Photo credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider, 1995.
Introduction
The 1990s were a hectic time for American foreign policy. The United States and, by extension, the United Nations (UN) found themselves trying to navigate how to handle crises on a global stage that quickly gained the eyes of the world in this new digital age. As television media was now starting to showcase what was once kept between state leaders and their soldiers, diplomatic and military decisions had to be considered in ways never seen before. The conflict in Haiti from 1991–1995 illustrates this time of confusion and portrays the cyclical nature of the Haitian refugee crisis and the UN interventions into Haiti, raising questions about the effectiveness of UN operations and the weight of domestic policies on UN mandates.
Background
The US has long had a turbulent relationship with Latin American and Caribbean states. Haiti found itself in a unique position where although it gained independence long before other states, it was submerged in financial debt to foreign powers, making it virtually impossible for Haiti to develop a stable and functioning society. Western colonial powers often imposed a “divide and conquer” strategy that positioned the locals against each other, thus distracting them from the real enemy, the colonizing party. This was a double-edged sword as Haitians, all under French rule but of different racial and ancestral backgrounds, were turned against each other, aiding the French in their oppression of the local population. Yet, this strategy eventually positioned them against the white French through the use of the maréchaussée, a rural police force established to control the population. The structure of the maréchaussée established a system reliant on military loyalty through money rather than civic obligation, creating a legacy that would haunt Haiti throughout its future as it attempted to democratize.
This corruption based relationship that was forged by the maréchaussée meant that Haiti suffered countless coups and assassinations in addition to a drowning economy that made progress appear impossible. Increased US involvement in Haiti occurred from 1915 to 1934 in its first attempt to restore order to the state and again during the Cold War, which presented an opportunity for the US to actively engage its anti-communist agenda in Haiti. In comparison to the communist regime of Cuba, Haiti was decidedly anti-communist, and thus became a tool for the US to promote its democratic agenda. The US therefore supported Haitian presidents who often became brutal dictators and reigned over the state with vicious control, because criticizing an anti-communist country was seen as ceding control to communism itself. When the newly elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide entered office, he was quickly overthrown in a military coup led by General Raoul Cédras in September 1991. This created a situation that was not ideal for the US because it supported Aristide’s inaguration as it signaled the first democratic election in Haiti, which was an important symbolic marker of democratic strength in the face of Cuba’s communism. Cédras overthrew this democratic process and took up the mantle as Haiti’s newest dictator, leading the Haitian Armed Forces (FAD’H) in a witch-hunt that targeted not only former members of Aristide’s party, but anyone who had supported him, undoubtedly creating a situation that placed most civilians in danger of kidnapping, torture, and death.
American Refugee Policy
As violence escalated in Haiti, thousands fled the country by whatever means possible, crossing the land border into the Dominican Republic or taking dangerous boat rides to the US. Yet, before the UN intervention in Haiti can be examined, it is imperative to understand the American political landscape in which the Haitian refugee crisis occurred to grasp the reasons behind the US and UN’s reactions. Migration in 1980 was rapidly increasing, as the US received over 124,000 Cubans and 10,000 Haitians in seven months. There were stark differences in the receptions of the two populations. Cubans were more easily welcomed because they were an established refugee population in the US at the time, whereas Haitians were condemned as darker-skinned refugees fleeing a country that was an established ally of the US. If the Cubans were victims of communism (that were still only reluctantly welcomed), the Haitians represented the dark side of American foreign policy that the world would rather forget.
As such, in 1981, the US and Haiti entered an agreement that allowed the US Coast Guard to intercept vessels containing Haitian asylum seekers and migrants based on the argument that these individuals were engaged in “the illegal transportation of undocumented aliens to our shores.” While the agreement did protect those that the US defined as refugees, this did not include economic migrants (who were often fleeing Haiti due to the oppressive atmosphere and impossible living standards that Cédras’ regime imposed on the country with the support from the US). Over the next decade, over 25,000 Haitians would be forcibly repatriated to Haiti, with only six Haitians being allowed to make asylum claims in the US. To make matters worse, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) identified Haitians as a high-risk group for AIDS. Consequently, in 1987, the US began restricting HIV positive people from entering the country. Thus, by the time of the 1991 coup, Haitian refugees were condemned by the US public for being linked to HIV, which was inconvenient for politicians who did not want to risk losing domestic support in another Mariel boatlift situation. The upcoming 1992 US Presidential election only worsened the situation, as both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton tried to create a solution for the Haiti crisis that would not cost them votes.
