Resistance in the Time of Cholera: The Limits of Stabilization through Securitization in Haiti

Abstract

The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is the latest of seven UN missions in the country, stretching over 20 years of international involvement. If the UN's Security Sector Reform (SSR) mission has had a 'stabilizing' influence on the country following Aristide's forced exile since 2004, a string of sexual scandals and the cholera scandal has progressively contributed to modify the local perception of the mission, seen as yet another foreign 'occupation' in Haiti. This article argues that while the resistance to the UN in Haiti is clearly contextual -linked to certain events and actions of certain individuals -it is also, and more fundamentally, structural in form. The article explores themes around the local resistance encountered by the UN in Haiti, using James Scott's multi-levelled approach of the landscape of resistance to highlight the complex nature of statebuilding in Haiti, while linking the more recent form of resistance to MINUSTAH to the specific securitization approach adopted by the mission and its restrictive mindset. Introduction: The Limits of the Failed State Framework for HaitiWhile Haiti has been hard-hit by a number of catastrophes over the years -a mix of man-made and natural factors coming into play -the earthquake of 12 January 2010 brought a degree of international attention that no one in the small island had seen before. The degree of infrastructural destruction and human life lost warranted this extraordinary attention: estimates oscillate between 200,000 and 300,000 persons injured and 65,000 to 316,000 deaths; most of the state apparatus was destroyed and infrastructural destruction extended to the cities of Leogane, Grand-Goâ ve, Petit-Goâ ve, Jacmel and Carefour. While estimates provide more a 'rough indication of the situation' 1 than anything else, some three million people are believed to have been affected in some way by the earthquake. Everyone felt concerned about the fate of the Haitians, and the phrase 'today we are all Haitians' emerged as a persistent refrain that reflected both the unprecedented character of the event, and the international response to it. International volunteers came from almost every region of the world, turning Port-au-Prince, already described as the capital of the 'Republic of NGOs' before the earthquake 2 into a 'wounded city mobbed with rescue and relief workers'.3 More than US$10 billion of aid was promised at the Montreal Conference, and even if only a portion of the aid has actually been disbursed so far, the consensus was that Haiti was in dire need of a 'Marshall-like' plan. 4 However, international involvement has increasingly been greeted by ambivalence in Haiti, and this initial reluctance has progressively taken the form of active International Peacekeeping, Vol.21, No.2, 2014, pp.198 -213 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2014.910399 # 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article. Non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work...

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