The highly anticipated Haitian presidential transition council was officially created on Friday, a month after the announcement of the resignation of contested Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
The formation of this body which will attempt to restore public order and stability in the country plagued by gang violence, was made official by a decree signed by Mr. Henry and published in the official newspaper, Le Moniteur.
“The mandate of the transitional presidential council ends, at the latest, on February 7, 2026
,” according to the text. Its members will have to
“rapidly”
appoint a prime minister as well as an
“inclusive”
government .
Chronic political instability
The council is not yet formally in charge of the country and Ariel Henry
“will present the resignation of his government following the appointment of a new prime minister”
, specifies the document.
The poor Caribbean country has suffered from chronic political instability for decades. But at the end of February, the gangs, whose violence was already ravaging entire sections of the territory, launched coordinated attacks against strategic sites, saying they wanted to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Henry. The latter, appointed a few days before the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, was strongly contested. He was unable to return to his country after a trip to Kenya. On March 11, the same day as a meeting between Haitians and several organizations and countries such as the United States, he announced that he would resign to make way for a transitional presidential council. The body was able to see the light of day after weeks of difficult negotiations.
Gang attacks
Nearly 100,000 people have fled the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince in one month to seek shelter from escalating gang attacks, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced on Friday. Thanks to the implementation of data collection at the most used bus stations, the IOM observed between March 8 and April 9, the departure of 94,821 people from the capital, mainly to join the departments of Grand South which already welcomed 116,000 displaced people who had fled in recent months, the IOM said in a press release. The previous IOM figure showed 53,000 people having fled in three weeks between March 8 and 27.
The agency notes that these figures do not necessarily reflect the entire flow, as some displaced people do not pass through the data collection points or pass through them when the data cannot be collected. Destination provinces
“do not have sufficient infrastructure and host communities do not have sufficient resources that can enable them to cope with these massive displacement flows coming from the capital
,” commented the IOM. According to this data, the majority (63%) of these nearly 100,000 people who fled the capital were already internally displaced, often having first taken refuge with relatives within the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. Some had even already been moved twice, three times, or more.