Fixing Haiti: MINUSTAH and Beyond

Edited Jorge Heine and Andrew S. Thompson

PUBLICATION DATA:

ISBN-10: 92-808-1197-5,
ISBN-13: 978-92-808-1197-1

LANGUAGE:

English

PAGES:

276

PRICE:

US$35.00

PUBLISHER:

United Nations University Press

PUBLISHED:

August 2011

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Haiti may well be the only country in the Americas with a last name. References to the land of the “black Jacobins” are almost always followed by the phrase “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere”. To that dubious distinction, on 12 January 2010 Haiti added another, when it was hit by the most devastating natural disaster in the Americas, a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake. More than 220,000 people lost their lives and much of its vibrant capital, Portau-Prince, was reduced to rubble. Since 2004, the United Nations has been in Haiti through MINUSTAH, in an ambitious attempt to help Haiti raise itself by its bootstraps. This effort has now acquired additional urgency. Is Haiti a failed state? Does it deserve a Marshall-plan-like programme? What will it take to address the Haitian predicament? In this book, some of the world’s leading experts on Haiti examine the challenges faced by the fi rst black republic, the tasks undertaken by the UN, and the new role of hemispheric players such as Argentina, Brazil and Chile, as well as that of Canada, France and the United States.

About the Editors

Jorge Heine is Distinguished Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI); CIGI Chair in Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs; and Professor of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University. Andrew S. Thompson is a Senior Fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Canada, and the Programme Offi cer of the Global Governance Programmes at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Table of contents:

Introduction, Jorge Heine and Andrew S. Thompson

Part I: Haiti’s governance challenges
External shocks to fragile states: Building resilience in Haiti, Amélie Gauthier and Madalena Moita
Haiti’s unending crisis: Food, the Constitution and the struggle for power, Robert Fatton, Jr.
The legacy of the 1987 Constitution and possibilities for constitutional reform, Mirlande Manigat
Reforming the Haitian National Police: From stabilization to consolidation, Timothy Donais
The Préval presidency: Opportunity, challenges and prospects, Marc Bazin

Part II: The United Nations at work
The “MINUSTAH experience”, Gerard Le Chevallier
Peace operations: On the importance of perceiving versus just seeing, Eduardo Aldunate
Latin-American peacekeeping: A new era of regional cooperation, Johanna Mendelson Forman
UNPKO and the Latin-American armed forces, Juan Emilio Cheyre

Part III: The hemispheric players
Haiti and the dynamics of regional cooperation, José Raúl Perales
Brazil’s mission in Haiti, Marcel Biato
Canadian policy towards Haiti, Stephen Baranyi
US policy towards Haiti under George W. Bush and opportunities