Caribbean & Central America - August 2015 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The Organization of American States (OAS) has attempted to help find a negotiated solution to the current migration dispute between the Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti. But its efforts to mediate in the sensitive dispute have failed to make much headway, serving instead to provoke the DR.

Bilateral diplomatic tensions intensified early last month after representatives from both countries staged a heated debate over the DR’s strict new immigration policies during an OAS Permanent Council meeting. Since the close of the DR’s national immigrant regularisation programme in June, the Haitian government led by President Michel Martelly has accused its DR counterpart of leaving thousand of individuals of Haitian descent born in the DR ‘stateless’ and of carrying out mass deportations of Haitian migrants and their descendants. The Martelly government warns that this could lead to a “humanitarian catastrophe” on Haitian territory as it is ill-prepared to receive a sudden influx of migrants. Based on this argument, Haiti called on the international community to intervene.

But the DR government led by President Danilo Medina rejects these arguments and maintains that any foreign intervention would represent an affront to its sovereignty. The issue was addressed during an 8 July OAS Permanent Council meeting. That day Haiti’s foreign minister, Lener Renauld, complained that the DR’s immigration regularisation programme had been too short and discriminated against Haitian migrants and their descendants; and that this would produce a crisis in Haiti, with thousands of migrants starting to head towards that country. Renauld added this could “destabilise” Haiti ahead of its long overdue national legislative elections. Renauld concluded that Haiti simply cannot receive “de-nationalised Dominicans” and he called on the OAS to intervene and “force the Dominican Republic to listen to reason”.

The DR’s ambassador to the OAS, Pedro Vergés, reacted negatively. Vergés denied that the migrant regularisation programme had left “anyone stateless”, and that the Dominican authorities had carried out any mass deportations (he did acknowledge that following the close of the migrant regularisation programme, the Dominican authorities had helped thousands of irregular migrants to voluntarily return to Haiti). Vergés insisted that the DR would not “accept any attempt to limit its sovereignty” and was clear that “No country negotiates with another the terms of its migration policies… no State sitting in this forum would accept that!”. Yet Vergés welcomed the deployment of the OAS mission as long as it “remains completely impartial”.

The OAS Permanent Council agreed to send a special fact-finding mission to Hispaniola, tasked with helping to find a “long-lasting solution” to the dispute. Led by the OAS’s political affairs secretary, Francisco Guerrero, the mission visited the island between 10-14 July and met with government officials, foreign diplomats and local civil society groups to analyse the situation of migrants on the ground. While the mission recognised the Dominican government’s disposition to find a concerted solution to the dispute, in its report, submitted on 29 July, it said that “there are people at risk of being left without any recognised nationality... and that despite the goodwill, guidelines from the [DR] authorities are not being applied in the same way at the local level”.

Consequently, the OAS offered to “facilitate dialogue with the two countries, to find avenues for solving … the current problems”. But this offer was swiftly rejected by the Medina government whose foreign minister, Andrés Navarro, said the DR had “not solicited nor does it require intermediation by the OAS” in its dispute with its closest neighbour. The Medina government remains clear that in the current environment, advancing a bilateral dialogue with Haiti is not viable.

• Haitian ambassador to DR sacked

On 22 July the Haitian government sacked its ambassador to the Dominican Republic (DR), Daniel Supplice, for “failing to adequately defend the country in the midst of the migration dispute with the DR”. The move came after Supplice gave a series of interviews in which he criticised the identification and documentation programme for Haitian immigrants (Pidih) launched by the government led by President Michel Martelly in support of the DR’s immigrant regularisation programme. Supplice told the press that the Pidih, which was intended to expedite the issuance of documentation required by Haitian migrants seeking to enrol in the DR’s immigrant regularisation programme, had been “a failure”. A replacement for Supplice, who was in the post just six months, has yet to be named.