Haiti’s Prime Minister wants to restore order

PEMBROKE PARK, Florida. – The children of Haiti desperately need the success of the country’s new prime minister.

United Nations officials reported that about three million children are in need of humanitarian assistance and that the displaced are at “increased risk of violence, including sexual assault, exploitation, abuse and family separation.”

Representatives of the non-governmental organization Saving The Children warned that “more than a million children live in areas under the influence of armed groups” and reported that “hunger is forcing children in Haiti to join violent gang groups.”

Haiti’s new school year begins on October 1. Reopening schools is on the agenda of interim Prime Minister Garry Conille, a U.S.-trained gynecologist with experience as a former prime minister of Haiti and as a seasoned international aid worker.

At a meeting in Washington in July, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Conille, 58, was counting on “strong support” from the US and Kenya as head of the UN-backed multinational security assistance mission in Haiti.

“We think the next few weeks and months are going to be quite interesting, but we are confident that with the establishment of the Presidential Council and the formation of this new government, we will be able to tackle these challenges head-on,” Conille said during the meeting.

Shortly thereafter, the New York Times reported that a presidential transition council had appointed Conille “to one of the most difficult jobs of any head of state in the Western Hemisphere,” as “an outsider untainted by Haiti’s notoriously dirty politics and chronic corruption.”

Conille, Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s successor, described the security challenge to listeners of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition: “At the end of the day, there are 12,000 thugs holding 12 million people hostage.”

At a meeting in June at the Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, Conille’s description of the gangs sparked deep concern among U.S. Representative Frederica Wilson and local Haitian-American politicians in attendance.

“We talked about prevention and were surprised to find that 50 to 70 percent of gang members are young boys,” Wilson told Local 10 News. “As we see, these are not grown men.”

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