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The United Nations and Spain in Haiti

01/02/2006 By Mariano Aguirre

Haiti is the poorest State in Latin America. It has 8.5 million inhabitants and four out of ten are under fourteen years of age. The country has had a negative economic growth for the last 25 years.

It is in the 157th position (out of a list of 177 countries on a UN index that measures Human Development in areas such as education, health or life expectancy). Most of the population lives on less than one dollar a day, and thousands of citizens try to emigrate, especially to the US and Canada.

Unlike what has happened in other UN operations over the last 15 years, MINUSTAH's mandate has been more widely interpreted, and this has entailed the use of force on occasions.

In some UN circles it is considered to be an "explorative" mission, combining peacekeeping negotiated between armed actors with the imposition of peace, in other words, using force without the consent of those actors.

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Keywords

Brazil Fragile state Haiti Latin America & Caribbean Peacekeeping Post conflict

Bio author: Mariano Aguirre

Mariano Aguirre is Director of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre in Oslo, and a fellow of the Transnational Institute. Former Director of Peace, Security and Human Rights at FRIDE.