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Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry resigned on Thursday after less than three years of governing the Caribbean country as a transitional council takes charge in the face of a gang-fuelled security crisis.
“I thank everyone who had the courage to face such challenges with me,” Henry wrote in his resignation letter, which was dated Wednesday but released on Thursday morning.
“I sympathise with the losses and suffering endured by our compatriots during this period,” he added in the letter addressed to his cabinet.
Henry’s finance minister, Michel Patrick Boisvert, will serve as interim prime minister while the transitional council, which was sworn in at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince on Thursday morning, starts work.
The council, backed by the United States and Caribbean countries, is expected to appoint a prime minister and convene Haiti’s first elections since 2016. The body is made up of nine members from different political parties and civil society groups; its mandate expires in February 2026.
Henry, a 74-year-old former neurosurgeon, took office in July 2021 following the assassination of president Jovenel Moïse in circumstances that remain mysterious. Since then the mandates of every elected official in the country have expired and violent gangs have thrived: they now control more than 80 per cent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
When Henry travelled to Kenya in late February to secure the east African country’s leadership of a UN-backed security mission to Haiti, a coalition of gangs launched a series of attacks and prevented the embattled premier’s return. Henry has remained abroad since, with his resignation letter signed in Los Angeles.
The members of the presidential council had “a long and rocky road ahead to forge a new functional government”, said Diego Da Rin, who researches Haiti for the International Crisis Group.
“Several members of the council are part of political groups that already have their eyes on the next elections, and this could increase the tensions that already exist within this freshly installed body.”
Meanwhile, rights groups have warned that the humanitarian situation on the ground is deteriorating in what is already the poorest nation in the Americas.
Hospitals and schools have been forced to close, while the airport and seaport have been shut down by gangs. More than 2,500 people have been killed, injured or kidnapped this year, according to the UN. Over 90,000 people in the capital alone have fled their homes, while officials have warned about the risk of famine.
“The situation in Haiti is catastrophic, and it grows worse by the day,” Catherine Russell, the head of the UN children’s agency Unicef, said at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday.
“In many areas, essential services have collapsed, while people are losing access to food and safe drinking water, and in some communities, life is more dangerous now than it has ever been.”
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