The Significance of American Domestic Politics
The Bush administration saw thousands of Haitians being intercepted by the US Coast Guard, and it temporarily halted repatriations and imposed economic sanctions on Haiti. When more of the international community began to pay attention to Haiti, Bush was in a position where he could either let in another influx of refugees and risk losing the election, or he could knowingly send refugees back to their deaths and risk losing the election. Bush decided to revise the “screen and return” policy so that the US Coast Guard still intercepted refugee vessels but held the Haitians aboard their cutters while American diplomats sought other countries that would host the refugees. By November 1991, the repatriations continued, and one government official claimed, “most of these people do not have a legitimate fear of persecution.” Media attention was focused on the issue, and members of Congress and immigration rights groups vocally criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the situation, pointing out the racial hypocrisy of the repatriations and stating, “it’s the difference, I guess, between exporting oil and bananas.” Facing legal pressure and temporary restraining orders from various human rights groups while dodging alarming headlines that outraged against the “floating US jails,” Bush was left with a choice. He could continue the previous decade’s policy of forced repatriation, ultimately gaining more public condemnation, or, under the National Security Council’s recommendations, detain Haitians at the American naval base of Guantánamo for asylum “processing” as a temporary solution. This created an ideal situation for Bush’s reelection campaign, as Guantánamo served as a deterrence factor against future refugees, a constitutional loophole, and a blind spot to the media and human rights lawyers who could not access the naval base without permission of the US military.
The Legacy of Guantánamo
The US constitution does not protect foreign nationals outside of the US, and Guantánamo presented a situation in which the US could keep foreign nationals at a location outside of the US whilst also processing their asylum claims. Furthermore, one interpretation of the living conditions at Guantánamo posits that the inhumane living conditions were weaponized to signal to Haitians that they should stay in Haiti or they too would be detained there. Part of this deterrence strategy can be illustrated when analyzing the clear limitations of Guantánamo as a holding facility. The naval base had a capacity of approximately 12,500 people, yet in just three weeks, the Coast Guard intercepted “unseaworthy, overcrowded, and unsafe” vessels holding over 10,000 people in total. By the time President Clinton addressed the nation about the Haiti crisis in 1994, Guantánamo was holding over 14,000 people. The camps denied many Haitians the right to even appeal for asylum, creating a situation where they were held for up to three years in unstable camps that were exposed to rain and the tropical heat, infested with vermin, and lacking water and sanitary supplies. Eventually, some refugees threatened a mass suicide due to the unbearable conditions.
Many of the refugees were held in Guantánamo for so long because neither the Bush nor Clinton administration wanted to be responsible for letting in thousands of “HIV positive” refugees. Thus, these refugees were held in a state of limbo where the options were to either wait for their asylum claim to be processed (where only a third were eventually let into the US), or return to Haiti. This tactic led Guantánamo and the Coast Guards’ capacities to be overstretched. Consequently, in May of 1992, the US declared that no additional refugees could be housed at the naval base, and one day later, repatriations of refugees intercepted at sea began without evaluating their asylum claims. As a result, over 40,000 Haitians would be interdicted by the end of 1992, with 29,500 repatriated back to Haiti, and 54 let into the US as refugees. The US highlighted the number of Haitians that drowned making this journey on unstable boats to explain why they were safer in Haiti, and framed this decision as one that was done to control illegal immigration. The US felt that allowing Haitians to file for asylum inside the country did not protect US borders and would impede on diplomatic efforts that were focused on restoring a democratic government in Haiti.
