Haiti crisis will not be resolved anytime soon, expert warns

Professor Rosa Freedman comments after Haiti declared a state of emergency.

Professor Rosa Freedman, Professor of Law, Conflict and Global Development at the University of Reading, said: “We can't talk about the crisis in Haiti now without talking about what happened 20 years ago when an international coalition intervened to prevent the elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from running the country. Ever since then, we've had international intervention after international intervention and Haiti has slowly drifted towards becoming a failed state. 
 
“We are now seeing calls for another UN intervention, but for more than 100 years international interventions have failed Haiti and resulted in corruption, dictators and now gangs taking over the country.
 
“We have to come up with a different solution to international intervention as the crisis in Haiti is not going to be resolved anytime soon. What we are seeing now is what we have seen in other parts of the world where gangs overrun governments as they have more ammunition and more power than the state. It takes many, many years for failed states to come back under government control.”