Prime Minister Ariel Henry signed a new political agreement with a group of Haitian political and civil society actors in early 2023, committing to a transitional process that would culminate in elections and the installation of an elected government. The accord was the latest in a series of political agreements that Haiti had produced without successfully implementing, and observers were divided on whether it represented genuine progress or another episode of political theater.
The agreement established a transitional presidential council composed of representatives from major political and civil society groupings, with a mandate to support Henry’s government in organizing elections and eventually replacing it through a democratic process. The structure attempted to broaden the political base of the transitional arrangement beyond Henry’s government alone, incorporating voices that had previously been excluded from the governing coalition.
Opponents of the accord, including significant portions of the Montana Accord coalition, argued that any arrangement that kept Henry in a central role was fundamentally flawed given the ongoing assassination investigation and his lack of constitutional legitimacy. They argued that the international community’s insistence on working with Henry rather than insisting on a genuinely new transitional arrangement was enabling continued governance failure.
The international community — the United States, CARICOM, the UN — welcomed the new accord as progress while acknowledging the enormous challenges that separated the signing of a political agreement from the actual organization of credible elections in Haiti’s security environment. The gap between political agreements on paper and political change on the ground had proven enormous in Haiti; whether this accord would prove different from its predecessors remained deeply uncertain.