Why there's hope for Haiti

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This is a special edition of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, looking at what can help bring about a brighter future for the Caribbean nation of Haiti.

I'm Nick Miles and in a former role reported from Haiti a number of times in the early 2000s.

Struggling with poverty and political instability even then, in recent years the country has descended into wider gang violence.

Together with the BBC's investigations correspondent Nawal Al-Magafi, who's reported extensively from Haiti, I'll be joined by the Haitian democracy activist Monique Kleska, women's rights group organiser Pascal Solage, and Diana Maniya-Arroyo, who works for the medical charity Médecins Saint-Frontière in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

Together, we will talk about Haiti's current problems, but also look at the people who are working hard to resolve them and prove that their country is far from being beyond hope.

The lazy shorthand, the cliché, if you like, for Haiti is that it's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a hopeless case that's not known stability for decades, where violent gangs rule and international aid providers are fighting a losing battle with the chaos.

But let's interrogate that narrative a bit. First of all, some basics.
Haiti is a country in the Caribbean, neighbouring the Dominican Republic. 11 million people live there.

It famously gained independence from France over 200 years ago after a slave revolt.

A bold start for a new nation, but countless times since then it's been hit by waves of political violence and natural disasters.

Poverty has led to hundreds of thousands of people leaving, looking for a better life abroad. But over the next half hour, we'll be hearing from people who say it doesn't have to be that way.

Yes, there are huge problems. The government is only in control of small parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and we won't gloss over any of that or any of the other challenges that Haiti faces.

What we will do is look at the seeds of change that can break the cycle of violence and instability. We're going to do that in the company of three people who know Haiti extremely well.

Noel Al-Maghafi is the BBC's investigations correspondent. She's been in Haiti twice this year, speaking to to gang members and others trying to get by.

Monique Klesker is a Haitian, a political rights activist normally based in Port-au-Prince.

Pascal Salage is another Haitian woman and runs a women's rights organisation for victims of sexual violence in Port-au-Prince.

We're going to start though with something that they're all very familiar with. Wall and I caught up with Diana Mania-Arroyo who ran the medical charity MSF in Port-au-Prince until earlier this year.

She began by telling us the difficulties facing people in Haiti right now. I have to start with sexual violence.

And this is something that we witness firsthand because we run a project since 2015 that provides comprehensive medical and psychological care for people that experience sexual abuse.

It's not only the number of cases

that is extremely concerning, but it's also the dynamics of these aggressions that has significantly changed.

So survivors talk about the number of aggressors increasing, sometimes two, sometimes five, sometimes 20.

Survivors also talk about the use of weapons, sometimes to use that aggressors used to rape them with, sometimes to hit them in the head so that people become unconscious and it is easier to abuse of them.

Also, the dynamics of the aggressions has changed.

So many, many of our patients talk about how they were aggressed in their own homes because when armed groups come to new areas that they want to take control, they break into people's houses and they rape women whether they are 15 years old or whether they are 65 years old.

And Nawal, the breakdown in security across particularly Port-au-Prince means that children are also at risk. A lot of children are not at school because schools are closed in many areas.

So it's a problem for children as well. Yes, it is.
I mean, just speaking to what Diana Diana was talking about, when we were in Port-au-Prince, I went to the safe house for victims of sexual abuse.

And the lady that runs this safe house took us to meet people at the balcony. And when we got there, it was all these very young girls.

And I thought that these were the children of the victims that we were about to meet.

And then I was actually told that these were the survivors of sexual violence. You know, everyone in Haiti is touched by this.
You know, every

so many of the women, if not the majority of the women I spoke to when we were in Port-au-Prince, have experienced some sort of sexual violence living in the city.

And their testimony is some of the most horrific I've ever heard covering the story. You know, talking about multiple assailants, talking about,

you know, how they were raped in front of their husbands and children and then saw their partners killed in front of them.

One of the things that really caught my eye when we were in Port-au-Prince is whilst we were covering these horrific stories, it was amazing to see these young girls and young children coming out of school in the morning and in the afternoons, because it just reminds you of like how life goes on and a bit of normalcy.

So I started looking into it and then I found out that these were private schools and the majority of schools that are still running in Port-au-Prince are only private schools.

There are barely any state schools that are still functioning. Many of them have been turned into IDP camps to house people that have fled the neighborhoods that have been taken over by the gangs.

And others are in gang-controlled territory being used by the gangs.

And Diana, in terms of supporting children with psychological trauma as well, what kind of help is there out there for that in Haiti?

