Haiti too unstable for elections, PM says, as gang violence intensifies

Alix Didier ⁠Fils-Aime says Haiti too insecure for elections as a new wave of violence forces hospital evacuations.

Haiti’s Prime Minister Alix Didier ⁠Fils-Aime has said the security situation in the Caribbean nation is not stable enough to hold presidential elections scheduled for August.

Fils-Aime’s comments on Monday came as clashes between rival gangs escalated in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, forcing hospitals to evacuate patients and hundreds of people to flee their homes.

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Haiti has not held elections since 2016, with successive governments delaying polls as powerful armed gangs cement their control over the capital.

The violence has killed thousands of people and displaced more than a million, limiting the ability of authorities to guarantee a free and fair voting process.

“It is clear that the security conditions ⁠are not met at the level for us to have elections in August,” Fils-Aime told the editor-in-chief of Haiti’s oldest newspaper Le Nouvelliste in an interview broadcast on Magik9 radio.

“I would like for elections to happen by the end of the year,” he added. “On February 7, we would have an elected president.”

Fils-Aime took over from ‌a transitional presidential council on February 7 this year.

The country’s electoral council had previously scheduled a first round vote for August 30 and runoff vote in December. More than 280 ⁠political parties were approved to compete.

Hospital evacuations

Haiti’s last president Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021 after he put off organising elections. His murder left a political vacuum that allowed already powerful gangs to extend their influence over almost all of Port-au-Prince.

Efforts by authorities to quell the fighting and curb the influence of criminal groups have largely proven ineffective, while the United Nations and the United States have tied their commitments to support Haiti’s security forces to the government holding elections.

In Port-au-Prince on Monday, the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders announced the evacuation of its hospital in the neighbourhood of Cite Soleil following intense clashes there on Sunday.

The organisation, known by its French acronym MSF, reported treating over 40 gunshot victims within 12 hours while providing temporary shelter to 800 people fleeing the violence. One of those injured was a security guard who was hit by a stray bullet in the hospital’s grounds.

Another hospital in the area, Fontaine Hospital, told the Reuters news agency it had evacuated newborns from its intensive care unit. MSF said it treated some patients who transferred from Fontaine, including pregnant women who gave birth overnight.

“Currently, not a single hospital is open in the area where the fighting is taking place,” MSF said in a statement. While local medical needs were growing ‌exponentially, MSF said it could not protect its staff or patients in the midst of gunfire, which “has not stopped” since Sunday morning.

Monique Verdieux, 56, who fled to a highway after watching armed men burning houses in her neighbourhood, told the Associated Press news agency that she’s not sure where members of her family are after they scattered in different directions.

“I am now sleeping in the street,” Verdieux said, noting it was unsafe to return.

Over a million displaced

Local business leaders said the fighting in the area, near the capital’s port and just a few miles from its international airport, involved the Chen Mechen gang, its partners and their former allies. The groups had all been part of a broad ⁠alliance known as Viv Ansanm, a coalitio of hundreds of armed gangs across the capital.

According to a report published earlier this year by the International Organization for Migration, gang violence has displaced more than 1.4 million people in Haiti. About 200,000 of them are now living in crowded and underfunded sites in the nation’s capital.

The ⁠renewed violence comes after the last members of a Kenyan-led mission in Haiti left the country as part of a restructuring of a UN-backed force mandated to help restore security in the country.

The mission had been hamstrung by a lack of troops, funds and equipment. It had also faced sexual abuse accusations.

The UN’s new plan aims to deploy ‌some 5,500 new troops in Haiti by the end of October, but it is not clear where all of those troops will come from or who will fund their operations.

The government of Chad said in April that it plans to send 1,500 personnel to Haiti and that some 400 have already been deployed.