Written by: Travis Ross

The Haitian Democracy Project, once an organization focused primarily on disseminating propaganda for the Group of 184, has rebranded itself as an organization centered on advocacy for the representation of women in Haitian politics.

Richard Sanders describes the Group of 184 as an “elite led coalition that united organizations fervently engaged in the highly partisan struggle to oust Aristide. According to Sanders, they “coordinated and led the successful campaign to destabilize Haiti’s elected government and depose President Aristide”. The Group of 184 member groups included FOKAL, led by Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis and R&D, led by Danièle Magloire.The Group of 184 was led by Andy Apaid and Reginald Boulos, regarded as two of Haiti’s oligarchs who Sanders accurately describes as “two of the country’s most reviled multimillionaires”.

HDP is led by James Morell. Morell co-founded HDP along with Haitian oligarch Rudolph Boulos. Its personnel once included two former U.S. ambassadors to Haiti, as well as a U.S. special envoy to Haiti.

According to Tom Reeves, the HDP website once contained “143 supportive and often fawning references” to the Group of 184.

HDP has shifted focus over the years since the 2004 coup. In 2019, they promoted Reginald Boulos’ new political party MTVAyiti. A January 2020 article posted to HDP’s website asked whether Reginald Boulos’ campaign represented a “bourgeois revolution” that provided Haiti with a “ray of hope that will get Haiti out of the impasse of social inequality and poverty.”

Morell and HDP are enthusiastic supporters of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS). Morell said the MSS “would be a rare good use of U.S. forces”. Less than two weeks before visiting the U.S. State Department, HDP published an article again insisting that U.S. forces must be included in a “full peacekeeping mission” to “save the situation.”

More recently, HDP has rebranded itself as an organization devoted to women leadership in Haiti. Wiselaine Dorcélus, a lawyer, leads the HDP’s women-candidates’ campaign, networking with other women’s advocacy groups in Haiti. The campaign is named the Regroupement National des femmes candidates (National Association of Women Candidates - RENAFECA), launched May 21, 2021.

HDP’s networking efforts have led Dorcélus to events across Haiti’s ten departments, including events hosted by the UN and the Haitian Ministry on the Status and Rights of Women (MCFDF), attended by other feminist leaders like Novia Augustin, the head of Ref-Haiti, vice-president of FEDOFEDH, and proposed candidate to the TPC for western-backed feminist groups in Haiti.

These efforts seem to have had some success. In a statement published on the HDP website, RENAFECA appears as a signatory among 115 other women’s advocacy and feminist groups based in Haiti. The statement was released on April 16, 2023. The statement makes several demands of then PM Ariel Henry to address the security crisis and begin addressing the welfare of the Haitian population.

USAID-funded Haitian imperial feminists omit critique of foreign intervention

The statement was drafted by Kenise Phanord, a sociologist, feminist, and coordinator of the Collectif Universitaire pour la recherche et l’émancipation des femmes (University Collective for the Research and Emancipation of Women - CUREF). Phanord has worked for the ONU - Femmes (UN Women) and Haiti’s State university. More recently, she assisted in conducting a wide ranging study for USAID. The study’s goal was to complete a “countrywide gender analysis to inform the USAID/Haiti 2020–2022 Strategic Framework and the mission’s programs, projects, and activities.”

Phanord led the Canadian government’s first initiative under the Women’s Voice and Leadership program in 2017, in collaboration with UN Women and Ministry of Women's Affairs and Women's Rights, to increase the number of women running for elected positions in Haiti. This initiative began with a call to organize discussions with women's organizations, political party leaders and other civil society organizations.

Like many other leaders in the Haitian imperial feminist movement who collaborate with western governments, Phanord ignores the role of democracy, popular representation, and Haitian sovereignty in her analysis of Haiti’s feminist movement. Phanord published an academic article on Dec. 28, 2022 in the International Journal of Education, Culture and Society titled the “Impact of the Current Crisis on the Achievements of the Haitian Feminist Movement.” Phanord attempts to track whether successive governments in Haiti have met the constitutional quota of 30 per cent since founding of Haiti’s Ministry for the Status of Women in 1991.

