Luis Abinader states the international community has the obligation to aid Haiti
President Luis Abinader said that “the international community has the obligation to come to the aid of Haiti to overcome the suffering that this people endures.”
During the summit of heads of state and government of the Central American Integration System (SICA) held in Santiago (northern Dominican Republic), Abinader stressed this “obligation” also so that the Government of Haiti “can assume a higher level of responsibility vis-à-vis the countries around them” in terms of migration.
Haiti, he stressed, “has recently seen its political and social stability deteriorate to unprecedented levels, unleashing waves of immigration in most cases irregular and disorderly, the first destination being the Dominican Republic, but also other countries” in the region.
Abinader called attention to the “sacrifice” that the Dominican Republic makes with the excess of illegal immigrants, which “exceeds their possibilities of assimilation.”
For this reason, he insisted, “the international community has the obligation, the obligation, to come to the aid of Haiti,” whose situation is an “issue of the utmost importance for the Dominican Republic.”
Although, he pointed out, Santo Domingo is aware that migratory movements “are produced by structural factors typical of the development of our economies, it is also true that it is the obligation of each government to assume the levels of commitment that correspond to it, especially if they are emitters”.
Faced with a south-south migration that “does not stop growing, it is imperative that from SICA and in each of the organizations where we have spaces for dialogue, we work seriously to achieve a better ordering of the movements of people,” he added.
Haiti is experiencing an acute crisis at all levels and a spiral of violence at the hands of the armed gangs that control a large part of Port-au-Prince and that even blocked the country’s main oil terminal for weeks.
This caused a fuel shortage that paralyzed Haiti and even forced the closure of hospitals, at a time when cholera has reappeared, already causing more than 200 deaths.
Despite the unlocking of the oil terminal, chaos continues in the poorest country in the Americas, where some 4.7 million people experience high levels of food insecurity out of the country’s 11 million people.
Faced with this situation, in November the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, asked the Dominican Republic to stop the forced deportations of Haitians.
Abinader, who described Türk’s statements as “unacceptable” and “irresponsible”, announced that the repatriations of undocumented Haitians would not only continue, but would increase.
Thousands of Haitian citizens reside in the Dominican Republic, most of them in conditions of irregular migration, and most of the deportations from this country affect them.