UNITED NATIONS, United States: Haiti is on the brink of civil war and unless the international community intervenes quickly, the Dominican Republic will struggle to protect itself, its president warned at the United Nations on Tuesday.
Haiti has been in turmoil for years, with armed gangs taking over parts of the country and unleashing brutal violence, leaving the economy and public health system in ruins.
“The international community cannot allow the Haitian disaster to continue one more day,” President Luis Abinader, whose country shares the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola with Haiti, told reporters after addressing a UN Security Council meeting on food insecurity, climate and conflict.
He said the Dominican Republic has been warning the world body since 2021, when President Jovenel Moise was assassinated, of a spiraling security crisis in Haiti.
Now the gang-ridden nation is “on the brink of civil war,” Abinader said, calling on the international community to fulfill its promises and send a multinational force to bolster Haiti’s beleaguered security forces.
Last year, the UN Security Council gave the green light to just such a force to be led by Kenya. But it was delayed by months of logistics, a legal challenge in Nairobi and a lack of funding.
Abinader said the time for “promises” to fund the force was over.
“Either the money comes now, or Haiti’s collapse will be irreversible… The Dominican Republic will fight with all its might not to be dragged into the same abyss.”
“Our watchword from now on will be: either we fight together to save Haiti or we fight alone to protect the Dominican Republic,” he said.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has not held elections since 2016 and the presidency has remained vacant since Moise’s killing.
Gangs run rampant in large parts of the country and the number of murders more than doubled to nearly 4,800 last year, according to a UN report released this month.
More than 1,100 people were killed, injured or kidnapped in Haiti in January alone, making it the country’s most violent month in two years of conflict, the United Nations said.
Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince have a tumultuous relationship over immigration and the construction of an anti-migration wall along their shared border by the Dominican Republic, which is far more prosperous than its neighbor.
Tensions have risen in recent months as private Haitian operators built a canal drawing water from the Dajabon, a river that marks the border.
