Haiti Doesn’t Have a Single Elected Official Left. Where Does the Country Go From Here?

This article was originally featured in Foreign Policy, the magazine of global politics and ideas.

Haiti is facing its most severe crisis in decades. Violence has skyrocketed, presenting a “lethal threat” to the country’s national security and worsening the humanitarian situation on ground. According to the United Nations, approximately 1 million people are on the brink of famine, 350,000 of whom have been displaced. The country is in a power vacuum. There is not a single elected official in the country, all the way up to the president—a position that has been vacant since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

What remains of the state is near collapse, with gangs threatening the National Palace after having successfully released more than 4,700 prisoners. Guy Philippe, a former coup leader and ex–presidential candidate who was recently released from U.S. custody, is prepared to take charge with the support of Moïse Jean Charles, an opposition leader, and Jimmy Cherizier, the most prominent gang leader. The latter has warned of “a civil war that will lead to genocide” and has denied the return of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has been stuck in Puerto Rico for more than a week.

Early on March 12, Henry agreed to resign from his post once a transitional presidential council is formed. The United States has supported this decision, and is now advocating for a new “political transition” in Haiti without the support of Henry, contradicting previous statements made by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti and the Organization of American States.

The proposal to establish a council of up to nine members (including two nonvoting observers) was put forward during a high-level meeting in Jamaica earlier this week, convened by the Conference of the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Representatives from Canada, France, the U.N., and the United States—including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken—attended the meeting.

The council would include representatives from political parties, civil society, and the private sector. However, the proposal remains contentious within certain political circles in Haiti, and it has already been opposed by Philippe’s party and Cherizier, the latter of whom has said that “Haitians should be the ones to decide the form of their government.”

Finding agreement and consensus on the path forward has proven elusive despite the urgency of righting this dismal situation. The U.N. and, more notably, the United States have reiterated that Haiti needs free, fair, and credible elections in order to emerge from its multifaceted crisis. However, holding credible elections under the current circumstances is far more complex than simply scheduling a vote.

It has become abundantly clear that previous Haitian elections have not resulted in a pathway to sustainable development and democratic governance. They are not, therefore, the panacea that the international community sees them as, nor a functional exit strategy.

Flawed or contested elections will only undermine the legitimacy of elected officials and further erode trust in democracy—and Haiti already scores among the lowest in the Northern Hemisphere in that category. Therefore, it is crucial that the next elections (which may take place within two years, according to proposals made by leading figures) are meticulously organized.

It may seem obvious, but in practice, the international community has tended to undervalue the technical and legal aspects of an election, preferring quick processes and political validation by international electoral missions that serve as a stamp of external legitimacy.

Asking political candidates to participate in an electoral race that they believe is flawed from the start is bound for failure. Regrettably, members of the international community have pushed for this to take place regardless, not only in Haiti but also in other conflict zones.

Yemen is a perfect illustration. The 2012 Yemeni presidential elections were openly noncompetitive, with only one candidate, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, running for office. This made it more a plebiscite than an actual election, with posters of Hadi above each ballot box. The country’s Supreme Electoral Commission reportedly inflated the voter turnout figures to give Hadi the appearance of popular support.

The United States largely applauded this election, calling it “the beginning of a promising new chapter.” Nonetheless, the Houthis and the Southern Movement called for an election boycott, and two years later, Yemen found itself in a new civil war.

Another good example is Afghanistan. The parliamentary elections held in October 2018 were viewed by some members of the international community, such as the United States, as more of a technical test before prospective presidential elections than as a way to establish legislative power.

The opposition parties demanded that the electoral commission create a biometric voter registry. However, due to time constraints, the biometric registration was done on election day, making it impossible to centralize the data and remove possible duplicates. A sticker affixed to each ballot with voter information also potentially violated voter secrecy and endangered the lives of voters. Nevertheless, the parliamentary elections carried on but failed due to massive fraud, and most members of the electoral and complaint commissions were sent to jail.

Yet the same issues that were observed during the parliamentary elections, such as instances of ballot stuffing, continued into the 2019 presidential election. Voting procedures were even changed over the course of election day, contradicting electoral law provisions. The unreliability of the voter registry and malfunctioning biometric voter verification machines remained a significant concern. As a result, the election authorities purged nearly 1 million votes due to irregularities and alleged fraud.

This so-called democratic exercise ended with a new power-sharing agreement between incumbent President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah in May 2020, and subsequently, in the fall of Kabul in August 2021—an incident that came at enormous cost to both U.S. taxpayers and human lives. Despite the threat of the Taliban’s advance, authorities still planned, with U.N. assistance, to hold elections in Kabul just three months before the city fell—revealing the lack of understanding of the political and security situation at the time.

In the case of Haiti, the problems with the electoral system are not new and should not come as a surprise to international officials.

First, Haiti desperately needs a civil registry and an audit of the current ID and voter registries. Before any vote can be held, this audit needs to be settled transparently, with the participation of national and international observers. Haiti has not conducted a census in more than 20 years, much like in Afghanistan, which means that we can only estimate the voting-age population based on demographic projections provided by the country’s statistical institute.

This issue became particularly contentious during the administration of Moïse, when the government began issuing new biometric ID cards and claimed that it had registered over 4.5 million people ahead of the 2021 constitutional referendum, a total many believed to have been highly inflated.

Next, the electoral process needs a permanent electoral council and an independent dispute mechanism. Since adopting the 1987 Haitian Constitution, which calls for forming a permanent electoral council, Haiti has instead experienced an extraordinary 19 provisional councils. This erodes institutional memory and subjects each new council to charges of politicization, thus undermining confidence in electoral processes and accelerating electoral fatigue.

Furthermore, this electoral council serves as both judge and jury for the voting process, organizing the election and then adjudicating any disputes that arise. If electoral disputes are to move from the streets to the courts where they belong, an impartial and independent appeals process is necessary.

The most recent law regulating political parties, which authorizes creating a party with only 20 signatures, is another concern. There are reportedly more than 250 political parties registered in Haiti. If this law is not amended, it could destabilize the next election—as happened during the 2015 presidential election, when some 900,000 registered “representatives of political parties” might have taken over the voting process—leading to allegations of vote buying and multiple voting, which ultimately resulted in the vote being annulled.

Finally, it is essential to examine the country’s legal framework and consider constitutional reforms. Some existing constitutional provisions have been contentious and challenging to implement. For example, the requirement that one-third of the Senate be reelected every two years has seldom been fulfilled, resulting in dysfunction in the upper chamber of Parliament. The duration of the president’s and senators’ terms has also been interpreted differently, resulting in widespread protests and the alleged use of gangs to suppress them.

Ahead of the vote, an electoral law that outlines the rules of the election process must be put in place. The law requires approval by the Haitian Parliament, which does not exist today. Given the extraconstitutional nature of the current situation, it is thus imperative that the electoral rules (which must now take the form of a decree) emerge from a broad political consensus to avoid a potentially damaging boycott.

It is easy to agree that Haiti needs elections. But a credible election starts well before the first vote is cast, and it must be fair and competitive enough to ensure greater legitimacy by increasing voter participation and widespread acceptance. As reflected by debates in the U.N. Security Council, the international community has too often seen elections in Haiti or other conflict zones as a simple box to check before proclaiming that democracy has been restored. We must avoid making the same mistake again.