The former Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry is effectively exiled in Puerto Rico after his re-entry into the nation was blocked by the gangs. Both Henry’s government and its successor, the Transitional Presidential Council, have failed to hold long-promised democratic elections and reverse the deteriorating situation. Haiti is experiencing social, economic and political catastrophe. A UN-approved, but UN-independent, Multinational Security Support Mission (MMS), spearheaded by Kenya and funded by the U.S., was assembled in 2024 to help the Haitian authorities stabilise the nation. Viv Ansanm, who allege that the mission promotes the interests of an imperialist American oligarchy, oppose the mission and claim political legitimacy as the protectors of Haitian sovereignty. Despite this, much of the international community and various Haitian organisations oppose their inclusion in future peace negotiations. This report posits that Haitian instability will inevitably precipitate further foreign intervention and therefore outlines the potential opportunities and risks presented by further foreign intervention and recommends a structure therefor.
Historical, Social, Economic and Military Context
Haiti has witnessed various, mostly bloody, foreign interventions. The U.S. consistently intervened in Haitian politics in the 20th Century; the U.S. restored ousted presidents to power, propped up anti-Communist leadership and even occupied the nation. A United Nations stabilisation mission composed of primarily Brazilian troops, designed to promote human rights, conflict avoidance and democratic political engagement, was also operational in Haiti between 2004 and 2017. Though the mission largely stabilised the nation and successfully built a more effective Haitian police force, the mission was beset by scandals. UN personnel and aid workers were accused of committing human rights abuses and engaging in sexually exploitative practices. Cholera was also introduced to Haiti by Nepalese peacekeepers. These failed interventions cast a long shadow and are widely perceived to have undermined Haitian sovereignty. Many Haitians have therefore expressed wariness toward the foreign MSS. However, this scepticism towards foreign intervention is offset by popular concern about the lawlessness that threatens to engulf Haiti. Viv Ansanm, a coalition made up of once warring gangs which formed in 2024, are powerful. Their numerous foot soldiers attack police stations, healthcare facilities, prisons, and even forced the closure of Haiti’s main international airport in November 2024. Viv Ansanm currently occupies most of Port-au-Prince and many surrounding towns.
The Haitian economy is in tatters: there has been no recorded economic growth since 2018, more than 60% of Haitians earn less than $1 a day and 30% reportedly live in extreme poverty. Roughly 50% of Haitians face food insecurity and 40% lack access to clean drinking water. Haitian society is consequently divided, disillusioned and desperate. Distrust in political organisations, whether (supposedly) revolutionary or governmental, is widespread as many believe that the authorities covertly negotiate with the gangs to enrich themselves at the population’s expense. Haitians are charged ‘circulation’ taxes when they cross gang-controlled checkpoints in Port-au-Prince. In 2024, over 5,600 Haitians died because of gang violence and more than 250 were executed by the Haitian police, who have been accused of committing human rights abuses. Most Haitians are currently unsafe and unfree.
The Haitian state controls a mere fraction of Port-au-Prince and its entry points, has neither a functioning president nor parliament and is unable to provide its citizens with basic necessities: most hospitals are out of service, prison breaks have occurred, makeshift refugee camps are scattered around Port-au-Prince and fears of famine abound. Haiti is becoming an open air prison with millions of inmates. Polls suggest that most Haitians, as of 2023, supported the deployment of a UN-sanctioned force to fight Viv Ansanm and re-establish order. UN intervention, to both many Haitian and international observers, seems the only current viable option for the creation of a stable Haitian government. This has created a geopolitical catch-22; Haitian sovereignty, a concept historically undermined and overridden by foreign actors, has become dependent on foreign intervention.
UN Peacekeepers monitoring a food distribution centre in Haiti. Source: https://news.sky.com/story/un-peacekeepers-fathered-hundreds-of-children-in-haiti-mission-report-says-11889570
Core Arguments and Policy Recommendations
The escalation and increased militarisation of foreign intervention in Haiti seems inevitable. The gradual expansion of the MSS has failed to prevent Viv Ansanm’s territorial expansion. The entirety of Port-au-Prince is at risk of falling. Two Kenyan police officers have so far been killed and, given the mission’s gradual augmentation, more deaths are likely. The Dominican Republic has also adopted an increasingly militaristic stance towards Haiti: Dominican President Luis Abinader recently pledged to send 1500 additional troops to the Haitian-Dominican border to prevent Haitian border crossings. Furthermore, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has revoked the temporary legal ‘protected’ status of thousands of Haitian asylum-seekers in the U.S.; they now face deportation under threat of military force. Ergo, Haiti’s decline does not exist in a vacuum; the safety of many Haitians already depends on the national interests of foreign military powers. The United Nations should preclude the risk of an escalated, nationalistic foreign intervention in Haiti by a third-party nation state by establishing a peacekeeping mission with international funding and military backing.
The MSS is unfit for purpose. The mission is funded primarily by the U.S. and Kenya’s very involvement has been widely attributed to Biden’s designation of the East African nation as a major non-NATO ally. The MSS is therefore perceived, by Viv Ansanm and others, as both a geopolitical tool for the improvement of U.S.-Kenya relations and a vessel for the neo-colonial expansion of American regional interests. The Kenyan police also have a growing reputation for brutality in Kenya proper. Their deployment unsettles many international, Kenyan and Haitian observers. An international UN mission whose troops, police and aid workers came from a variety of countries, both traditional allies and adversaries of the U.S., would be less susceptible to influence by non-Haitian regional interests and therefore less likely to be perceived as imperialist, or at least particularly Americanophile. Many in the UN already support the transfer of the MSS to a UN peacekeeping mission.
