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The political crisis continues and no way out seems to emerge after more than two months of popular demonstrations against the president. The impact is immense in many sectors, particularly in prisons, where the situation has alarming effects on prison conditions.
With our correspondent in Port-au-Prince,
Without concessions on the side of power, the tension remains strong in the country which always paralyzes the activities and prevents the free circulation in the cities and between the departments. The economic sector is very affected . Schools have only opened a handful of days since the beginning of the school year. And in prisons too, the situation is serious. Inmates' lives are in danger for lack of food.
" There are risks that prisoners are starving, " warns the national network of human rights RNDDH who says it. Some penitentiary institutions no longer have food stocks. The most affected are the prisons that are in the provinces. The RNDDH is particularly concerned about the conditions of the detainees in Jérémie and Mirebalais.
Difficult refuelings
For water, the public body Dinepa and several international organizations provide supplies not without difficulty, but to circulate food trucks between departments and even in cities is still largely impossible.
The humanitarian community is fully aware of the situation, but for these same security challenges, many actors can not intervene. If no response to this emergency has yet been provided by the United Nations or NGOs it is also that providing food to prisons in a crisis is not strictly their mandate.
The International Committee of the Red Cross would be the most appropriate organization to intervene. The problem is that the ICRC has not been present in Haiti for two years.
Inhumane health conditions
Today prisons also lack medicines and cleaning products. Normally, sanitary conditions were already described as inhuman, but the current situation is unbearable for the detainees.
Human rights organizations no longer chew their mouths : " It's torture, " says RNDDH, putting forward a host of sinister details. Because of the prevailing tension in the country, prison directors in Haiti now limit the release time of inmates to the maximum. Every day, they only have a few minutes out of the cell to do everything: wash, wash their clothes, go to the bathroom and stretch their legs.
Haitian prisons are the most overcrowded in the world. The average occupancy rate exceeds 400%. As a result, detainees can not walk in their cells where they are sitting in dozens of positions. For " security reasons ", the directors also suspended all visits.
Paralysis of the judiciary
The crisis has also pushed the main associations of magistrates to advise the judges to stay at home. This de facto closure of the courts only worsens the slowness of justice.
These weeks without any progress of the judicial procedures are as many weeks in addition to preventive detention for the people who are now incarcerated and awaiting a judgment. And in Haiti, this concerned the large majority of prisoners. Three-quarters of adult prisoners have not yet been tried, some have been waiting behind bars for years.
For minors, only 21% of them were actually sentenced by a court. Because these inhuman conditions of confinement - without enough, if not even without any food and in total violation of their rights to health and dignity - are lived today by more than 200 adolescents in Haiti.