Yeah, so when it comes to sexual violence in particular, we see about 20% of our patients being under the age of 18.

That, however, speaks only to those who are able, willing, and capable of coming to us. That doesn't mean that that is the entirety of under 18-year-olds who are sexually abused.

When they come, they receive the comprehensive package of care, including seeing a psychologist.

We see severe mental health trauma resulting from sexual violence, and sometimes including suicidal ideation.

And in 2018, we did a study and we looked at the various factors contributing to the psychological issues that survivors presented.

68%, so more than half, cited stigma as one of the major challenges they face. And this is because of blaming, judging survivors' behavior, and also family rejection.

Diane, I just wanted to move on to another aspect of the problems. It's that kind of financial insecurity, this widespread unemployment.
People are in the casual sector just eking out a living.

We've been speaking in Port-au-Prince with a local reporter, and we heard from a couple of people living in the capital about the challenges they're facing.

Life is not good to me at all. My mom had 13 kids.
All of them died. I'm the only one left.
I'm sitting in the square because I'm hiding from my landlord.

I haven't been able to pay rent since September. I have nobody helping me, and I don't get anything from the government.
Only God is protecting me.

I'm a mechanic and a driver, too. I no longer have a job.
I now live at my mum's. I come to this public square to spend all day here and then go home.
I have nothing.

Sometimes I feel like killing myself. But no, that would be cowardly.
Life is such an important gift.

And people do take their own lives and take risks with their lives because of the situation that they are in at the moment, don't they, Diana?

Yeah, well, around 10% of the sexual violence survivors that we see say that stigma in particular could push them toward suicide.

This is only now I'm only speaking about sexual violence, but we see other types of cases of patients. We have a number of facilities that provide trauma care.

So, for example, between the beginning of the year and June, we supported over 2,000 survivors of violence in the city, including many civilians who are hit by stray bullets.

40% of them are women and children. This, I think, is important to translate it into how it looks on a day-to-day basis for the average Haitian.

I also see it through my own medical staff that has to leave their house to come to the medical facilities that we run. The risk of stray bullet is high.

The risk of finding oneself in the middle of crossfire is high. It's an extremely challenging city to live, but indeed life does go on amazingly.
I mean, a challenge for people to live in.

What about working in Port-au-Prince? Noel, you went there several times, and even as an international journalist, with all the backup that that comes with,

it's a challenge, isn't it? It's incredibly difficult, but safety is definitely the biggest difficulty that you face day to day.

I mean, we went in in a bubble, but there was a lot of planning involved, right? We went to a nice hotel that had generators to take the place of when the state electricity cuts off.

We had clean water, but that's not what the average Haitian has in Port-au-Prince. We drove around in armoured vehicles to protect ourselves from any stray bullets.

But just planning for this and thinking about all the kind of risks and mitigating them ahead of going to Haiti, you think, how do people survive this every single day? And they don't.

You know, they have to take risks because they have to feed their children, they have to bring home food. And we saw it with our very own eyes.

We were driving around Port-au-Prince in our armoured vehicles, and then some shooting broke out between gang members and police.

And there was this bus full of people who were heading to work, which had to just kind of hide behind cover as people were shooting across from either side of it.

And this is what day-to-day life is like for the average Haitian in Port-au-Prince.

As we record this podcast, about a thousand members of an international police and military force approved by the UN are on the ground in Haiti. To what extent is that helping the situation?

They are in these big armoured vehicles. It's very hard for them to move around.

And the gang members in their hundreds are armed and agile and can run around and shoot at the tires of these armoured vehicles?

You know, in one instance, we were with them, they shot at our tires, they went flat, and we kind of had to limp in these armoured vehicles out of gang-held territory.

And it just gives you an idea of how little they can do because they're terrified of stepping out of these vehicles.

During our trip, I went to meet one of the gang leaders, his name was Vaj, and I asked him if he was afraid of the Kenyans.

And he said, no, because how are they going to differentiate between us and civilians? We're embedded in society here and they're not going to be able to kind of sift us out.

You know, and he also gave me an idea of who they're going up against, these fanatics, basically. We can hear a little bit from him now, can't we?

When we're fighting, we are possessed. We are no longer human.
We become the devil.

Do you understand?

We are people when, like this, you sit and talk to us, but if we're cornered, we'll come out swinging. As a gang leader it's my duty to fight.
I will never give up until the state sits down with us.

The dialogue will be good for us but until then we'll fight. It's the wealthy state that has decided to take us on.

