By Gazette Haiti, July 12, 2024
On Friday, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN accused other members of the Security Council of blocking US efforts to impose sanctions against a former Haitian senator and Senate leader Youri Latortue, who is accused of funding armed gangs.
Latortue, "exercises considerable control over political and economic life in the Artibonite department, including through the use of violent gangs, which he has financed", she said, citing a report by a panel of experts from Haiti.
The panel was set up by the UN in October 2022 after the Security Council unanimously approved sanctions for Haiti, the first authorization since 2017 and the first for a Western Hemisphere country. The panel's job is to make recommendations, based on its investigations, on who should be sanctioned because they pose a threat to Haiti's peace and stability.
UN sanctions are among the toughest sanctions, and would freeze a person's assets while preventing them from traveling to most countries in the world. So far, the UN has imposed sanctions on just five gang leaders, leading to criticism of the measure's effectiveness because gang leaders generally don't keep their money in banks and don't have visas to travel to other countries.
The United States, along with France, lobbied for the inclusion of both gang leaders and politicians on the list, which the expert group proposed. "We were deeply disappointed by the unexplained hold placed on Youri Latortue," Thomas-Greenfield said of the prominent Haitian politician.
Thomas-Greenfield's comments came after the 15-member Security Council voted unanimously to renew the mandate of the UN political office in Haiti for another year. The resolution, drafted by the United States and Ecuador, charges the UN. Integrated Office overseeing the success of the new political transition in Haiti, as well as the Kenya-led multinational security support mission.
Thomas-Greenfield's comments on Latortue are likely to resonate in Haiti, where observers have questioned whether the US and other countries are still determined to pursue sanctions following an aggressive first campaign targeting designated members of the political and economic elite.
A long-time politician who once served as an advisor to former President Michel Martelly, Latortue was one of the country's most powerful politicians when he was in power. Today, he is one of a handful of Haitian politicians blacklisted by the United States. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Canadian government. He has denied all allegations against him and hired a lawyer to fight the designation, which freezes all assets he owns in the U.S. and Canada.
Thomas-Greenfield's comments are the first public acknowledgement of an effort by the US and others in the Security Council to impose sanctions against Latortue and other powerful politicians in Haiti, and are a window into the council's divisions over who should be sanctioned. Although no one has publicly admitted to blocking sanctions against Latortue, the representative of the Russian Federation, who is president of the council this month, alluded to friction in his comments. Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's first deputy permanent representative to the UN, said that with regard to sanctions, he hopes that "the interests of individual council members will not be placed above the task of supporting an inclusive political dialogue".
Although Russia signaled last week that it had no problem sanctioning people other than gang leaders in Haiti, as long as the evidence supports the claim, the country accused both the US and Canada of using sanctions to clear the political field in Haiti. Polyanskiy's comments reflect a wider debate within the international community about how best to deal with the crisis in Haiti, and whether those believed to be behind the instability should be on the negotiating table or punished. It's a problem that even the United States doesn't seem to be managing coherently. Haitian politicians were invited to a reception at the US embassy in Haiti last week, and although none of the guests had been sanctioned by the Treasury Department, at least one had had his US VISA revoked.
Translated by CHIP editors
Posted July 24, 2024