(2009-08) Building the Rule of Law in Haiti: New Laws for a New Era
Summary — A USIP Peace Briefing by Hans Joerg Albrecht, Louis Aucoin and Vivienne O'Connor on modernizing Haiti's early-19th-century criminal code and criminal procedure code, drawing on USIP-commissioned expert reports and a June 2009 technical workshop with Haitian lawmakers.
Key Findings
- Haiti's criminal code and criminal procedure code dated to the 1830s and no longer matched modern crime or human-rights standards. Modern offenses such as organized crime and trafficking were absent. USIP-commissioned expert reports and the June 2009 Port-au-Prince workshop built Haitian legislative ownership of the reform agenda with international technical support.
Full Description
This August 2009 USIP Peace Briefing reports on the drive to replace Haiti's criminal laws, largely unchanged since the Napoleonic-era codes of the 1830s, with legislation adequate to modern crime and human-rights standards. USIP commissioned comparative reports from Louis Aucoin and Max Planck Institute director Hans Joerg Albrecht, supplied Haitian lawmakers with its Model Codes for Post-Conflict Criminal Justice, and co-hosted a June 2009 technical workshop in Port-au-Prince on modernizing the criminal code and criminal procedure code. The briefing surveys the gaps in the existing codes, including offenses and procedures that no longer match Haitian realities, missing modern crimes such as organized crime and trafficking, and inconsistencies with international human-rights obligations, and outlines a reform path pairing Haitian drafting ownership with international technical support. It stands as a snapshot of pre-earthquake justice-reform momentum whose agenda, notably the penal code overhaul, took another decade to advance.
Notes
USIP Peace Briefing; original publisher PDF recovered from Wayback (direct file capture)