Her analysis fails to correlate the peaks of women representation in government with democratic elections that were not undermined by foreign meddling. The two peaks of women representation were under Lavalas governments led by Aristide. Phanord notes PHTK governments had not met the 30 per cent quota and that since Martelly’s election, gender-based violence has been trivialized and “from 2010, the ministers have been chosen unilaterally by the political parties”.

Phanord’s analysis fails to explain that the PHTK electoral victories were a result of foreign meddling and a precipitous drop in voter participation in these elections. Both were a consequence of Washington and Ottawa intervening in Haiti’s democratic process.

A more accurate analysis would point out that since the founding of Haiti’s Ministry for the Status of Women in 1991, the key variable that has led to a large representation of women in government is Haitian sovereignty as a necessary condition for open and fair democratic elections. Or, put another way, the key variable that has led to a lack of representation of women in government is meddling from Washington and the CORE group in Haiti’s affairs.

This point is generally absent from analyses provided by many Haitian imperial feminist leaders. If they did make this point, their access to funding from the very foreign governments who have actively undermined Haitian democracy for decades - the U.S., Canada, and to a lesser degree, France - would cease.

The aforementioned statement reflects the UN’s background role providing funding to Haitian women’s advocacy and feminist groups, leading to the elevation of some leaders who do not oppose the role of the UN and foreign governments in violating Haiti’s sovereignty.

This type of funding correlates well with an observable deradicalizing effect on political movements as their leaders develop closer ties to the foreign governments causing the various crises in Haiti.

Foreign governments and private foundation focus on women’s advocacy groups

The UN, along with Canada and the US, provide a consistent flow of funding and support to the women’s advocacy and imperial feminist sector they have partnered with.

The UN Women’s Peace & Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) provides funding for organizations such as Ref-Haiti and Négés Mawon. These partnerships are often created in collaboration with the governments of Canada and the United-States.

For example, the Canadian government provides funding via its Women’s Voice and Leadership program, in collaboration with UN Women. In addition, Canadian funding is also directed to Haitian feminist and women’s advocacy groups through ASFC’s AJULIH program, who collaborates with private foundations like FOKAL.

Washington also has several vectors for developing partnerships with, and thereby influencing human-rights oriented organizations inside Haiti.

The CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy (NED) provides funding for several human rights groups in Haiti. Some of whom also receive funding from the Canadian government. It is not clear which organizations currently receive funding from the NED because they no longer publish an annual list of grantees.

USAID is also actively seeking out Civil Society Organizations (CSO) in Haiti through its Civil Society Strengthening Program. Announced on October 21, 2022, the program has a budget of $15 million. USAID plans to fund 250 unnamed Haitian CSOs under the program.

USAID also has several projects on the ground in Haiti as part of their “Advancing Women’s Political and Civic Participation and Leadership” initiative.

Commenting on USAID’s various initiatives in Haiti, Jennifer Link, the current Mission director for USAID in Haiti, explained that USAID works “with one of the largest networks of women’s organizations that includes more than 742 women’s organizations with 230,000 members”. Link remarked that USAID’s work is “kind of an unusual civil society program in USAID, in that we work directly on the internal governance structures of the organizations.”

USAID also provides funding for similar programs as well. Few details are available, although an update is likely forthcoming following the aforementioned 2023 report commissioned by USAID, co-authored by Haitian imperial feminist leader Kenise Phanord.

USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance has partnered with UN Women Haiti in the form of “generous donations” to the WPHF.

The record shows that the leaders who collaborate with foreign governments and private foundations are almost universally compliant with the American government's hegemonic domination of Haiti. Leaders who openly challenge U.S. or Canadian imperialist policies in Haiti simply do not receive funding, or do not see funding renewed.

There may be one exception to this trend.

Jesula Blanc, a lawyer, feminist, and women’s rights activist from Ouanaminthe, Haiti coordinates the Plateforme Genre du Nord'est (North-East Gender Platform - PGNE). The WPHF webpage that outlines its collaboration with USAID celebrates her as a “champion of transnational activism” who “strongly believes that the international community can make a huge difference”.

