Sanctions and Haiti’s criminal crisis: What can be done to strengthen the mechanism?

With delays in the deployment of the MSS force, the most visible response to Haiti’s criminal crisis has been the use of targeted financial and mobility sanctions by the international community. This involves two separate, though complementary, elements.

First, in October 2023 and January 2024, the UN Security Council issued designations on five gang leaders, emanating in part from investigations conducted by the designated Panel of Experts (POE).¹ Secondly, there have been a series of unilateral designations issued mainly by the United States, Canada and the Dominican Republic. Notably, US and Canadian authorities have been willing to designate politically powerful individuals, including politicians and businessmen, which the UN has avoided to date.² Since late 2023, however, both UN and unilateral sanctions have seen little further activity, with no designations issued. Notably, the EU — which has a number of members with important ties to Haiti — has not issued any designations under the sanctions regime it created in July 2023.³

Precise reasons for this seeming pause in activity are unclear. The UN Security Council is historically slow in considering and issuing sanctions, with decisions requiring consensus among members of the Security Council.⁴ In Haiti, this general trend is likely to have been exacerbated by the complexities of the situation and the reality that many gang backers are also prominently involved in business and/or political activity.⁵ There appears to be substantial reluctance by member states on the Security Council to designate such backers, most likely because of the risk that designations on elites could negatively impact peacebuilding and government formation, though obviously this comes with the equally palpable risk of allowing the elite-gang nexus to operate unhindered.

Such a rationale may also explain why the US and Canada have hit pause in their designations. However, there is another explanation, in that unilateral sanctions on some elites are also likely to be impeded in cases where those individuals hold both Haitian and US or Canadian nationality. States are generally reluctant to levy sanctions on their own citizens, preferring the route of legal prosecutions (although there have been few visible investigations or legal actions pursued by the US or Canada against senior officials alleged to have backed gangs to date).

While understandable, the consequence of this approach of waiting on prosecutions, or in some cases prioritizing the slow development of national designations over UN designations, is shaping a number of negative developments on the ground in Haiti.

The pause in designations, either due to slow UN processes or a preference for prosecutions, will have a counter-productive effect on efforts to target the gangs and the key elites who back them. During a previous lengthy pause in UN sanctions, between November 2023 and February 2024, the GI-TOC recorded growing scepticism in Haiti on the reality of sanctions, as well as on the international community’s political will to enforce them. Between late 2023 and early 2024, the dissuasive effect of sanctions, or at least the deterrent impact of their possible application, seemed to have partly disappeared.

Given the overall degradation in the situation in Haiti and the lengthy delay in the deployment of the MSS force intended to help stabilize the country, a renewed push on sanctions is arguably an important element both to address and shape the criminal threats impacting Haiti and to signal focus to the Haitian population.

Doing so, however, arguably needs to be rethought in a way that is both more strategic and has a deeper impact than current approaches. A multinational strategy should be developed to address Haiti’s gangs, their logistical suppliers and business partners, and their political and business enablers.

The development of such a strategy should involve the UN and the Security Council, as well as regional actors, such as CARICOM. The strategy should not be solely sanctions-focused, but rather seek to coordinate ways in which all cooperating state tools, including national prosecutorial approaches, aid, data sharing and sanctions, can be applied towards a cohesive end.

Crucially, such a strategy should aim to draw together states that use sanctions and those that do not as a tool against organized crime, with the latter instead leveraging other options in their foreign policy or justice toolkits — including economic and security force assistance, information sharing and prosecutions — to contribute to the broader effort. Such a strategy should also bring non-traditional players, such as the US Department of Justice, more directly into the effort, heightening investigations, prosecutions and mutual legal assistance to Haiti and its neighbours.

There also needs to be a dose of realism in the near-, middle- and long-term objectives of such a strategy. Eliminating gangs in Haiti is likely to prove unfeasible. Degrading their current martial power, breaking the link between gangs and elites, and ending sexual violence are arguably more realistically achievable.

To support this strategy, there needs to be a rethinking of how sanctions are employed, including their potential deeper impact. This involves a more comprehensive sanctioning approach targeting the totality of the criminal ecosystem around Haitian gangs, rather than simply a focus on gang leaders. Lower-profile but critical actors, such as financiers, money launderers and weapons suppliers, should be a key focus.

The same thinking should apply to criminal actors outside of Haiti’s borders, who play important supportive roles with the gangs, or who have deepened their business ties during the current crisis. An example could be the targeting of drug trafficking organizations explicitly for working with gang boss Izo, and through him shipping cocaine to Europe.⁶ The aim of such an approach would be to deter regional criminal actors from engaging with Haitian ones, impacting the financing of the latter.

A regional approach could also help expand support within Haiti for international efforts to address the current crisis, underscoring the international community’s understanding of the substantial transnational elements fuelling the country’s gangs.

Finally, there is a need for a more nuanced focus on the business and political enablers of gang activity within Haiti. As the UN POE has detailed, many of these enablers wear multiple hats, engaging in a melange of business, politics and criminality.⁷ This has complicated efforts to sanction them, as some within the international community view any involvement in politics as sufficient grounds to avoid designation. While understandable, such a Manichean approach to political involvement risks distorting incentives in Haiti. It could well lead business actors with connections to gangs to dabble in politics as a shield against sanctions, to the detriment of both Haitian politics and efforts to break the link between elites and gangs. A more nuanced approach would involve a fine-toothed assessment of the degree to which an individual is a political actor, and how current and systemically important such political activity is.

Ultimately, information suggests that international sanctions can have a shaping effect within Haiti, particularly when it comes to deterring business and political elites. Used strategically and in tandem with other elements in the international toolkit, sanctions thus offer an option for responding to the current crisis. Doing so, however, requires a renewed drive of unilateral and UN designations, done in a strategic manner, with a focus that goes beyond key leaders and towards the facilitative actors and political backers who support them. As sanctions progress, targeting and messaging need to be calibrated to have a stronger impact, without stigmatizing the entire private or state sector, and risking turning them into pariahs. Critically, the aperture for such approaches should be widened beyond Haiti to include the complex criminal and financial networks that enable the gangs. Such an approach can help Haiti, while also helping the broader region to address increasingly transnational threats.

Notes