Conflict in Fragile States

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that the whole House will feel indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for keeping what I hope he will not mind my calling an unfashionable issue before the attention of the House and British Parliament. It is essential for us, as well as the grand themes that we adumbrate and pursue in this place, to keep an eye on the questions and the subject that he has so wonderfully and with such assiduity pursued for so many years. We are grateful for that. I hope that he will not mind my appearing to subvert his debate by picking on one place in the list of fragile states to illustrate the very points that he has made. I have never had such a generous amount of time in which to speak, and I promise not to try to turn it into a Methodist sermon; I am getting into my comfort zone at 15 minutes. There are some important points to make.

From the lovely briefing note from the Library we can see that the Fund for Peace has a fragile states index, and so does the OECD 2015 States of Fragility report list a number of countries. All the countries on both lists are actually from the African continent or the Middle East, except for one, which appears on both lists—that country to which I will refer in the rest of my remarks, Haiti. It is an extraordinary country in the middle of the Caribbean, 90 minutes’ flying time from Miami in Florida. It is in an entirely different geographical context, so one wonders how that little country has been dragged into this list of extremely fragile countries, whose fragility is often related one to the other because of their proximity to each other and the fact that they have the same demographic, economic and military situations.

The OECD 2015 report says that the five things that put these countries on to the list are, first, the levels of violence present in the country; access to justice; the effectiveness and accountability of institutions; the degree of economic inclusion and stability; and the ability of the country to withstand potential,

“social, economic and environmental shocks”.

I confess to having a special interest in Haiti, having lived there for 10 years, and I shall lay before the House one or two statistics—if we can be patient with that at the fag-end of a parliamentary day such as this. At the five-year mark for the violence and military action in Syria, 250,000 were reported to be victims of the strife. I want to compare that with the 250,000 who died in Haiti in 2010 in five minutes, after the earthquake that destroyed so much of the capital city and surrounding areas in that year. Compare that with 300 recently in Italy and 85 in Christchurch—although I recognise that these comparisons are odious. Some 1.5 million people ended up in tents scattered around the city in every conceivable piece of land. If you take that as a proportion of the population of Haiti and translate it to the United Kingdom, it would mean that the entire population of London would be living in tents. So it was an extraordinary shock; half the government institutions were destroyed, as well as the records contained in those institutions—mostly paper records at that time. The presidential palace went, the cathedrals went, the main streets went—the destruction was extraordinary. That is the first thing that puts Haiti in a very vulnerable position as far as anybody wanting to perpetrate deeds that deny human rights or exploit human weakness is concerned.

On the second point—I hope noble Lords can be patient with me—we have just celebrated the way that the Ebola outbreak in west Africa has been brought to a conclusion. We note the resource that was directed towards that problem and the commitment of people such as the nurse who has just been cleared of potentially misleading the National Health Service. We recognise that this was a good news story. Ten thousand people died, but the matter has been dealt with because of the rallying of states and countries around the world.

In Haiti, 12,000 victims of cholera have died in the last five or six years and more are still dying. Perhaps that fact would not be noteworthy except for one salient phenomenon: cholera was introduced to Haiti by soldiers from Nepal serving in a peacekeeping force. There had been no cholera in Haiti before their arrival; the country will now not be without it for a considerable time. The United Nations has only in the last month been prepared to admit publicly its liability in this respect. Those 12,000 victims have attracted very little interest, I have to say, with huge amounts of denial from the United Nations and others around the world. It is an ongoing problem and it seems not unfair to me to mention it in the same breath as the 10,000 people who died of Ebola in west Africa.

