Haiti is entering a new phase aimed at containing its worsening political and security crisis, but the future is uncertain.
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry has resigned, paving the way for an interim council to lead the embattled country.
In a letter posted on social media on Thursday, Henry said his government had “served the nation in difficult times.” The letter was dated Wednesday.
The interim council was officially set up on Thursday. The outgoing cabinet announced that Economy Minister Michel Patrick Boisvert has been appointed interim prime minister until a new government is formed.
An alliance of the country’s powerful gangs launched a coordinated attack on the capital Port-au-Prince in late February. This coincided with Henry’s visit to Kenya to support a United Nations-backed security force that the East African country had agreed to send to Haiti.
Amid the violence, Ariel agreed to resign last month and has not returned to Haiti. CBS News has reported that he was protected abroad by the United States Secret Service.
The nine-member transition council, in which seven members have voting rights, is intended to help set the agenda of a new cabinet. It will also set up a provisional electoral commission, which will be necessary before elections scheduled for 2026 can take place. They also want to set up a national security council.
While gang leaders had called on Henry to resign, they expressed dissatisfaction at being left out of the transition negotiations and it remains unclear how they will respond to the new council.
For its part, the international community has called on the Council to prioritize widespread insecurity in Haiti.
Before the recent attacks began, gangs had already controlled 80 percent of Port-au-Prince. According to a recent United Nations report, the number of Haitians killed in early 2024 increased by more than 50 percent compared to the same period last year.
Meanwhile, around 360,000 Haitians remain internally displaced, 95,000 people have been forced to flee the capital due to gang violence and five million are experiencing “acute hunger,” according to the United Nations.
Heinrich was never directly elected. Instead, he was selected for the post of prime minister by Haitian President Jovenel Moise shortly before Moise’s assassination in 2021 and came to power with the support of the United States and other Western countries.
But many human rights observers are worried about what comes next in a country that has experienced decades of spiraling crises caused by corrupt leaders, failed state institutions, poverty, gang violence and a U.S.-led international community whose interventions in the Domestic politics are largely unpopular with Haitians.
As a result, many Haitians remain wary of any foreign involvement in Haiti today, saying it would only make the chaos worse. Still, several leading human rights activists have said the Haitian National Police is ill-equipped to stop the violence.
Kenya, for its part, had suspended its plans to send a security force to Haiti until the Transitional Council came to power, although it remains unclear whether this is still the case.