Legitimisation and empowerment of the state, the temporary provision of basic services to Haitians and negotiation with (and, if necessary, deterrence of) Viv Ansanm should be the three key UN objectives. A UN mission in Haiti should resemble the UN mission (UNAMSIL) in Sierra Leone (1999-2006). UNAMSIL succeeded; it helped negotiate a peace treaty between rebel and government factions and the disarmament of their paramilitary forces. The mission provided aid to beleaguered Sierra Leoneans, facilitated social reintegration of rebel fighters, cemented the extension of state control to previously lawless regions, oversaw the rebuilding of critical infrastructure and catalysed the re-establishment of an effective civilian police force. UNAMSIL’s success was characterised by the mission’s insistence upon constructive rather than retributive dialogue between warring parties and a strong military presence, which allowed peacekeepers to effectively protect civilians and deter threats to its personnel and equipment. A UN mission in Haiti should have similar objectives and operational structure.
In concrete terms, the UN should deploy peacekeepers to deter Viv Ansanm, safeguard Haitian civilians and UN non-military personnel, protect the Haitian state and professionalise Haitian law enforcement authorities through training. UN aid agencies should assist the Transitional Presidential Council in providing basic services, such as transport, healthcare, shelter, food and water, to all Haitians. This UN aid would alleviate the pressure on the Haitian state, allowing it to prioritise rebuilding Haitian infrastructure, banking, services and business. The UN mission should negotiate with Viv Ansanm less as a criminal coalition and more as the militarized wing of a nascent political party. In January 2025 their leader declared the group’s intention to seek political recognition; Viv Ansanm has indeed developed some limited political acumen that belies its political, if not moral, designation as a criminal coalition. Their heavy military presence makes their inclusion in negotiation necessary, and their gradual formation of an anti-interventionist political philosophy makes such an inclusion feasible. Negotiators should make the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers and Viv Ansanm’s political recognition contingent on their total abandonment of criminal activities, relinquishment of territorial control and commitment to promoting their nascent ideology in legitimately contested elections rather than through force.
Haitian instability is such that an eventual full-scale foreign military intervention, most likely by the Dominican Republic, designed to avoid regional destabilisation seems unavoidable. The withdrawal of the MSS in the absence of a UN replacement mission would likely result in a civil war that could force the Dominicans’ hand and that Viv Ansanm, given the institutional and military deficiencies of the Haitian state, would likely win. Therefore, a UN-supervised multilateral peace process seems to be the only alternative to the MSS, a foreign military occupation of Haiti or the expansion of Viv Ansanm’s tyrannical rule.
Key Players
In spite of the risk to regional stability, regional actors like the Dominican Republic and the U.S. are currently isolating Haiti. The Trump administration has partially frozen funding for the MSS and the Abinader administration has greatly increased deportations of asylum-seeking Haitians. Moreover, the U.S. has also designated Viv Ansanm as a transnational terrorist group on May 02 due to the ‘direct threat’ posed by them to the United States, according to Marco Rubio. The Dominican Republic began constructing a border wall designed to reduce Haitian migration in 2022. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Abinader have vocalised their support for increased international involvement in the stabilisation of Haiti. However, their nations’ mass deportation programs contribute to Haitian instability by exacerbating the strain on the nation’s collapsing institutions and infrastructure.
Viv Ansanm and their leader, a former police officer named Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier, oppose all foreign intervention and claim to be revolutionaries who protect Haitians from a French-backed American oligarchy hell-bent on promoting its interests in Haiti through foreign intervention. This, according to Chérizier, explains American and French objection to Viv Ansanm’s inclusion in political negotiations. Many Haitian political organisations, such as the opposition Democratic and Popular Sector, support the continued designation of Viv Ansanm as a criminal organisation. Some Haitian politicians however, such as Liné Balthazar of the PHTK party, support the inclusion of Viv Ansanm in future political negotiations, stressing the need for a pragmatic approach. CARICOM leaders have also mooted negotiation with Viv Ansanm.
Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier, the leader of recently designated terrorist organisation Viv Ansanm. Source: https://news.sky.com/video/haiti-gang-leader-will-consider-ceasefire-but-warns-foreign-forces-will-be-treated-as-invaders-13103779
Opportunities and Risks
Foreign intervention in Haiti has come at significant historical risk for Haitians. Pernicious examples of foreign intervention in Haiti range from a decades-long US military occupation to the sexual abuse perpetrated by members of OXFAM against Haitians after the organisation’s deployment to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. A future UN intervention must be scandal-free and ensure that its participants act in rigorous accordance with the UN charter.
The presence of UN peacekeepers, despite their stated purpose, could antagonise Viv Ansanm and exacerbate the conflict between the coalition and the foreign-backed Haitian authorities. Such an escalation would likely see Viv Ansanm gain increased popular backing by marketing themselves as patriots resisting the imposition of foreign political will on Haitians. Nevertheless, the inclusion of Viv Ansanm in negotiations and offers of political recognition should mitigate this risk.
The new UN mission would offer the Haitian state the opportunity to rebuild its infrastructure and institutions and therefore better provide for its populace and, in the event of successful negotiation, it would offer Haitians a road to a peaceful future.
Conclusion and Geopolitical Implications
Deploying foreign ground troops on Haitian soil has been historically imprudent. However, it is precisely this history of intervention, which stretches from colonial times to the modern era, that has helped create the conditions for the current violent instability that besets Haiti. This historic meddling by foreign actors in Haitian politics and the current dire situation mean that the international community, represented by the UN, has an obligation to assist the Haitian population and help prevent the nation’s descent into civil war or occupation. The immediate geopolitical implications of a successful, UN-backed intervention in Haiti would likely be an alleviation of the migration crisis in the Caribbean and a stabilisation of the Dominican-Haitian border crisis.