Brian Concannon, IJDH co-founder and executive director, speaks in Aljazeera on the growing power of gangs and Haitian deportation in the United States.

“Brian Concannon, founder of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a US-based rights group, said gangs control about half the country, as well as half of Port-au-Prince. Starting in September, Haiti also faced crippling fuel shortages as gangs blocked the country’s main roads and demanded Prime Minister Ariel Henry resign.”

“People live in daily fear that going to work or to school or getting some food at the store will be a lethal decision,” Concannon told Al Jazeera. “People don’t even leave their houses for days and hospitals are closing because it is too violent for staff to get there.”

(…)

The US has deported the vast majority of Haitians arriving at its borders – more than 12,000 people, among them children – under a restrictive COVID-19 pandemic rule, and Haitians are now languishing in Mexico and other countries in the region.

Concannon said it ultimately will be up to Haitian civil society and political party members “to create the conditions that will allow a democratically elected, legitimate government to be seated as soon as possible”.

“In the next few months, short-term things are going to get worse, there is no way of preventing that,” he said. “There’s some hope in the medium term that the Haitian-led solution will be able to progress but really a lot of that success depends on the US getting out of the way.”

Read the full article here.