Blanc is also an executive member of le Congrès National Ouanaminthe (Ouanaminthe National Congress - CNO). The CNO recently called out the TPC as “mired in corruption” and that Conille’s government is “incapable of responding to the insecurity” in Haiti. A member, Fritz Gourdet, said Conille “must make way for a competent team that has a better handle on the Haitian crisis.”

The CNO’s opposition to the TPC and Conille’s administration goes back to their founding. In a May 18, 2024, press release, the CNO stated that Conille and the TPC have “brought no change or prospect of change” and that their brief time in power “corresponds to the arrival of foreign forces in the country, under the cover of the United Nations, to once again defile the sacred soil of Haiti”.

The press release ends with another call for the “implementation of the Resolution of the Ouanaminthe Congress for a New Haiti!” The CNO had announced the resolution - a proposed transition plan - on March 7, 2024, at a separate press conference. The resolution outlined a plan where Haiti’s Provisional President would be selected from among the remaining judges elected to Haiti’s Supreme Court, and the choice of a Prime Minister would be selected based on a consensus among political actors, civil society, and the business sector.

It remains to be seen if USAID continues to celebrate Blanc as a “champion of transnational activism”.

What is clear is that the UN, the Canadian government, and USAID have been working in coordination to consolidate and influence the governance of the women’s movement in Haiti. Seeking out local women’s advocacy groups and incorporating them into larger federations, while seeking individuals with leadership potential and drawing them into the network of NGOs funded by the UN, Canada, and USAID.

This funding has the dual effect of reducing the likelihood of emerging leaders becoming radicalized in local communities and from developing an anti-imperialist perspective, while muting the voices of those who do.

Haiti’s ‘poto mitan’ and independent women leaders

Speaking at an event titled “Women at the Forefront: Transforming Women’s Lives in Haiti”, Pascale Solages remarked that ““they say women are the poto mitan (center post) of Haiti. There are no women on the Presidential Council - they don’t need a center post there?”

Solages doesn’t question the TPC’s legitimacy. What is up for debate is the number of women in the Washington-controlled transitional government. Predictably, Solages’ critique of Canadian policy in Haiti extends only as far as the government’s past support for PM Ariel Henry.

Solages and other Haitian imperial feminist leaders’ focus on having a seat at the table bore fruit in regard to the Conseil électoral provisoire (Provisional Electoral Council -CEP). The CEP will presumably have some nominal role in organizing elections under the watchful eye of Washington.

An organizing committee made up of western-backed women’s advocacy groups (Kay Fanm, FEDOFEDH, Fondation Toya, Kri Fanm Ayiti, & SOFA) selected Marie Rebecca Guillaume as the representative for the CEP.

Guillaume is a musician, educator, and a member of the women's advocacy organization Tribin Fanm Politik. Guillaume also founded the nap vanse clinic that provides free healthcare to the residents of Wharf Jérémie, in Cité Soleil. This is not the first time Guillaume has been selected by women’s advocacy groups in Haiti to represent them on a CEP. Guillaume ran for the position in 2016, and again in 2020 where she won the nomination.

Like Solages, Guillaume has spent significant time living outside Haiti. Both also have completed degrees at universities in western countries. They are not poto mitan.

These relationships underline how funding from imperialist governments and likeminded Foundations and organizations have infiltrated the networks of women’s advocacy and feminist groups in Haiti. Slowly transitioning them to dependence on foreign funding while elevating leaders who are compliant with Washington’s imperialist control over Haiti as the nation is reduced to colonial status.

Meanwhile, women leaders on the ground in Haiti who remain outside the western NGO network and oppose U.S. hegemony are muted.

Réa Dol is a community leader and organizer, and co-founder of the Society of Providence United for the Economic Development of Petion-Ville (SOPUDEP). Based in Morne Lazzare, Dol directs a variety of programs in SOPUDEP including, but not limited to: accessible education and empowerment to women and children, adult literacy programs, HIV-AIDS prevention and treatment programs, organizations for financially struggling women.

Dol is the embodiment of a poto mitan, a community pillar those like Solages claim to want representing Haitians.