Well listening to that is the Haitian academic and pro-democracy activist Monique Gleska.

Monique given what we've heard, the sheer brutality of what we've just heard, what faith do you and other Haitians have that this Kenyan-led force can have any impact at all?

We do not, a lot of us do not believe that it's a question of faith in the Kenyan force. I think it is a question of faith in the Haitians' capacity to resist and to mobilize.

Unfortunately, we do not have competent authorities who are willing to do what should be done. And this goes back years.

This is a man-made crisis. Recently, they had tests for policemen and policewomen.
They had over 8,000 Haitian men and women who wanted to be policemen. They had tests for the army.

They had over 2,000 who wanted to be in the army. So, what happens? They don't put enough money for the training.
They do not have enough instructors.

And it is not part of the mindset that Haitians can actually do the job. And I must say that there is a resistance.

There is a resistance because you have neighborhood groups that are organizing themselves to protect their different neighborhoods.

And a lot of them have managed to repel some of the gangs from taking over more territory. Monique, that's an extremely well-made point.

And I think now we we can speak to a Haitian woman called Pascal Solage, who runs an organisation called Nigis Melwon, a women's rights organisation that particularly helps victims of sexual violence.

Hello, thanks very much for joining us, Pascal. Thank you for the invitation and good morning, everyone.

Pascal, I was interested in reading one of the things you've been doing is trying to help women take part in and have a real impact on public affairs.

How are you trying to do that and encourage people to do that? Doing advocacy. Political advocacy is a part of the work.

Being in places where we can advocate for saying that women need to be in those places. Women need to be part of the decision.
Women need to be part of the fate of this country. It's really important.

Women are in the street with Nege Smaw, protesting against violence, protesting against gang violence, protesting against the lack of political and economic actors with gangs who are terrifying the population.

So for us, it's really important to educate women, to help them understand that being Asian, being women, it's being citizen and being citizen, it's the right to be part of all the process we can see in the country where they have to take decision to participate in decision for the country is to educate the young women.

And Monique, do you see political apathy, perhaps if it has developed in Haiti over the last few years, being driven away by grassroots organizations like that?

Yes, because there is a lot of training that is going on, and there is a certain amount of investment in community.

As a matter of fact, recently, in addition to other things that are being on, there is a Focula initiative that I'm part of.

And we actually had an incubator of three weeks with 25 basically high school students teaching them about leadership and about citizenship and about developing community projects based on their leadership skills.

And there are other things like this that

is going on.

So the involvement of youth, because another data set that is important is that 64%

of the Haitian population is under 24 years old. So not only does it mean that it is important to get them involved as citizens and build their citizenship, a type of,

you know,

just building their skills in that so that they can become involved, but it also sends a signal to the authorities that social justice is an important

component of every development.

Nowal, in your trips to Haiti, what examples have you seen of that people at a local level really thinking towards the future, a new Haiti where things function and there is security for people?

I'm really glad you asked that question because I think we do always focus on talking about the gangs and the gang leaders and the fighting when we talk about Haiti.

But what really struck me about Haiti is the people's resilience. And you spoke about the local men within neighbourhoods that keep their neighbourhoods secure.

We went to Pakor and to Kemskov and we spent time with the vigilantes, young men who, when we were filming with them, covered their faces with balaclavas because they didn't want the gangs to be able to identify them, but armed and who take on rotation shifts turns to keep their neighbourhood secured.

I mean we toured with them and we could hear the bullets from the gang members on the other side of this fence between the neighbourhood that's gang controlled and the neighbourhood that isn't.

And they take it in rotation to keep their neighborhoods secure. And just behind these men, there was a market that had women and children and families getting food, going shopping.
And

they're trying because the government is unable to trying to keep their neighborhoods safe and to keep the gangs away.

And also,

when we were doing the story about sexual violence, we went to all these safe houses to meet these women.

And a lot of these safe houses, one of them run by Neges Mawan, actually, are run by Haitian women.

And when we speak to them about, you know, they come every day, they do courses to give these women agencies to be able to take care of themselves when they leave these safe houses, ways to work, they do education courses, they do mental health courses, really inspiring stuff.

But when you speak to the teachers, the women that are running these programs about where they're coming from, you know, the trips they have to take every day, the places they have to go through to be able to come to work is incredible.

I mean, it's terrifying, but also quite inspiring to see them come to work every day and to have that kind of resilience and want to make a change in Haiti.

