Port-au-Prince (AFP) – The head of the Organization of American States (OAS) urged Haitian authorities on Wednesday to speed up voter registration ahead of upcoming elections, the first in a decade. The first round of voting is scheduled for mid-December in the impoverished Caribbean nation, which has been ravaged by gang violence that has displaced over a million people.
“The registration of voters needs to be accelerated, needs to be intensified,” OAS Secretary General Albert Ramdin told a news conference in Port-au-Prince at the end of a three-day visit, noting that more than 1 million people have been displaced. “We need to make sure that their right is not disenfranchised as well,” he said.
Ramdin said that in discussions with Haiti’s government, electoral council, and international and local security agencies, “we did express our concern with regard to where we are today, three months before the elections.” Several municipalities under the control of criminal gangs lack voter registration centers, and as of Monday, nearly a month after opening, only about 260,000 people have registered to vote.
Ramdin called member states of the OAS — an organization that promotes cooperation in the Americas — and other partners that have pledged support for an international gang suppression force to fulfill their commitments. The first round of voting for the election was initially scheduled for August but has been pushed back because of security concerns.
Haiti has not held elections since 2016, and its last president, assassinated in 2021, has not been replaced. It is the poorest country in the Americas and has for years suffered from instability as powerful gangs have carried out rampant killings, rapes, looting, and kidnappings. The security crisis worsened in early 2024, when gangs launched a wave of violence that forced the country’s unelected prime minister to resign.
Nearly 1.5 million of the 11 million population are internally displaced due to violence, according to a June estimate by the International Organization for Migration.
© 2024 AFP
