The strength of Haiti’s revival

New leaders recognize that rebuilding the fragile Caribbean state starts with renewing trust within communities.

The Monitor's View

In the three years since the assassination of Haiti’s last elected leader, warring gangs have overrun the capital, displacing more than half a million residents and spiking the murder rate. Their violent grip underscores the challenge of stabilizing the Western Hemisphere’s poorest and least secure country.

Yet the Caribbean nation’s newly appointed prime minister, Garry Conille, offers a different perspective. “Please do remember that two thirds of the country, close to 10 million Haitians, live in ... circumstances that are relatively peaceful,” he told NPR last week. They deserve leadership “that reflects their courage, that reflects their generosity and certainly their commitment to hard work and change.”

For ordinary Haitians, their new leader’s comment may strike a welcome chord of humility. It reflects a lesson learned slowly in recent decades from other faltering states. Restoring governance is more likely to succeed if it begins at the roots rather than at the top. Ordinary citizens, as Keith Mines and Kirk Randolph of the United States Institute of Peace put it, are “force multipliers.” Tapping their resilience requires earning their trust.

Programs in Somalia and Yemen, for example, show that nurturing trust between communities and local authorities strengthens public confidence that governance can be honest, inclusive, and collaborative. It can lead to reduced violence and greater respect for women.

Rebuilding Haiti starts from scratch. The last elections were eight years ago. Parliament sits empty. Poverty increased to as high as 58% last year, according to the World Bank. The country sits persistently at the bottom of global corruption rankings.

The international community has raised a modest multinational police force led by Kenya to help rein in the roughly 200 armed gangs in Port-au-Prince. But Mr. Conille, a soft-spoken doctor who spent 25 years working for the U.N. and other aid agencies, seems to recognize that his country’s recovery depends more on the force of integrity and transparency. “He’s delivering something people have been asking for, which is communication,” Wolf Pamphile, founder of the Washington-based Haïti Policy House, told The New York Times Tuesday.

The goal for Haiti’s new government is to prepare the country for elections in February 2026. That involves a long list of formidable tasks, from rebuilding a broken justice system to restoring basic public services. “For the response to be adequate to the challenge, the effort will have to mobilize Haitian society on a level never before seen,” Mr. Mines and Ms. Randolph wrote last month. “Citizens will need to be empowered to do more, and all indications are that they are more than prepared to play such a role.”

By equal indications, they now have leaders who are also willing to follow.