Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Haiti: Key Recent Developments, March through October 2020

This update, an informal translation covering March through October 2020, reports that widespread insecurity gripped Haiti in the period since IJDH's February 2020 update, with local human rights organizations documenting police and government-official involvement in attacks on marginalized communities and raising credible concern that gang violence is being deployed as a tool of political repression; at minimum, the government failed to control violence affecting some of Haiti's most marginalized communities, alongside numerous reported incidents of government violence against protesters and the press, met with pervasive impunity linked in part to a politicized judiciary.

Concerns over democratic governance persisted amid serious electoral disputes: President Jovenel Moise's continued use of decrees to govern, including naming a prime minister and cabinet on 3 March in a manner observers considered contrary to constitutional procedure, added political and electoral uncertainty to an already unstable climate. When the absence of elections caused mayoral terms to expire in all 141 of Haiti's municipalities in July, Moise used a decree on 9 July to grant himself power to appoint municipal commissions, removing local electoral control; Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) members resigned that month calling for dialogue, but Moise installed a new CEP on 18 September shortly after the United States warned of 'consequences' for Haitian civil society actors seen as obstructing the electoral process.

Key civil society figures rejected the new CEP as unconstitutional, including its mandate to hold a constitutional referendum, and Haiti's Supreme Court refused to swear it in; many in civil society instead called for a transitional government to oversee any electoral process, arguing the Moise administration lacked the legitimacy to preside over elections given its own contested electoral history and allegations of complicity in serious financial corruption.