As Haiti’s security situation continued to deteriorate in the final months of 2021, calls for some form of international security assistance grew louder from multiple directions — the Haitian government, UN officials, humanitarian organizations, and some civil society groups who argued that the state’s capacity to restore order was simply insufficient to overcome the scale of the criminal challenge without external support.
Prime Minister Henry formally requested international assistance in addressing the gang crisis, an appeal that went to the United States and the UN Security Council. The request represented a significant political step for a government that had to balance the acknowledgment of its own security limitations against concerns about sovereignty and the complicated history of international security interventions in Haiti.
The United States, which bore significant influence over any international security response, was cautious. The Biden administration expressed willingness to support Haiti but had significant reservations about deploying forces into a complex security environment without a clear mandate, exit strategy, and Haitian political framework that would give an intervention legitimacy. The memories of MINUSTAH’s mixed legacy — including the cholera introduction and sexual abuse scandals — made the politics of international security intervention in Haiti extremely complicated.
The debate over international security assistance would continue into 2022 and beyond, reflecting the fundamental difficulty of designing interventions that could actually help restore Haitian security without repeating the mistakes of previous international engagements. The gang crisis that required an urgent response was real; the international community’s ability to respond effectively without causing additional harm was genuinely uncertain.