During his presidential campaign, Clinton claimed that he would respond to the Haitian refugee crisis differently than Bush by explaining how he would reinstate asylum screening. Yet the Sun Sentinel called attention to Clinton’s acknowledgment that the riots thrown by the Mariel Boatlift Cubans at Fort Chaffee in 1980 played a factor in him losing his first bid for reelection, since he had invited the US government to bring the Cubans to Arkansas in the first place. With this path of logic, it was inferred that Clinton realized bringing Haitian refugees into the country would yield similar results, and thus a week into his presidency he announced that he would continue deploying the Bush administration’s policy of intercepting and deporting Haitians without asylum screening interviews.
In March 1993, famous journalist and activist Jesse Jackson gained permission to visit Guantánamo, where they interviewed hundreds of refugees and exposed the inhumane conditions of the camps. In solidarity with the detained refugees, some black clergy and members of civil rights organizations participated in hunger strikes, funneling in a wave of negative publicity. Furthermore, in timing that seems anything but coincidental, the United Nations Security Council passed its first resolution on Haiti in June of the same year. A second resolution was passed in July, authorizing military action to reinstate Aristide as president of Haiti. At this point, over 40,000 refugees had fled from Haiti and thousands had been killed, but it still took a year and a half for the UNSC to even address the issue.
The Role of the International Community
Throughout 1991 and 1992, the US, with its partners in the Organization of American States (OAS), shouldered much of the responsibility of returning Aristide to power. In June 1991, the OAS committed to the “Santiago Revolution,” where it promised to defend democratic regimes in the Western hemisphere from eroding, a decision that was unprecedented considering Article 15 of the OAS charter forbade forcible intervention. Furthermore, Haiti became a symbolic issue in the news from 1991 to 1994, where the reputation of the US in other world matters was dependent on how it reacted to Haiti. Thus, as the numbers of refugees increased, so, too, did the media coverage of the mishandling of Haiti, and when the US was supposedly spearheading the charge against anti-democratic regimes, it could not afford to let Haiti weaken its international reputation. Therefore, seeing as the charter of the OAS did not grant the power to authorize intervention into Haiti, the UN was the next logical forum to shift the issue.
It is worth noting that even if the UN was involved in relieving the crisis from the start, a humanitarian crisis is often only likely to receive intervention if the US, the state with the most manpower and funding to contribute, is in support of the mission. Thus, whilst the UN itself wanted to separate itself from US domestic politics, the realities of UN financial dependence on the US makes this an impossible outcome at present. In theory, the UN is an international organization with no one state in a position of supreme power over the others. However, it is hard to ignore the US’s influence as both a permanent member and the top financial contributor. This trend was evident throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and thus, in 1993, the US Congress placed a cap on how much the US could pay towards the regular and peacekeeping budget, at 22% and 25% respectively. This is not necessarily indicative of the claim that the US and its interests played a large role in influencing the UN’s operations, but perhaps the fact that American Major General Kinzer commanded the UN forces in Haiti and that the 40% of the 6,000 UN personnel in Haiti was composed of US military members can be. As such, the UN essentially acted as the mechanism through which the US attempted to salvage its domestic and international reputation.
US domestic concerns positioned the refugee crisis as a matter of security. Government statements, press releases, and Supreme Court hearings illustrated these domestic fears by framing the refugee crisis in the context of “illegal immigration,” Haiti’s role as an “illegal drug conduit,”and the danger of letting HIV positive people into the country. Yet on an international scale, the US was primarily concerned about restoring its image as a leader of the West, with the startling headlines in Somalia and Bosnia only worsening this status. The securitization of Haitian refugees made this issue relevant to the international community and acted as a tool that allowed the US to accomplish both goals through the UN. If the refugees were viewed through a humanitarian lens and seen as simply refugees, the actions taken might have been different. On one hand, if there was only a truly humanitarian reason for intervening, it may not have taken a year and a half and 40,000 refugees to promote action from the UN. The original killing and persecution should have been enough for the international community to get involved. On the other hand, why did the UN become so involved with Haiti that it implemented and extended multiple observation and peacekeeping missions between 1993–1996 that cost $3 billion, whereas the crises in Sudan and Somalia that had hundreds of thousands of casualties received fewer resources? It is simultaneously the lack of attention and overabundance of resources that make Haiti stand out as a particularly unique UN operation.
