As Haiti teeters on the brink of state collapse amid a marked resurgence of kidnappings, insecurity, and gang violence, Western powers have resorted to their usual strategies to try to stabilize the country: sanctions on Haitian elites connected to gangs and efforts to strengthen the national police. Meanwhile, after a year of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s calls for yet another foreign intervention, the United Nations recently approved the deployment of a multinational security force, led by Kenya, to support Haiti’s police.
There may be a role for punitive measures in the international community’s approach, but any strategy that focuses purely on criminal justice or military-style security mechanisms is doomed to fail, just as past U.S. interventions did. Pervasive state-sanctioned gang activity is just the most visible reflection of the primary, though under-recognized, driver of Haiti’s catastrophe: the country’s broken monetary system, which is a legacy of its colonial past.
The dollarization, devaluation, and hyperinflation that have decimated Haiti’s economy and left most Haitians in poverty are merely the latest offshoots of a financial crisis many centuries in the making. International efforts will succeed only if they confront and make amends for Haiti’s brutal history of colonization. Rather than using force yet again,