Recently, Dol also partnered with Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL). In a 2021 interview with SOIL, Dol explained that “outside actors don’t know the reality of what the population really needs”, referring to NGOs based outside of Haiti. She also emphasized that she hoped “to see Haiti not under control of any big powerful country” in the near future.

Dol also co-founded two organizations in 2013 with Nigerian artist and activist Sokari Ekine. Sopu Fanm pou Fanm’s goal is to “empower young girls and women to become leaders of community health”, while FASA’s aim is to “promote women’s human rights, democratic principles, good governance, social justice and access to quality health care and social services.”

Ekine explained that the levels of poverty seen in poor neighborhoods are “consequences of global capitalism”. “The actions of brutal regimes all over the global south break the backs of the poor in the interest of their imperial masters and capital” she said. “And it is poor women who are criminalized, disenfranchised, and further pushed to the margins, having to deal with multiple acts of violence.”

Indeed, Islanda Aduel, a member of peasant organization Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen, centered her explanation of the current crisis in Haiti on imperialism. She explained in an interview that “the whole project of imperialism — I’m talking about the U.S. in particular — is to make us dependent”, referring to the west’s neoliberal policies that are imposed on Haiti. She argues that these policies aim to “seize the agricultural land we have” in order to “put concrete on it to make free economic zones and tourist zones.”

Aduel also doesn’t hesitate to outline the potential consequences of the MSS on the lives of Haitian women: “This occupation is already at our door. Women will be subjected to violence. Whenever there is occupation, women’s bodies become the territory of war.”

The contrast between Dol and Aduel’s comments in comparison to that of the imperialist feminists is striking. Feminists working outside the network of western-funded NGOs in Haiti are not prevented from critiquing American hegemony in Haiti, as their funding is threatened. Dol may not have been commenting directly on the TPC, however, her view on foreign meddling is clear.

Dol and Aduel also clearly demonstrate a class-consciousness the imperialists lack. They have not been “NGO-ized” as a consequence of avoiding partnerships with the same western governments who have consistently violated Haiti’s sovereignty.

NGO-ized feminist and women’s advocacy groups in Haiti comply, support MSS

While several western funded feminist NGOs in Haiti have offered their support for the MSS, some have gone further. In an open letter to interim PM Conille, the RNDDH, NPD, and Négés Mawon demanded that the new interim government led by PM Garry Conille under no circumstances offer amnesty or “show leniency” to “armed bandits”.

The letter, released July 3, 2024, acknowledges that the signatories did not support the MSS. With the impending arrival of Kenyan police the signatories demanded that “mechanisms must be put in place to prevent human rights violations” and that “the mission must compensate victims when the civil liability of agents is established.”

The letter is problematic on a few levels. First, NPD and the RNDDH are foundational to the Montana Accord who, in turn, support the MSS as a voting member on the TPC.

Second, acting Representative of Haiti to the Organization of American States Gandy Thomas signed the Status Of Force Agreement. The agreement states that all MSS “personnel, including locally recruited personnel, enjoy immunity from legal process for all acts performed in the exercise of their official functions.” Only MSS Mission Command can certify whether personnel are subject to Haitian law.

This agreement was signed on June 21, 2024, two weeks before the open letter was published. Conille had already agreed to virtual blanket immunity for MSS personnel.

A refusal to offer amnesty to members of armed groups is also a tacit refusal to engage in dialogue with their leaders. The predictable consequence of this is increased violence in areas controlled by armed groups. Civilians living in the poor slums of Port-au-Prince will inevitably face the full force of imperialist intervention as MSS, PNH, and FAD’H forces engage in battles with armed groups in an effort to eliminate them.

The underlying class allegiances are apparent in this call for Conille to withhold offers for amnesty and leniency as part of negotiations. If Conille were to mobilize the MSS to eradicate armed groups it would be the residents of the slums who would face being caught in the crossfire. Meanwhile, the signatories of the letter to Conille who live outside Haiti or in the protected, wealthy areas of Port-au-Prince are not threatened by the inevitable battles between armed groups and MSS forces backed by PNH officers.

