Haiti under tutelage: when imperialism dictates national policy

Port-au-Prince, Saturday, January 31, 2026 — Statements made on January 29, 2026, at the United Nations Security Council by the Deputy Representative of the United States, Jennifer Locetta, mark a further step in the normalization of international tutelage over Haiti. That day, Washington did not merely express a diplomatic opinion: it drew a line of command, designated a leader to be kept in place, and ordered the dissolution of a Haitian institution, the Presidential Transitional Council (CPT), by February 7, 2026, at the latest. We are no longer in international assistance. We are in the political administration of a sovereign state by foreign powers, under the guise of security, stability, and the fight against armed gangs. Haitian Sovereignty, a Geopolitical Adjustment Variable By asserting that the continued presence of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé is « essential » to Haiti's stabilization, the United States de facto replaces the Haitian people and their institutions. They knowingly ignore a well-documented political reality: a majority of the CPT's voting members adopted a resolution in favor of his dismissal. This unilateral choice illustrates a well-known imperial logic: legitimacy no longer comes from the vote, national consensus, or law, but from conformity to the strategic interests of dominant powers. BINUH: Humanitarian Showcase, Political Instrument The extension of BINUH's mandate for an additional year, with supposedly « re-centered » missions, is part of a historical continuity: that of international missions incapable of bringing peace, but extremely effective at neutralizing Haitian sovereignty. For over two decades, every UN mission has promised stability and reconstruction. The result is known to all:

1. more powerful gangs,
2. weaker institutions,
3. a more dependent state,
4. a more vulnerable population.

The security discourse here serves as an ideological smokescreen, masking a harsher reality: Haiti is treated as a territory under international management, incapable, according to this logic, of governing itself. The Disintegration of the CPT: An Order, Not a Recommendation The American call to dissolve the CPT before February 7 is neither neutral nor innocent. It is an act of direct interference, publicly assumed, which recalls the worst pages of Haitian history: military occupations, imposed governments, remote-controlled transitions. To label Haitian actors as « corrupt interferences » while retaining one's own political allies smacks of colonial paternalism, where corruption becomes a selective argument, used to disqualify some and sanctify others. The Haitian Elite, Passive Accomplice to Domination But imperialism never imposes itself alone. It thrives on the moral and political bankruptcy of local elites. In Haiti, too many leaders:

• seek the approval of chanceries rather than that of the people,
• confuse governance with personal political survival,
• bargain national sovereignty for international recognition.

This silent betrayal is the main fuel for foreign domination. As long as Haitian actors continue to beg for international arbitration to resolve internal conflicts, crucial decisions will be made outside the country. National Security as Pretext, Domination as End Goal The argument of fighting gangs has become the central narrative tool for interference. Yet, no serious assessment demonstrates that externally imposed solutions have sustainably reduced violence. On the contrary, state fragmentation and security dependence have created a vacuum that armed groups have exploited. Imposing a « strong » leadership without real popular legitimacy amounts to confusing authority with control, apparent stability with lasting peace. A People Dispossessed of Their Right to Decide Through decisions made in New York, Washington, or elsewhere, the Haitian people are reduced to spectators of their own history. Democracy becomes an abstract horizon, constantly postponed, while political arrangements are negotiated outside of any citizen control. However, no imposed peace, no tutelary transition, no imported solution can repair a nation deprived of its capacity to decide for itself. Returning to the Dessalinian Ideal: Sovereignty or Illusion Haiti was born from a radical refusal of imperial domination. To renounce this demand today, even in the name of security or stability, is to empty independence of its meaning. The question, therefore, is not who supports which Prime Minister, nor which institution must disappear before February 7. The real question is more brutal, more fundamental: Does Haiti still want to be a sovereign nation, or does it definitively accept being administered by others? Jean Wesley Pierre