The UN Intervention into Haiti
However, one reason the UN intervention in Haiti is often looked upon with disdain is the convoluted nature of its intervention that cannot help but reflect what happens when domestic politics influences the operations of an international organization. One of the first places one should look when analyzing the UN intervention in Haiti is UNSC Resolution 940. This resolution authorized the removal of Cédras’ regime by “all means necessary,” therefore allowing the use of military force to reinstate Aristide. Furthermore, Article 2(4) of the UN Charter defines the conditions under which forcible intervention is permitted: an instance of self-defense or where the Security Council determines that there has been a breach of international peace or an act of aggression. The UN definition of aggression is especially important, as it is defined as “the use of armed force by a State against … another State” Objectively looking at the coup in Haiti and utilizing this definition, Haiti did not commit an act of aggression against another state, nor did it breach international peace because the entire situation was enclosed within Haiti. However, the Security Council deemed the situation in Haiti as fulfilling this definition to pass Resolution 940. In order to justify Resolution 940, the Security Council had to declare that the refugee crisis and the fall of Haitian democracy met the criteria of having breached and being a credible threat to international peace.
This is not a debate about whether it was morally right or wrong for the Security Council to make this decision. It is simply identifying that in passing Resolution 940, the United Nations decided to interpret its Charter differently than it had in previous crises, making Haiti the first time that the promotion of democracy was used as a reason to authorize the use of force. It is therefore not surprising that the planning and implementation of the intervention itself was wrought with disorganized chaos as the UN could not fully explain why it was going into Haiti. This intervention ultimately acted as both a peacemaking and peacekeeping mission under the name Operation Uphold Democracy.
The first steps of Operation Uphold Democracy included the creation of the International Civilian Mission in Haiti (MICIVIH) in February 1993, a civilian observation mission that was mandated to “verify respect for human rights.” This raises the question about how an observation mission that is not mandated to intervene during periods of violence is supposed to improve the human rights situation in Haiti. Bryant Freeman, a human rights observer and expert on Haitian Créole and culture, acted as a cultural instructor in Haiti. During his time training MICIVIH personnel, he remarked that “one or two bodies were deposited on our doorstep each week.” For all that the US wanted to resolve the situation in Haiti, it was also suffering from “Somalia Syndrome,” or the fear of American casualties during a peacekeeping operation. After the media aired the moment where American troops were killed and dragged through the streets of Somalia, there was understandably a reluctance to place US troops back on the ground and even more hesitancy to have them directly participate in subduing hostilities. Unfortunately, this was apparent to Cédras, and he capitalized on American fears to embarrass the US and the UN and to continue killing thousands of Haitians.
Anti-Aristide groups that supported Cédras chanted “Remember Somalia,” and were perceived as such a physical threat that a US naval ship eventually retreated from Port-au-Prince in October 1993. Days later, the Haitian Minister of Justice was assassinated while simultaenously, the buildings that housed UN personnel were shot at and had their water and phone lines cut off, prompting MICIVIH to depart Haiti that same month. Not only did both of these incidents discredit the OAS, the UN, and the US, but the departure of the naval ship was filmed by news reporters and aired on television. Freeman recalled civilians “crying and saying you are our only hope” as MICIVIH and the other human rights observers left Haiti despite the US promise to restore stability “by any means necessary.” Instead, the UN placed an embargo on Haiti as a means of disrupting fuel used by the businesses of Haiti’s elite. The goal was to pressure them into forcing Cédras to step down, while allowing humanitarian aid to pass into the country. Yet, the wealthy were unaffected and the number of refugees continued to increase. According to Colonel Boyatt, “it had no effect on the rich at all, the people they were trying to affect. It completely destroyed the nation’s infrastructure for the poor.” The worsening conditions on the ground were reflected in the number of refugees that fled the country, with almost 25,000 Haitians being interdicted by the US Coast Guard in 1994. This led Aristide to end the 1981 repatriation agreement between Haiti and the US. One month later Clinton changed his refugee policy and announced that Haitians would once again be given asylum processing aboard US ships.
