Building Peace in Haiti.

With the expiration of the mandate of the United Nations International Civilian Support Mission in Haiti in February 2000, following the Secretary-General's recommendation that it not be renewed, 10 years of intense UN involvement with the Caribbean republic drew to a conclusion.

In December 1990, when UN observers monitored the country's first genuinely inclusive general elections, they helped Haitians make a giant step towards establishing a democracy after over three decades of dictatorship. Sadly, the result--a landslide victory for the radical Catholic priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas movement for fundamental social and political change--was unacceptable to the country's tiny economic elite and, after less than eight months in power, the Haitian military overthrew the democratic government.

The years of military coup (1991-1994) proved a steep learning curve for the United Nations. A pioneering human rights mission, the joint United Nations/Organization of American States' International Civilian Mission in Haiti (MICIVIH) was deployed in 1993, but its presence failed to stem a rising tide of violence as the Haitian military and groups of armed civilians attempted to destroy the democratic movement. Hopes for a peaceful resolution of the crisis were raised in July 1993 when the United Nations brokered an accord between exiled President Aristide and the Haitian military. However, the latter cynically reneged on the deal that collapsed when a pro-military civilian militia gang staged a violent demonstration to stop the deployment of UN police trainers. As the assassination of both grassroots activists and high-profile pro-Aristide figures continued, MICIVIH was evacuated for its own safety.

In response, the United Nations during 1994 resorted to increasingly strict sanctions designed to force the military to return to the negotiating table. But the measures failed to dislodge the coup regime, and military leaders and top business families even took advantage of the sanctions to feather their nests through the control of a thriving contraband trade. Worse still, the sanctions sent an already sickly economy into the emergency ward, and the main victim of the resultant economic crisis was the poor majority--the main base of support for the exiled, democratic government. Already one of the poorest countries in the Americas, Haiti's gross national product fell by a staggering 26 per cent during the coup years.

Despite the suffering, support for Mr. Aristide remained high, and the military regime showed no sign of achieving political stability. Prompted by the destabilizing effect on the Caribbean region of a massive refugee exodus and reassured when Aristide's representatives agreed to carry out neo-liberal economic reforms, the United Nations finally took decisive action in September 1994. With UN authorization, a 28-nation multinational force (MN$ led by United States troops, were dispatched to restore the constitutional order in Haiti.

The intervention was unopposed by the Haitian military, and within weeks President Aristide returned. The peacekeeping phase proceeded reasonably smoothly and in March 1995 a United Nations mission-UNMIH-under Lakhdar Brahimi, took over responsibility for security from the United States-dominated MNF. The MICWIH human rights monitoring mission, again under Cohn Granderson, also returned to assist with the massively daunting peace-building effort.

In the space of a year, UNMIH successfully oversaw parliamentary and presidential elections that, although marred by some irregularities and low voter turnout, were largely free and fair. The election also produced Haiti's first peaceful transition of executive power when President Rene Preval took over the reins from Mr. Aristide in February 1996. UNMIH also helped to establish a new 5,000-strong Haitian National Police in place of the much-hated Haitian Armed Forces, abolished by President Aristide on his return.

The mission worked closely with international financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which oversaw a development aid package that was projected to amount to $2.5 billion over five years. One of the innovations for a peacekeeping/peace-building operation was the UNMIH decision to integrate the work of the United Nations Development Programme into its overall mission. The UNDP Resident Representative in Haiti was named as its second in command.

As the UN mission in Haiti was periodicaliy renewed and renamed, troop deployment was progressively reduced in size, but it was not until November 1997 that the last UN military contingent withdrew. At that time, because of a continuing need to support the newly-established police force, the Security Council mandated a new mission of 300 civilian police, known by its French acronym MIPONUH [Mission de police des Nations Unies en Haiti] Both MIPONUH and MICIVIH were extended until March 2000, at which time they were replaced by the International Civilian Support Mission in Haiti (MICAH), with an initial mandate of one year and a brief to advise on justice, the police and human rights. But MICAH's mandate was not renewed. The SecretaryGeneral's report of 9 November 2000 found that "a deteriorating political situation", mounting "popular discontent ... in response to the rising prices and increasing poverty", and "rampant crime, violent street protests and incidents of violence directed at the international com munity" made a continuation of MICAH unadvisable.