Viv Ansamn leader Jimmy Cherizier has repeatedly called for dialogue with Conille.

Conille responded by demanding armed groups “lay down their weapons” and “recognize the authority of the Haitian State before any dialogue can commence.

A few weeks later, speaking at a July 25 press conference in Cité Soleil attended by hundreds of spectators, Cherizier celebrated a peace pact established between three armed groups. Kim Ives reported that “Gabriel Jean-Pierre, who represents the quarter known as Brooklyn, Mathias Saintil, who represents Boston, and James “Bendji” Edmond, who represents Bélékou (previously represented by the late Iscar Andris), made a pact to stop all fighting.”

Cherizier’s announcement came a day after thousands marched in Port-au-Prince’s giant shanty town of Cité Soleil to celebrate the peace. Cherizier told the crowd “this peace shows the importance of dialogue … we in Viv Ansanm, the people of the poor neighborhoods, the lowest of the low, whom they don’t see as human, who don’t have water or electricity, we want dialogue to take Haiti to another place.”

In an article for the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), Jake Johnston, in response to the PM's demand that armed groups respect State authority, asks the question: “What state authority does Conille refer to?”. He notes that Conille “was not elected, nor appointed or confirmed by any elected representatives.” Conille has not provided a “rationale for recognizing the authority of a state that is as responsible for the violence as any armed group”, Johnston argues.

Johnston argues that, far from an abdication of justice, dialogue with armed groups “offers an opportunity to end the cycle of instability while rendering the question of an ill-defined and open-ended foreign intervention moot.”

Demanding “no amnesty” for armed groups also risks obliterating the opportunity to reveal who has funded and armed the criminal armed groups. Johnston makes the points out that justice “also requires dismantling the elite networks that have nurtured and supported the gangs, and who are welcomed at the negotiating table on a daily basis.”

Indeed, Vitel’homme Innocent, whose armed group, Kraze Baryé, is a member of Viv Ansanm, told a CNN reporter in an April 2024 interview that “he would be willing to face the justice system as long the corrupt elite do too.” Innocent explained: “We have to get rid of the oligarchs’ system, and we are ready too to answer the justice system of our country, so that we can see where the worst evil was hidden.”

The sincerity of Innocent’s claims cannot be confirmed until authentic attempts at dialogue are pursued.

Meanwhile, politicians suspected of arming and funding armed criminal groups are also against amnesty. Andre Michel, leader of Secteur Democratique and a long-time supporter of the PHTK, is against amnesty for members of armed groups. He was also implicated in the arming and funding of Kempes Sanon’s gang in Bel Air, along with other politicians such as Antonio Cheramy, Rony Colin, Nènèl Cassy, Marjory Michel, Ricard Pierre, and Fanmi Lavalas’ Schiller Louidor.

This, as the new interim leader of the TPC, Fanmi Lavalas’ Leslie Voltaire, officially requested the MSS be transformed into an official U.N. peacekeeping mission. According to a Washington Post article, Voltaire has also said that, while “nobody favors amnesty,” he suggested that “the council would create a truth and justice committee to facilitate gang members disarming, appearing before victims, and repenting.”

SOFA, now led by activist and feminist Sharma Aurélien, stands out among human rights and women’s advocacy groups who have actively or tacitly supported the MSS intervention in Haiti. In an article published at the Miami Herald, Aurélien made it clear she is against the MSS, stating “cooperation and solidarity from the international community, not military intervention and pity.”

This stand against the MSS has not, however, stopped the inflow of funding from foreign governments who support the armed intervention. While the Canadian government isn’t listed as a partner on SOFA’s website, SOFA received funding from Canada through Global Affairs Canada’s programs with Avocats sans Frontiéres Canada and the Centre d'étude et de coopération internationale (CECI). This is in addition to its partnership with AJWS.

This stance also hasn’t prevented SOFA from consulting with the MSS. A SOFA representative recently attended a workshop led by the MSS to explain their “Complaint and Reporting Mechanism.” Other attendees include representatives from various UN agencies, USAID, the RNDDH, BINUH, and the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group.

