Human Rights Situation in Haiti
- Homicides rose 17 percent in a single year, from 1,380 to 1,615, and kidnappings rose 180 percent to 655. The Commission presents these as the measurable face of armed-group control, not as crime statistics.
- The report covers 2018 to mid-2022, so it documents the period between the PetroCaribe protests and the collapse that followed the 2021 assassination, which is the stretch most often summarised and least often sourced.
- The state filed no observations on a report it was formally invited to answer, which the Commission records in the introduction.
- Footnote 22 gives the OAS symbol for each of the eight Haiti country reports since 1969, making the report a finding aid for the reports before it.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights approved this country report on Haiti on 30 August 2022 and published it after the Haitian state confirmed in December that it had no observations. It covers January 2018 to June 2022.
The report is organised around six substantive chapters. Democratic institutions traces the erosion of the electoral calendar and of the bodies meant to hold it. Citizen security records what the Commission found on armed-group control, with 1,615 homicides in 2021 against 1,380 the year before, and kidnappings up 180 percent to 655. Economic, social, cultural and environmental rights covers access to essential goods and services in a country the report describes as the poorest in the Americas. Human mobility covers displacement and return. The final chapter sets out conclusions and recommendations to the state.
The evidence base is stated openly. The Commission created a dedicated coordination and response unit for Haiti, SACROI, in February 2019, visited the country from 17 to 20 December 2019 under Commissioner Flavia Piovesan, and held 175 sessions in Haiti between 2 and 8 March 2020. It met the President, four ministers, the national police, the Office de la Protection du Citoyen and more than 70 civil society organisations, including representatives of victims of police violence and survivors of the La Saline massacre.
This is the Commission's eighth country report on Haiti since 1968. Footnote 22 lists the OAS symbols for all of them, which is the cleanest published index of the run.
How to cite
Organization of American States (OAS); Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), 2022, Human Rights Situation in Haiti, https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/informes/cch/pais.html
- Rights holder
- Organization of American States (OAS)|Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)