Interview

In Haiti, humanitarian NGOs are “limited by daily violence”

A parent carrying their child after picking him up from school walks past police as they conduct an operation against gangs in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, March 3, 2023. © Odelyn Joseph / AP

Text by: Mikaël Ponge

3 mins

In Port-au-Prince, under the control of the gangs, from 130,000 to 150,000 inhabitants had to flee violence, rapes and kidnappings.

Local NGOs are having the greatest difficulty in maintaining their activities.

Interview with Emmanuel Rink, director of operations for Solidarités International (emergency support in water, hygiene and food security) who returned from the Haitian capital a few days ago.

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RFI: How is the daily situation unfolding in Port-au-Prince?

Emmanuel Rink:

Everyone has a story every day that has touched them directly.

Some couldn't get out over the weekend because there were

around their neighborhood, in every direction.

Others have been without electricity for 15 days, as the power station itself was looted by the gangs, with staff threatened.

Still others have injuries, or even know people who have been kidnapped.

Others finally experience a cutting ruled by the gangs, who send requests for taxation, a sort of unofficial tax in the neighborhoods.

They ask each owner or each inhabitant to pay a certain amount, at the risk of being violently attacked if they refuse.

It's a bit like everyday life, I think, for everyone who lives in Port-au-Prince.

It's very difficult.

Without making a classification of the worst, is this Haitian situation similar to areas that you know elsewhere or is it completely new?

Solidarités International operates in 23 countries, almost all of which are currently at war:

, Afghanistan or

.

We have about 90 bases around the world.

Indeed, for Port-au-Prince, it is undoubtedly in the top 3 or the top 5 of the least secure bases where we operate, and the bar is still set quite high!

So it's very complicated, we are really in an intensification of the crisis, and already in a major humanitarian crisis.

Moreover, an awareness is taking place in the humanitarian sector, with an increase in response resources.

A number of NGOs, including ours, have increased their human and financial resources.

Unfortunately, we are part of a major humanitarian crisis, so it is difficult to see in the short term what could reverse the trend.

►Also read:Focus - Haiti: "There is a genocide brewing here and we are letting the situation rot"

What does humanitarian activity come up against?

Is it hampered in its will to act?

Here is the paradox.

On the one hand, we want to increase our capacity to respond to needs that are increasingly strong, increasingly intense and extensive.

But on the other hand, we are limited by this daily violence.

Each movement must give rise to very tight security management, must be validated.

We cancel them, we allow them, it can change from hour to hour, we have to keep ourselves updated at all times.

All this hinders our movements.

We ourselves have reduced our working hours, since the risk of kidnapping is very high and is concentrated more at certain times than at others.

So, all of this creates an extremely complicated environment for humanitarian workers, with national colleagues who sometimes – we understand – are afraid in their daily lives, whether at work, but obviously also at home.

From what you have observed in the field, among your teams and among the other members of humanitarian NGOs, is the note optimistic in spite of everything?

The pessimism is strong.

This is what struck me when I met a whole set of key interlocutors, some of whom I had already met four years ago.

There is a very strong pessimism from all our Haitian colleagues – and from all our international colleagues as well.

Difficult to see in the short term where the light will come from.

►Also listen: Journal of Haiti and the Americas - "You can buy a gun for $500 in the United States, and resell it for $10,000 in Haiti"

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