Soros’ Open Societies Foundation, in turn, founded the Haitian feminist organization FOKAL, and provides funding to several feminist and women’s advocacy groups in Haiti. FOKAL also coordinates with Avocats sans Frontieres Canada to distribute millions of dollars in Canadian funding to various Haitian human-rights and feminist groups in Haiti through the AJULIH program.

The militarization of women by Canada’s feminist neoliberal leadership

Canada’s support for the MSS and NGOs in Haiti are a result of what Canadian anti-war activist and writer Tamara Lorincz calls Prime Minister Trudeau’s “so-called feminist foreign policy language” which “deceptively conceals Canada’s belligerence in international relations.”

While Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, has claimed that Canada’s feminist foreign policy is “a lens that we must apply in order to support gender equality, peace, and prosperity globally” that is “free from violence”, the reality is that Canada’s so-called feminist foreign policy is instead, as Lorincz describes, a “militarization of women” by “Canada’s feminist neoliberal leadership” who are “driving weapons exports and war.”

Support for the MSS is an endorsement of imperialist interventionism and violence. The MSS is a part of a larger imperialist plan to control and occupy Haiti for decades.

The Canadian government is not interested in renewing Haitian democracy and sovereignty. As Kevin Edmonds explained in a recent article, the CORE group is an “unelected imperial body” of which Canada is a member. Canada and the CORE groups other members: Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, the European Union, the U.S.A., and the Organization of American States - are the “international community” often referred to in mainstream media in reference to Haiti. Their role is to provide diplomatic cover for, and assist in, implementing American imperialist foreign policy in Haiti.

Indeed, Canada’s contribution to “supporting” Haiti has amounted to providing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding Haiti’s police force, funding compliant NGOs in Haiti, and training 330 CARICOM troops from Jamaica, Belize and the Bahamas in Jamaica who will soon join the MSS as part of “Operation HELIOS”.

Mélanie Joly also announced that Canada will contribute an additional $5.7 million CAD to the United Nations Trust Fund for the MSS. This followed a previous announcement in February pledging $80.5 million CAD for the MSS.

Canada is the only financial backer of the MSS after Washington, who is providing the bulk of the funding. Despite this, the MSS has not reached its funding goals. As of October 2024, only 430 foreign police officers have arrived to serve in the MSS.

Washington’s and the CORE group’s end goal is the continued subordination of Haiti by Washington as a colonial state under the Global Fragility Act (GFA), a law that is supported by the Canadian government.

Haiti is often the laboratory for Washington’s new policy designed to maintain hegemony. In this instance, the GFA is the new experiment in imperialist domination of Haiti.

The U.S. and Canadian government’s efforts to organize the MSS is a necessary step to (s)elect a new government which will agree to negotiate and sign the GFA into law. That would create a bilateral agreement for the deployment of an occupying force led by Washington.

As U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols explained, Washington has “a long term strategy for Haiti under the Global Fragility Act that has a ten year plan to support Haiti’s increased stability and autonomy.”

The GFA emphasizes building relationships with “local civil society” by “strengthen[ing] the capacity of the United States to be an effective leader of international efforts to prevent extremism and violent conflict.”

This “capacity” includes negotiating 10-year “security assistance” agreements with “partner” nations.

The “autonomy” Nichols hopes to foster is from Russia and China. This adversarial stance on Russia and China results from their rapprochement with “fragile states” which involves geo-strategic concerns, including access to raw materials. Kim Ives described the GFA succinctly as “fundamentally a military response to China, the principal challenger of U.S. world hegemony.”

The imperial feminist leaders and organizations are playing a role in maintaining this “autonomy” and forcing Haitians to endure the relentless brutality of America’s imperialist domination of Haiti.

Unless Haiti is able to break free from U.S. hegemony and regain its sovereignty, it will remain a pawn in the United States’ new cold war with China and Russia.

Travis Ross is a teacher based in Montreal, Québec. He is also the co-editor of the Canada-Haiti Information Project at canada-haiti.ca. Travis has written for Haiti Liberté, Black Agenda Report, The Canada Files, TruthOut, and rabble.ca. He can be reached on X.

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