Daily Brief Audio Series
The collapse of order in Haiti is so catastrophic, Human Rights Watch is calling on the UN Security Council to authorize and deploy a full-fledged UN mission to the country urgently.
This is not something we do everywhere every day, particularly when it involves a country like Haiti with a troubled history of past UN missions. So, let’s go through our reasoning.
First and foremost, the situation in Haiti is truly appalling.
Haitians are at the mercy of increasingly organized and coordinated criminal groups involved in arms, drugs, and human trafficking. This year alone, criminal groups have killed nearly 5,000 people. Some 4,000 girls and women have reported sexual violence, including gang rape.
Over 700,000 Haitians – 25 percent of them children – are internally displaced. Half of Haiti’s population struggles to afford food, making it one of world’s most acutely food insecure countries.
Criminal groups now control around 85 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and its metropolitan area. They have expanded their control into other parts of the country, as well.
Their activities are so extensive, it could have significant consequences for peace and security beyond Haiti, across the Caribbean region.
One key problem is Haitian police are simply overwhelmed. They are under-equipped and under-staffed. They are also undermined by some officers being implicated in serious abuses or having links to criminal groups.
The Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, which was intended to try to help the police, is also overwhelmed.
Largely US-funded and Kenya-led, the MSS remains in pre-deployment status due to shortages of both money and personnel. It needed US$600 million for its first year of operations; only US$97.4 million was allocated. It expected 2,500 officers to be deployed; it has just around 400.
What the people of Haiti are calling for is a strong commitment from the international community.
The MSS is technically authorized by the UN Security Council but is not, strictly speaking, a United Nations mission. If it were transformed into what HRW is calling for, a full-fledged UN mission, it would gain a lot.
It would benefit from funding through contributions from all member states. It could leverage expertise and tools the UN has for such missions, including for human rights vetting. Additionally, it would coordinate with UN agencies already present in the country to provide a more joined-up response to Haiti’s overall collapse.
A full-fledged UN mission could, unlike the MSS, have a more robust and comprehensive mandate to address the various dimensions of the crisis – including the need to restore the rule of law, democratic governance, and access to basic necessities.
This mission should be viewed as an opportunity to address past failures. It should advance reparations for abuses committed during past international interventions and ensure mechanisms are in place to promote accountability to rebuild public trust.
At the end of last month, the UN Security Council asked UN Secretary-General António Guterres, to present “strategic-level” recommendations for the role the UN could play in helping address the security, economic, and humanitarian crisis in Haiti.
Guterres should act swiftly and push forward with a plan to transform the MSS into a full-fledged UN mission, one that avoids the mistakes of past UN operations in the country. The people of Haiti cannot wait.
In today’s edition of the Daily Brief, I’m in the underground tram station at Parvis de Saint-Gilles (Sint-Gillisvoorplein) in Brussels, Belgium. (watch video)
The reason why is that today is Human Rights Day and the 76th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Extracts of the Declaration surround us here on the walls of the station in Dutch and French, Belgium’s two main languages.
The lettered tiles are the 1992 design of Brussels-born artist Françoise Schein. They’re part of Schein’s collection of similar works related to human rights in metro stations and other public spaces around the world.
Here we can see articles of the Declaration such as:
Article One: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
Article Two: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
Article Five: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Article 14: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”
Article 18: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion…”
There are 25 others, and they all outline the fundamentals of our human rights. Drafted in 1948 in the aftermath of apocalypse in World War Two, these words represent hope for the future. To guarantee a better world tomorrow, the drafters knew, these would be words to live by.
It may seem strange at first to have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the walls of a public transport stration. Maybe some people passing by these letters every day don’t know what they’re all about.
Still, if you think about it, a metro station is a good metaphor for universal human rights. Public transport and human rights, in fact, have a lot in common.
Both belong to all of us. Access to your tram stop and your rights shouldn’t depend on your religion or your gender or what language you speak. These things are open to everyone.
Whatever divisions we may all show on the surface, deep down, we’re all in the same tram, trying to get along.
Today, we’ve got exclusive reporting concerning the conflict in Sudan.
Two of my colleagues, Mohamed Osman and Laetitia Bader, have just returned from the town of Renk in South Sudan, near the border with Sudan. More than 700,000 people have crossed into South Sudan at this location since Sudan’s devastating conflict started in April 2023.
Remember, this is in addition to the more than half a million people who have fled over the border to Chad to the west, and the 11 million people displaced from their homes inside Sudan itself. The scale of the crisis is enormous.
My colleagues visited a transit camp in Renk that was envisaged to accommodate people temporarily. It now stretches along a one-kilometer dirt road with makeshift shelters and a few larger metal-sheet sheds.
During my colleagues’ visit last week, there was an uptick in people fleeing into Renk, with thousands of new arrivals rushing across the border, as fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) drew ever closer to the frontier. At the weekend, fighting reached the final town in Sudan before the border.
People have different reasons for fleeing.
My colleagues spoke to residents of a village of 350 people who arrived in the last days in open air trucks pulled by tractors. Women, children, older people, and adolescents all crowded into these trucks after they heard the RSF was approaching their village.
A family of 13, on the other hand, fled as the SAF arrived in their town, fearing they would be accused of being RSF members for having lived in an area under RSF control for so long. They fled with nothing but a bag of sorghum, picking up a few blankets along their journey.
The complete absence of possessions among those arriving is striking.
Since the first days of the fighting in Sudan, the RSF have notoriously pillaged people’s private property. They’ve rampaged through people’s homes, stealing gold, furniture, even children’s school bags. People have had to sell remaining possessions to be able to eat. Others have been robbed by fighters or criminal gangs as they fled.
