(2024-07) Mapping Haiti's Road Toward Justice: Lessons from Colombia and Guatemala
Summary — USIP analysts argue force alone will not break gangs' hold on Port-au-Prince and that Haiti needs whole-of-society transitional and restorative justice mechanisms as part of a comprehensive counter-gang strategy. Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and Guatemala's CICIG anti-impunity commission offer adaptable models for delivering justice for victims, diverting gang members and strengthening Haitian judicial institutions.
Key Findings
- Force alone, even with the Kenyan-led MSS mission, will not bring peace; Haiti needs whole-of-society transitional and restorative justice mechanisms within a comprehensive counter-gang strategy.
- Colombia's JEP offers a template: macro cases prioritizing patterns of violence, truth over retribution, and sentences from eight years of restricted freedom for cooperators to 20 years' prison for refusers.
- An estimated 30-50 percent of Haitian gang members are children, strengthening the case for restorative sanctions for lower-level members.
- Guatemala's CICIG shows a hybrid international-national commission can dismantle high-level criminal networks, including toppling a sitting president and vice president in 2015; a Haitian version could address PetroCaribe, La Saline and the Moïse assassination.
- CICIG and its Honduran and Salvadoran counterparts were all shut down (2019-2021) after threatening elites, so any Haitian mechanism needs broad political support and durable domestic capacity.
Full Description
This July 2024 analysis by Nicolás Devia-Valbuena and Gabriel Rojas-Andrade contends that Haiti's interim government cannot defeat the gangs through force alone, even with the Kenyan-led MSS mission, and needs creative, whole-of-society mechanisms to divert gang members from violence. From Colombia, the authors draw on the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) created after the 2016 FARC accord: a 'macro cases' strategy prioritizing patterns of violence, truth and victim dignity over pure retribution, and graduated sentences (eight years of restricted freedom with restorative projects for cooperators, up to 20 years in prison for those who refuse). Adapted to Haiti, macro cases could cover gender-based violence as a weapon of war, elites' use of gangs as political instruments, Bwa Kale vigilante abuses and blockades of goods; restorative sanctions matter especially because an estimated 30-50 percent of Haitian gang members are children.
From Guatemala, the CICIG hybrid commission (operational 2007) shows how international prosecutorial expertise embedded alongside national institutions can dismantle criminal networks, including a customs fraud scheme that brought down the president and vice president in 2015. A similar commission in Haiti could tackle the PetroCaribe corruption case, the 2018 La Saline massacre and President Moïse's 2021 assassination. The cautionary lesson: CICIG and its Honduran and Salvadoran successors were shuttered when they threatened powerful interests, underscoring the need to maintain broad political support while building domestic capacity. The authors conclude Haitians must design their own combination through inclusive dialogue.
Notes
Recovered from Wayback Machine (USIP 2025 publisher takedown); web article printed to PDF