Can a New U.S. Plan Finally Give Haiti the Long-Term Framework It Needs?

Published days after the State Department designated Haiti a priority country under the Global Fragility Act (April 2022), this USIP analysis by Keith Mines and Nicolás Devia-Valbuena argues that the GFA offers Haiti its first genuinely long-term U.S. policy framework. The authors document the depth of the crisis: a health system in shambles (some 60 percent of health facilities in the south destroyed after the 2021 earthquake), 62 percent of the population food insecure, kidnappings up almost 60 percent year on year in early 2022, and a governance void following President Jovenel Moïse's assassination, with parliament dissolved since 2020 and a headless judiciary.

Two GFA features are singled out as potential breaks with past practice: a 10-year country strategy co-designed with Haitian partners, replacing the short mandate cycles that have hampered U.N. missions, and a requirement that all elements of the U.S. government work with a wide range of local partners, including civil society, community leaders and business. Drawing on Georges Fauriol, Rufus Phillips and Heather Selma Gregg, the authors caution that institution-building alone will fail without a political cause that earns genuine popular support and a sense of national unity; the GFA's insistence on inclusion gives it a better chance than previous efforts driven by U.N. mandates and electoral calendars.