As 2021 drew to a close, the overwhelming verdict of observers across the political spectrum was that the Haitian state had comprehensively failed its people in one of the most catastrophic years the country had experienced. The assassination of the president, the failure to conduct elections, the inability to respond effectively to the earthquake, the capitulation to the gang fuel blockade, and the expansion of criminal territorial control all represented specific, concrete failures of governance that had directly harmed millions of Haitians.
The failure was not new — it had been building over years and through multiple administrations — but 2021 had brought it to a point of crisis that was impossible to deny or minimize. The institutions that a state needed to function — a judiciary, a legislature, an accountable executive, effective security forces, capable public administration — were all either absent, deeply compromised, or operating far below what the moment required.
Yet even in this assessment of state failure, it was important to distinguish between the Haitian state and the Haitian people, who had demonstrated once again in 2021 their remarkable capacity for solidarity, adaptation, and survival. Communities that the state had abandoned continued to function through mutual aid, religious institutions, informal economic networks, and the deep social bonds that Haitian culture had built over generations.
The question for 2022 and beyond was whether any combination of Haitian political will and international support could begin to rebuild the state capacity that Haiti needed — not a replica of the failed institutions of the past, but something more accountable, more effective, and more genuinely responsive to the Haitian people’s legitimate demands for security, services, and dignity.