After the apparent success of UNMIH in 1995/1996, this gloomy conclusion to the UN mission begs the question, what went wrong? In retrospect, it is perhaps possible to see that there were measures that the UN missions took, or did not take, that have contributed to the current malaise.

First among these relates to the persistence of insecurity, political violence and the rising rate of crime. A primary responsibility for this state of affairs rests with the MNF's failure during the first months of the post-intervention period to institute an effective programme to disarm the paramilitary network that had worked hand-in-glove with the military regime. MNF troops displayed a marked reluctance to act on reports of hidden arms caches, and instead preferred to promote a weapons buy-back scheme. By the time it closed, the scheme had netted approximately 30,000 weapons, but this figure represented a small fraction of those estimated to have been distributed to its supporters by the former military regime. Moreover, many of those handed in were reputed to be unserviceable or antique.

Another crucial issue and one that bears heavily on the current state of lawlessness and impunity was reform of the judicial system. Traditionally, the Haitian judiciary had served as a tool to preserve the established order and to oppress the population at large, and it was in dire need of a radical overhaul. Unfortunately, the reform process was the subject of a bilateral arrangement, and the United Nations contribution was limited to logistical and technical support. As it was, the bilateral reform programmes failed to achieve significant results, reflected by the fact that up until 2000 there were only a handful of prosecutions for violent political crimes committed during the 1991-1994 period. Although MICIVIH and UNDP undertook sterling work in the field of prison reform, the failings of the judicial system have created a new set of problems.

The prison population has leapt from 1,500 five years ago to 4,000 in 2000, putting a severe strain on staff and inmates in antiquated prison buildings. Furthermore, only 20 per cent of these 4,000 inmates have vet faced trial and many have been detained for years without appearing before a judge.

The above points are of immense significance, particularly in relation to the current difficulties experienced by the Haitian National Police Force. On the one hand, the Force is often overwhelmed by crime waves and politically motivated violence carried out by armed gangs. On the other, the aparent partiality and weakness of the judiciary undermines police morale and encourages officers to take matters into their own hands.

A second area in which the United Nations could have played a more active part both as a mediator and moderating influence was the thorny question of economic development strategy. A large amount of aid provided by the international community was disbursed in the years following UN intervention, but any concrete, positive economic impact is hard to detect either at the macro-economic level or in the living standards of the rural and urban poor who make up the vast majority of the Haitian population. Questions must be asked about the role played in the development of Haiti's economic strategy by the Bretton Woods Institutions. Not only did an economic recovery fail to materialize, but political tensions were exacerbated with many Lavalas supporters claiming President Aristide had been forced to abandon his reform programme in favour of a structural adjustment plan that would only benefit the country's economic elite and foreign investors.

Much of the blame for Haiti's current descent into political turmoil and instability can indeed be attributed to the inability of the country's political leaders to either compromise or adequately represent the interests of the majority population. However, the MNF and the United Nations could have contributed more to building a lasting peace by implementing effective disarmament, and the UN could have insisted on a larger role in the judicial reform process, focusing more on bringing human rights violators to justice, and intervening to stop the imposition of seemingly inappropriate economic strategy.

As the International Peace Academy's Chetan Kumar wrote in Building Peace in Haiti, "ultimately, effective peace building cannot come from external assistance but from laying a firm foundation on which a local population can build a peaceful future for itself."

Charles Arthur is the editor of "A Haiti Anthology: Libete" and author of "Haiti in Focus: People, Politics and Culture".