Somalia, DR Congo and Yemen among states forced to sign deals and barter their minerals for aid or military support
Some of the world’s poorest countries have started paying millions to lobbyists linked to Donald Trump to try to offset US cuts to foreign aid, an investigation reveals.
Somalia, Haiti and Yemen are among 11 countries to sign significant lobbying deals with figures tied directly to the US president after he slashed US foreign humanitarian assistance.
Continue reading...Homeland security secretary attempting to end legal status for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s bid to end temporary deportation protections and work permits for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants before the program’s scheduled expiration date.
Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Joe Biden’s extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians through 3 February. It called for the program to end on 3 August, and last week pushed back that date to 2 September.
Continue reading...Trump administration revokes temporary protected status for citizens of country racked by deadly violence
More than half a million Haitians are facing the prospect of deportation from the US after the Trump administration announced that the Caribbean country’s citizens would no longer be afforded shelter under a government program created to protect the victims of major natural disasters or conflicts.
Haiti has been engulfed by a wave of deadly violence since the 2021 murder of its president, Jovenel Moïse. Heavily armed gangs have brought chaos to its capital, Port-au-Prince, since launching an insurrection that toppled the prime minister last year. On Tuesday, the US embassy in Haiti urged US citizens to abandon the violence-stricken Caribbean country. “Depart Haiti as soon as possible,” it wrote on X.
Continue reading...UN rapporteur calls for move as food deliveries are attacked and starvation becomes a weapon of war in Gaza and Sudan
UN peacekeepers should be routinely deployed to protect aid convoys from attack in places such as Gaza and Sudan, a senior United Nations expert has proposed.
With starvation increasingly used as a weapon of war, Michael Fakhri said armed UN troops were now required to ensure that food reached vulnerable populations.
Continue reading...Ruling reverses hold on Trump administration’s ending humanitarian parole of Venezuelan migrants and others
The US supreme court on Friday announced it would allow the Trump administration to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, bolstering the Republican president’s drive to step up deportations.
The court put on hold Boston-based US district judge Indira Talwani’s order halting the administration’s move to end the immigration humanitarian “parole” protections granted to 532,000 people by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to rapid removal from the country, while the detailed case plays out in lower courts.
Continue reading...A fraught history of race and immigration connect the new pope with his homeland
Pope Leo XIV, who on Thursday was elected as the first-ever US-born leader of the Roman Catholic church, has a familial bloodline that reflects his homeland’s fraught relationship with race – and why the nation’s stature as a melting pot of origins has long endured, records unearthed by genealogists show.
The maternal grandfather of 69-year-old Robert Prevost, the newly minted pope, was evidently born abroad in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, according to birth records that professional genealogist Chris Smothers cited to ABC News in a recent report. When Leo’s grandfather, Joseph Martinez, obtained an 1887 marriage license to wed the future pope’s grandmother, Louise Baquié, he listed his birthplace as Haiti, which at the time was the same territory as Santo Domingo, Smothers noted.
Continue reading...Rubio calls Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif ‘threat to US national security’ and says support for groups could lead to charges
The United States has designated a powerful Haitian gang alliance, whose members have taken control of almost all the capital city as a “transnational terrorist group”.
The criminal coalition known as Viv Ansanm (Live Together), and another faction, the Gran Grif gang, which in October took responsibility for a shocking massacre of at least 115 people in the agricultural town of Pont-Sondé, were both covered by the move on Friday.
Continue reading...France imposed harsh ‘ransom’ after revolution that campaigners say stunted Caribbean country’s development
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has announced a joint commission with Haiti to examine the countries’ shared past as Haitian campaigners demand a reimbursement of billions of dollars worth of “ransom” paid to France.
Macron announced his intention to create the commission as campaigners renewed calls for reparations on the bicentenary of an agreement to pay 150m francs to France in 1825 to compensate slave-owning colonists after the Haitian Revolution.
Continue reading...Move takes effect on 24 April as president weighs also stripping parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians in US
Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.
It will be effective on 24 April.
Continue reading...UN agency says more than half of the displaced people are children, as gang attacks see upswing in Port-au-Prince
More than 1 million people have been forced from their homes in Haiti amid a sharp upswing in gang attacks in the country’s embattled capital, Port-au-Prince, the UN has said.
The UN’s migration agency, the IOM, said that never before had such a large number of Haitians been reported to have been displaced by violence. More than half of those internally displaced people (IDPs) were children who were bearing the brunt of Haiti’s security breakdown. Many had been displaced repeatedly.
