Responsibility to Protect?

Does the Canadian-promoted “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine  include murder rape, and threats of violence?

That’s the question we should be asking Canadian officials after a  study in the prestigious Lancet medical journal released at the end of August revealed there were 8,000 murders, 35,000 rapes and thousands of  incidents of armed threats in the 22 months after the overthrow of  the elected government in Haiti.

In September 2000, Canada launched the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The commission's final report,  The Responsibility to Protect, was presented to the UN in December  2001 and at the 2005 World Summit, Canada advocated that world  leaders endorse the new doctrine. It asserts that where gross human  rights abuses are occurring, it is the duty of the international  community to intervene, over and above considerations of state  sovereignty.

In January 2003, the Canadian government organized the “Ottawa  Initiative” where U.S., Canadian and French government officials who  met at Meech Lake decided that Haiti’s elected president, Jean  Bertrand Aristide should be removed from office. The intervention was  justified, they reasoned, by the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
In due course, Aristide was forced from office. And Canada’s intervention in Haiti has exacerbated, rather than  improved, Haiti’s human rights situation.

Confirming numerous prior human rights investigations, the Lancet  study estimates that 8,000 people in Port-au-Prince were killed in  the 22 months after the toppling of Aristide’s government. The Lancet  study gives an idea of the scale of the persecution of those close to  Aristide’s Lavalas movement.

Of the estimated 8,000 people murdered — 12 people a day — in the  greater Port-au-Prince area, nearly half (47.7%) were killed by  governmental or anti-Aristide forces.  21.7% of the killings were  attributed to members of the Haitian National Police (HNP), 13.0% to  demobilized soldiers (many of whom participated in the coup) and  13.0% to anti-Aristide gangs (none were attributed to Aristide  supporters).

Canada commands the 1,600-member United Nations police contingent  mandated to train, assist and oversee the Haitian National Police.  Yet while Canadian police have been supporting them, the Haitian  police have been attacking peaceful demonstrations and carrying out  massacres, often with the help of anti-Aristide gangs. While UN  police have announced investigations in a few particularly egregious  cases, not one report from such investigations has ever been released.

The Lancet study also uncovered some evidence that Canadian forces in  Haiti were more than mere silent accomplices. Athena Kolbe, co-author  of the study, recounts an interview with one family in the Delmas  district of Port-au-Prince: “Canadian troops came to their house, and they said they were looking  for (pro-Aristide) Lavalas chimeres, and threatened to kill the head  of household, who was the father, if he didn’t name names of people  in their neighbourhood who were Lavalas chimeres or Lavalas supporters.”

Canada took command of “reforming” Haiti’s judicial  system, yet by all accounts huge numbers of political prisoners,  including the former prime minister, languished in prolonged and  arbitrary detention. The Lancet found an huge number of  unconstitutional detentions.
The study also found a “shocking” level of sexual violence committed  since the coup, with an estimated 35,000 women raped in Port-au- Prince, more than half of the victims under eighteen.  In a harrowing  account the co-author, Athena Kolbe, discussed interviewing a mother  who had been raped with a metal bar, which destroyed her cervix.  Gravely ill, the woman was transported by Kolbe’s crew to the general  hospital, where they offered to pay for medical costs. On discovering  that a uniformed police officer was implicated, the hospital refused  medical treatment. The victim eventually received medical attention  at another facility, but ultimately succumbing to her injuries. Kolbe  then paid for relocation of the traumatized family.
(This  necessitated not including the rape in the Lancet survey data.) Throughout the period investigated by the researchers from Wayne  State University in Michigan Canada was heavily involved in Haitian  affairs.

After withholding aid to Aristide’s elected government,  Canada gave nearly $200 million to the imposed Gerard Latortue  regime. Nearly five hundred Canadian troops with six CH-146 Griffon  helicopters were on the ground until August of 2004. And the imposed  Prime Minister was feted in Ottawa on a number of occasions.

On April 13, 2006, in Washington, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza  Rice praised “Canada’s very important role in Haiti.”
We suspect that anyone who has read the Lancet study does not share her praise.

Nik barry-shaw is a member of Haiti Action Montreal Yves Engler is the author of two books: Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority (with Anthony Fenton) and Playing Left Wing: From Rink Rat to Student Radical.