And also, in the food distribution sites, we went to multiple food distribution sites where people would come to these kitchens to get food for the day, all run by local Haitian organizations, people coming together to provide for their communities.

It was incredible to see. And, Pascal Solage,

what continues to motivate you? Clearly

you sense that there is still a possibility of great change in Haiti.

Because it's our country, because it's a place where a million people are living, because we are the ones who can ask but also act for the change.

In Negues Mawo, sometimes, sometimes we are receiving 20 women asking for help at Neges Mawo, survivors of violence, but also displaced women, but also pregnant young girls from rape, but also people with economic problems.

So these people, what they have, it's Haiti, it's their country. And it's our right.
to fight for this country and to fight for the country we want to see, the country we deserve.

We need to do the work because the people in places of power, they are not doing their job. So we have to do the work because what we have, it's ourselves.

And Monique, I suppose it's worth mentioning also that Haiti has some advantages as a country. It's not ethnically split.

Religious tensions are not high, as they are in many other civil wars around the world, the civil war in Lebanon, what went on in Darfur, etc., etc.

So Haiti has the potential to have unity and national pride, doesn't it? Yes, in a way, we do not have the issues, the divisive issues of a religion or ethnicity or all of that.

But I think one of the things that is extremely important is that one cannot expect for the country to be doing well when only a few hold the majority of the riches. It has to be spread out.

There has to be a middle class. And for that to happen, one needs to invest in development, particularly education, technological, etc.

But I want to bring in another point, which is this aspect of very often the international community is saying to us, well, you need to have elections today, you need to have elections right now, etc.

Nothing positive or profound is going to come from rushing elections when the population does not trust the people who are in power.

And I think that is where the international community can really invest, invest in

organizations like Neges Maru, CAIFAM,

and other organizations, human rights organizations, women's rights organizations and other

such organizations so that they can

build trust in education

for the community so that the communities can start trusting their authorities. We want elections like other countries have elections.
We want democracy with the big D, not with a small D.

So we want to be able to go to elections where we trust the process.

I don't say if, I say when Haiti relives again and takes its place on the international scene, because wait a minute, culturally, we have Haitian women, one of the co-founders of Negés Maron, who has won prizes for theater.

We have a major, her name is Gael Le Biennemé. We have Yannik Laires, a major novelist who recently won the Académie et de France prize.

So we have people on the international scene, cultural scene, that are showing the rich culture of Haiti. Monique, I love that strong note of optimism.

You're talking about when, not if, Haiti retakes its rightful place on the world stage.

Time now, unfortunately, to bring this discussion to a close. I'm going to ask you all, if I can, what one thing would help Haiti on the path to greater peace and prosperity?

Yeah, I want to start with you, Pascal. For that, we need men and women who have this vision, who have the, you know,

not only the capacity, but

who want to work for this, for peace and prosperity, because we need people in places who can really do what they have to do for peace and prosperity.

So we can have money, we can have power, we can have everything.

but if we don't have people in places with this vision, as Monique said, of Naiti free, democratic, free of violence, with social justice, without impunity, without

violence, we will never see

a country with peace and prosperity. Noel, you're not Haitian, but you've seen Haiti recently.
Same question to you. What changed?

When we were there last time, one of the things that really surprised me is how the international community is pulling away from investing in the things that really matter in Haiti.

You know, we were visiting organizations like Neges Mawan and other organizations supporting women and supporting other aspects that really need help and investment in Haiti.

And the international funders are now cutting aid rather than increasing it,

and are not investing in the things that matter in Haiti.

And so I would say that the international community needs to keep supporting those organizations.

And a final thought to you, Monique. What change?

Adding on to what has been said, particularly by Pascal Solage,

we need to have the committed men and women who are honest, who are visionary, in positions of authority, so that they can make decisions for the betterment of the population.

So the key then is men and women who are visionary, who are in positions of authority to make the decisions to invest.

in people, to invest in democracy. And even I'll say something that maybe might be revolutionary.

I believe Haiti should pay for its own elections so that that the international community does not meddle. So again, it is a man-made problem and it is a man

and woman-made solution that we need so that we are in the positions of authority, we are legitimate, and we have the power to bring not only policy changes, but real changes in the conditions of people's lives.

Moni Kleska, Pascal Solage, and my colleague Nawal Al-Magaffe here in London. Many thanks to all of you.

And that's all from us for now. Thanks for listening to this special edition of the Global News Podcast.
If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag Global Newspod.

This edition's producer was Carla Conte. The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Nick Miles, and until next time, goodbye.

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