Besides MICIVIH, the US led a first-phase multinational force (MNF) to establish a secure environment in Haiti to which the United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) could be deployed. The MNF was required to follow a non-interference policy, dictating that the FAD’H was responsible for handling public order. It was not until reporters broadcast the US military standing by as the FAD’H beat Haitians and clubbed one man to death that orders were changed. The new rules of engagement allowed US troops to intervene if they witnessed a similar incident. Even with these new rules of engagement, the overall rules of the mission still clearly laid out that Haitians were not to be assisted directly by Special Forces so as to avoid “mission creep” or fatigue. Perhaps due to the disenchantment of what felt like a pointless mission, some Special Forces found ways to bend these rules to help people by assisting in recovery efforts that included aiding with relief packages and rebuilding vital infrastructure, such as a diesel generator, a water system, and school buildings.
It is decisions like these that make Haiti such a unique humanitarian mission. There were military forces on the ground, but they were not originally allowed to participate in stopping hostilities. There were observers there to protect human rights, but they had no way to physically protect the people they were trying to help. Finally, although Haiti was viewed as both a humanitarian crisis and a peacemaking one, there were few efforts solely focused on humanitarian concerns and instead emphasized the need for reinstating democracy through police reform and free and fair elections. Functioning infrastructure and a working economy are vital necessities in creating an environment in which people can live. As much as the international community may like to pretend that economic migrants are different from refugees, the conditions that lead people to flee their homes are often intertwined with economic conditions that make life unbearable. Thus, missions like the ones between 1993 and1996 can only work if refugees have a home to which they can return.
The handover of the mission from US to UN forces illustrates this lack of care in making Haiti livable for Haitians. Many MFN troops were experiencing mission creep and wanted to transition the mission to the UN-managed UNMIH. Yet, the prerequisite factor to do this was proving to the UN that Haiti was stable enough for a handover from the US to the UN. The problem was that Haiti was not stable despite MNF forces being there for around two years. Therefore, efforts were taken to convince the Security Council that the UN was ready to enter Haiti while withholding the reality of the situation. Crime rates in Haiti were compared to those in large American cities to skew the representation of how secure Haiti was, the media was planted to film food deliveries to children, and lightly armed troops were sent into low-risk areas to mislead the world into thinking Haiti was safe enough that soldiers did not even have to wear armored vests anymore. This plan worked, UNMIH entered Haiti, and many US troops went home. Knowing the journey it took to reach this point, it should not be surprising to learn that UNMIH had its mandate extended five times and was eventually succeeded by three follow up missions: the United Nations Support Mission in Haiti (UNSMIH, July 1996 to 1997), the United Nations Transition Mission in Haiti (UNTMIH, August to November 1997), and the United Nations Civilian Police Mission in Haiti (MIPONUH December 1997 to 2000).
Conclusion
For as much dehumanization as refugees still receive today, the conflicts of the 1990s fundamentally changed the ways in which refugees were perceived and addressed. Haitian refugees reflected this dichotomy of being both a security issue that needed to be stopped and a human issue that should be handled with care. It was less so the presence of refugees, but the image of them that inspired US, and in turn UN policy. Each moment captured on camera carried a ripple effect that shifted how the US and the UN decided to approach Haiti. This ranges from the ways the refugees were intercepted, to the timing of when the intervention took place, to how each decision was made during the intervention. Ultimately, as much of Haiti’s operation appeared to be a PR scheme, it still seemed to have failed at accomplishing that goal and barely fixed the increasing number of Haitian refugees, which motivated the UN to take action in the first place.
Lily is an MA candidate in International Affairs with a specialization in Diplomacy. She has worked as a Graduate Writing Fellow at Boston University’s Educational Resource Center and has interned with the Department of Commerce. Her areas of interest include studying the role of the media in policymaking, public diplomacy, and human rights advocacy.
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