Of those finally arriving in Renk, many have had to flee multiple times. Some said they arrived with little more than their clothes on their backs.
One woman stood in sharp contrast as she got off the bus that brought dozens from the border, she held a little white fluffy dog in the cage. She had fled from Khartoum on a journey that would have taken just five hours before the war but now had taken her two weeks.
Most people have been forced to leave behind loved ones – older relatives who cannot flee, many who cannot afford to flee. Others have lost contact with their relatives in the mayhem as they fled.
With communications down in many parts of Sudan and many people having had their phones looted, reconnecting to separated family members is hard.
One man recently fled his hometown of Jebel Moya after two of his children, aged 8 and 11, were killed in an airstrike. That’s when his mother pushed him to flee. He left in the dark of night.
He was very troubled as he recounted his experience. He hasn’t spoken to his four surviving children.
“I see children playing in the transit center, and think of them. If I heard their voices, it would be enough for me.”
The Syrian conflict is back in the news again, with the outbreak of major fighting in the north of the country over the past week – along with revived fears of new atrocities against civilians.
November 27 saw the start of a surprise offensive led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist armed group that controls most of Syria’s Idlib province. They are fighting alongside factions of a group called the Syrian National Army (SNA), which is backed by Türkiye.
These anti-government forces together quickly seized large swaths of territory from Syrian government control, including the major city of Aleppo and the surrounding countryside. In addition, they’ve reportedly taken some areas that had been under control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which are backed by the United States.
The new offensive is pushing further south, too. Reports this morning say they’ve surrounded the strategic city of Hama, under government control.
In response, the Syrian government has vowed to mount a counteroffensive. It has been carrying out airstrikes across the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo alongside Russian forces.
More than 50 airstrikes hit Idlib alone, impacting at least four health facilities, four school facilities, two displacement camps, and a water station. Another government airstrike reportedly hit the entrance of the University Hospital in Aleppo.
Civilians have been quick to suffer from all this fresh fighting.
As of December 3, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported attacks in Idlib and northern Aleppo, by both armed opposition groups and Syrian government forces, had killed 69 civilians, including 26 children, and injured 228. By December 4, the Syrian Network for Human Rights recorded 149 civilian deaths.
Tens of thousands of Syrians have been displaced since the escalation of hostilities began on November 27. There have been severe disruptions to basic services and aid delivery.
What happens next in this conflict is anyone’s guess, but the past behavior of both sides gives enormous cause for concern.
There are documented records of the opposition groups mistreating religious and ethnic minorities and women in areas under their control. They’ve also been known to abuse people in detention, raising fears for the wellbeing of captured enemy fighters.
On the other side, the Syrian government and its ally Russia have also been responsible for atrocities over the past 13 years of hostilities. This includes repeated Syrian and Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, which may amount to crimes against humanity.
The widespread and systematic torture of tens of thousands of people by Syrian government forces is extensively documented and amounts to crimes against humanity.
The past eight days of renewed fighting have seen international calls for parties to comply with the laws of war. It’s also seen various promises from the warring parties to do so.
But what’s needed more than words is accountability. As long as perpetrators keep getting away with atrocities, they will likely keep committing them.
As HRW’s Adam Coogle, says: “Without credible justice, there will be no end in sight to the suffering Syrians have endured, no matter who controls the land.”
Next week, the international football organization, FIFA, is set to confirm Saudi Arabia as host of the 2034 Men’s World Cup.
They’ll do this regardless of the country’s appalling human rights record. FIFA did not require proper human rights due diligence nor enforce binding commitments to prevent labor and other abuses.
Labor abuses are very much a key concern here, in particular, because over the next ten years, there is going to be an enormous amount of construction to make the 2034 Men’s World Cup happen.
The Saudi bid submitted to FIFA outlined the country’s intention to build 11 new stadiums and refurbish four others. It anticipates the need for more than 185,000 new hotel rooms, as well as significantly expanding airport, road, rail, and bus networks.
Migrant workers will be the ones doing the building. There are currently 13.4 millionmigrant workers in Saudi Arabia – including from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. This number is expected to increase significantly with World Cup projects and other huge building efforts in the country.
Saudi Arabia has a long, grim record of treating migrant workers badly, and a new Human Rights Watch report has documented widespread abuses against them Some of these abuses may amount to situations of forced labor.
The abuses start from the time companies recruit workers: they often illegally force them to pay outrageously high recruitment fees. Once in Saudi Arabia, migrant workers then often face employers who violate employment contracts.
Sometimes, it’s just plain wage theft. Employers simply don’t pay people for their work or pay them less than was agreed.
In addition, working conditions at job sites are often dangerous, including extreme heat for outdoor workers. Abuses linked to extreme heat can cause lasting and potentially lethal health harms, including organ failure.
According to Bangladeshi government data, 884 Bangladeshis died in Saudi Arabia between January and July this year. Eighty percent of the deaths were attributed to “natural causes.”
Many migrant worker deaths in Saudi Arabia are unexplained and uninvestigated. Many are also uncompensated, leaving families of deceased migrant workers without financial support.
These kinds of labor abuses in Saudi Arabia have been well known for years. Before they accepted the Saudi bid for the Men’s 2034 World Cup, FIFA could have demanded that Saudi officials address these abuses and fix glaring gaps in their existing labor laws.
FIFA failed to do so, and as the new HRW report highlights, Saudi authorities are systematically failing to protect workers from these abuses or remedy them.