HAITI-UN human rights commissioner holds talks with Prime Minister Henry

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, CMC – The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Volker Türk, leaves here later on Friday following an official visit during which he held talks with Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry as well as senior government ministers/

Turk’s visit has been at the invitation of the Haitian government, which is under severe pressure from opposition parties to demit office and hold fresh elections following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021.

In addition, criminal gangs have been staging kidnappings for ransom and other violent acts in defiance of the police and the army.

“We informed the High Commissioner of the Government’s initiatives in the area of human rights, including national dialogue, the creation of an enabling environment for the organization of elections, the strengthening of the judicial system, the reduction of preventive detention,” Prime Minister Henry said.

Henry, who was accompanied by Foreign Affairs Minister Jean Victor Généus and the acting Justice Minister, Emmelie Prophète Milcé, during the meeting with Türk, said Haiti had taken good note of the recommendations within the framework of the Universal Policy Evaluation.

“We will begin, as soon as possible, to implement them. In about two years, we will be able to submit a progress report to the High Commissioner.”

Henry, in a statement posted on social media, said that it was also an opportunity to highlight the “many implications of the country’s multidimensional crisis, in particular the right to life, to health, to respect for private life, to the free movement of persons and property, and property rights.”

But the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) urged Türk to support the rule of law in Haiti recognizing the unconstitutional nature of the initiative to amend the Constitution of Haiti by referendum.

They said that the referendum provided for in the December 21 agreement of the “de facto Government of Haiti,” which has been condemned by a large part of Haitian civil society.

“High Commissioner Türk and the international community can support the rule of law in Haiti, or they can support the de facto government of Haiti and its Accord. They cannot support both,” said Mario Joseph, general counsel of the BAI.

“If High Commissioner Türk takes his mandate seriously, he will investigate how the de facto authorities and its predecessors have systematically dismantled Haitians’ democracy since 2011, with the international community’s continued support. He will listen to Haitians who will tell him that the solution to our crisis is not more dismantling and foreign interference, but a Haitian-led, democratic process,” Joseph said.

IJDH executive director, Brian Concannon, said the “de facto government’s proposed amendments are strictly as illegal in Haiti as they would be in the United States.

“Such a blatant disregard for the Constitution would be unacceptable in Canada, the U.S., or European countries,” Concannon added.