Continue reading...UN Human Rights Office adds that 2,200 were injured and nearly 1,500 kidnapped as international mission struggles
More than 5,600 people were reported killed in Haiti last year, the UN has said, as an international mission led by Kenya struggles to contain rampant gang violence.
The number of killings increased by more than 20% compared with 2023, according to the UN Human Rights Office. More than 2,200 people were reported injured and nearly 1,500 kidnapped, it said.
Continue reading...Gunmen target press conference at Haiti’s largest public hospital after street gangs forced its closure earlier this year
Two reporters and a police officer were killed and others injured on Tuesday when armed men opened fire on a group of journalists who gathered for a government press conference scheduled to announce the reopening of Haiti’s largest public hospital.
Street gangs forced the closure of the State University of Haiti hospital early this year and authorities had pledged to reopen the facility in the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Christmas Eve. But as journalists gathered to cover the event, the gunmen opened fire.
Continue reading...Government protests ‘unfriendly and inappropriate’ comments by French president caught on camera
Haiti’s government has summoned the French ambassador to the country to protest about “unfriendly and inappropriate” comments from Emmanuel Macron, who was caught on camera calling the country’s leaders “morons”.
The French president had on Wednesday described the decision of the Caribbean country’s transitional presidential council to oust the prime minister earlier this month amid an escalation in gang warfare as “completely dumb”.
Continue reading...For the first time in over 30 years Médicins Sans Frontières halts activity leaving 2 million people in Port-au-Prince without vital healthcare
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said its aid workers are “heartbroken” after the medical NGO was forced to suspend all of its healthcare services in Port-au-Prince for the first time in three decades, leaving Haitians in the violence-ravaged capital without a critical lifeline.
The international non-profit said it had no choice but to halt all operations on Wednesday after staff were repeatedly attacked and received death threats from armed vigilantes and the national police.
Continue reading...Armed groups clash with residents and police after plans for attack on Pétionville area announced on social media
Gangs have launched a fresh attack on Haiti’s capital, targeting an upscale community in Port-au-Prince where people with guns clashed with residents who fought side by side with police.
The attack on Pétionville was led by the Viv Ansanm group, whose leader, former police officer Jimmy Chérizier, had announced the plan in a video posted on social media.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands deported from Caribbean states, as Dominican Republic pledges to return 10,000 people a week
Activists have called on Caribbean governments to halt the mass deportation of Haitians fleeing escalating gang violence that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
In the past month, tens of thousands of people have been deported to Haiti, including 61,000 from the neighbouring Dominican Republic, whose president recently pledged to deport 10,000 migrants a week.
Continue reading...Medical charity says its staff members were violently attacked by police and vigilantes 100 meters from hospital
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said that at least two of its patients were killed after one of its ambulances was stopped and attacked in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
MSF said its staff members were violently attacked on Monday after “members of a vigilante group and law enforcement officers” stopped the ambulance, which was transporting three young people with gunshot wounds.
Continue reading...Move by US authorities comes after plane was shot at on Monday, injuring attendant and forcing airport shutdown
The US Federal Aviation Administration has banned civilian flights into Haiti for 30 days after a jetliner was shot at on approach to Port-au-Prince.
Bullets hit the Spirit Airlines plane when it was about to land on Monday, injuring a flight attendant and forcing the airport to shut down.
Continue reading...Spirit Airlines flight heading from Florida to Port-au-Prince diverted to Dominican Republic after flight attendant was grazed by bullet, amid broader violence in Haiti’s capital
Haiti’s international airport shut down on Monday after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince, prompting some airlines to suspend operations as the country swore in a new interim prime minister who promised to restore peace.
The Spirit Airlines flight headed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Port-Au-Prince was just hundreds of feet from landing in Haiti’s capital when gangs shot at the plane, striking a flight attendant who suffered minor injuries, according to the airline, the US embassy and flight tracking data.
Continue reading...Entrepreneur Alix Didier Fils-Aimé replaces Garry Conille as country rocked by worsening gang violence
Haiti’s transitional presidential council has appointed the entrepreneur and former senate candidate Alix Didier Fils-Aimé as the new prime minister, according to the official gazette in the country.
The businessman replaces Garry Conille, who was named prime minister in May. The shake-up is the latest blow to political stability amid soaring levels of gang violence.
Continue reading...