Thirdly, there has been a peacekeeping force in Haiti for 12 years, although there has been no war to protect people against. There was an insurrection in 2004, which displaced a democratically elected Government. The usurpers—the coup effecters—were led by a man who was a convicted murderer yet got the support of the western world, displacing the appointed, elected President and Administration in the country at that time. The British Government—I have been speaking to both DfID and the Foreign Office—pumps money into the maintenance of the peacekeeping force; indeed, that is the prime way in which the United Kingdom offers its aid to Haiti. But the force’s mandate is manifestly inadequate for the task: it keeps peace where there is not any war. I was in Haiti at one time when the two countries providing the peacekeeping force were India and Pakistan—by the way, it was called a beach-keeping force rather than a peacekeeping force—and was invited to dinner with officials of Islamic Relief. My friends knew the Pakistani overlords and I was invited to the headquarters of the Pakistani force and, lo and behold, we were joined by the top brass of the Indian force. There was more amity between India and Pakistan on the occasion of that dinner than on the ground in the subcontinent itself, from what I have perceived from the newspapers. I thought it was worth pointing that out, just for the sake of it. They have a great deal of fun.

The United Nations pumps money into countries to help them to support the charges laid against maintaining a standing army. They are hugely subsidised by these peacekeeping exercises. I have been in Haiti so many times. I travel on foot, I know everybody, I speak both languages and I feel at home. But when I went there a couple of years ago with a party from here, I had to go in a convoy of vehicles from the peacekeeping force. I could not divert from my path by 20 yards without previous approval from the necessary authorities, because nobody would otherwise accept responsibility for my safety—a crazy business. If the relevant people would build a few bridges, or a hospital or two, or help to build capacity in the realm of public administration, that mandate would have fruits and a legacy. As it is, they are hated and people cannot wait for them to go.

As regards the constitutional crisis, Haiti’s constitutional Government came to an end in February this year. The President at the time, a former pop singer, “Sweet Micky”, was approved by Washington—he was the man it wanted. There is evidence that the election that got him the presidency was rigged. However, the Haitians lived with that for five years. When last year’s elections seemed to be producing a similar result, the Haitians objected that time. They annulled elections that the international community had said were good. That meant that from February, instead of a new Government, there was nothing. Therefore, there is no constitutional arrangement in Haiti at the moment at all. The Haitians are hoping that the elections scheduled for next month will hold good, and that soon there will be a constitutional Government.

This uncertainty is bound to lead to all kinds of mystifying things happening on the ground. There is a known drug-running business running through Haiti and people in high positions make their money out of it. Capacity building is of the first order. I tried to arrange to bring people to this country and go there with a group from this House and the other House to interest Haiti in building a parliamentary capacity. It has never had an effective parliamentary Government since dictatorship is the model it is accustomed to. I wonder whether the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations, which after the Second World War was very useful in providing shelter and cover for countries in transition, but which has done no real work for a long time, might not be a useful vehicle for helping countries such as Haiti to get some stability, build capacity and become equipped to run their own affairs.

Corruption is talked about. Where did all the money go? However, when I spoke to the President of Haiti, he said to me, “Well, we may not be administering the money that we get very well, but, let me tell you, that of all those millions you read about in the paper, five cents in a dollar is what I administer, 95 cents in the dollar is what the international community administers. If there is corruption, ask the question somewhere else”. The Dominican Republic shares an island with Haiti and the former’s constitutional court has ruled that Haitians who have lived in the DR for years—generations, in fact—but have no papers can be repatriated. This is retrospective legislation but deportations are taking place right now of people who have lived there for a very long time and whose children have been born there. In all these ways, we are looking at a country that is not only fragile but vulnerable to forces within its own borders and to any predator that comes its way. When I lived there, I had the good fortune to travel the length and breadth of the country. In fact, I think I probably know it more than most Haitians do.

Eighty per cent of the population of Haiti live outside the normal economy. The levels of education are very low but the Haitian people, who seized their independence from the French in 1804—it was the first black republic in the world—are proud and resilient. To my knowledge, nobody who goes there comes away anything other than charmed by the experience. Fragility is on the cards and one worries about an uncertain future. The breaking of human rights, the potential for human slavery and the fact that children have very little opportunity to live educated and flourishing lives all preoccupy me. How does one bring a country like Haiti into the public mind, when the public mind is filled with the words “voodoo” and “backwardness”, neither of which typify the country in my experience and knowledge?

I once again offer my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, and hope that he will not feel that I have subverted his cause, but merely added a case history to the points that he made.