Prime Minister Ariel Henry signed a political agreement with a coalition of opposition parties in September 2021, committing to organize general elections in 2022 and establishing a framework for the governance of Haiti’s transitional period. The accord was presented as a step toward political normalization but was immediately contested by rival political groupings who argued it did not represent genuine national consensus.
The agreement committed Haiti to organizing presidential, legislative, and local elections in 2022, with a new president to take office before February 7, 2022 — the date that, under the Montana Accord opposition framework, the transitional government’s mandate would expire. The timeline was widely viewed as extremely ambitious given the security conditions on the ground and the institutional challenges of organizing elections in Haiti.
Signatories of the Montana Accord, which proposed an alternative transitional governance framework, rejected the September agreement, arguing that it was a deal between Henry and political actors who were part of the same political establishment that had produced Haiti’s crisis, rather than a genuine broad-based national consensus. They maintained their own framework as the legitimate path forward.
International partners cautiously welcomed the accord as a step toward the elections they had been calling for, while acknowledging the enormous challenges that stood between the signing of a political agreement and the actual conduct of credible elections in Haiti’s current environment. The accord provided a political framework but could not by itself create the security conditions that elections would require.