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UN's Haiti Unit Short of Staff, Funds - UN Finance - Global Policy Forum UN's Haiti Unit Short of Staff, Funds
By Don Bohning and Stewart Stogel
Miami Herald
March 16, 2000
A scaled-down United Nations mission to Haiti, likely to be the last such residue of the 1994 US-led military intervention that restored constitutional government to the country, gets off to a rocky beginning today, short on funding and lacking personnel. The mission's troubled birth comes at a critical time for Haiti as it moves uncertainly toward long-delayed parliamentary and local elections, currently scheduled for April 9 and May 21, but increasingly in doubt.
Known as MICAH from its French initials, the International Civilian Support Mission in Haiti combines and replaces two existing missions with mandates that expired Wednesday: a UN civilian police advisory group and a joint UN and Organization of American States human rights and justice monitoring unit. Combined, the two missions totaled about 350 people. The two missions were due to end late last year but were extended until March 15 in order to organize the new mission and get it operational, which it barely is.
When MICAH is at full strength, it's to have slightly more than 100 nonuniformed and unarmed technical consultants in the areas of human rights, judiciary and police, plus an administrative staff. But, because of delayed funding from the United States and the tardiness in identifying personnel, the new mission will be activated with less than 20 percent of its planned strength, according to UN officials and diplomats close to the mission's organization.
Among the early members will be directors and their deputies for the areas of human rights, police and justice plus a handful of others, plus seven administrative staffers.
A U.N. official said Tuesday that about 90 percent of the people who will staff the mission have been identified. Among them are several from the two missions whose mandates expired Wednesday, but who have not yet been offered jobs because of the funding problem. As a result, many are expected to be leaving Haiti today.
The cost of the new mission, created in a U.N. General Assembly resolution in December, is estimated at $24 million. Its mandate expires Feb. 6, 2001, the day a new Haitian president is to be sworn in. Of the $24 million, about $9.17 million is to come from the regular U.N. budget and the rest from voluntary contributions. That includes $7.5 million in leftover US funding for previous missions to Haiti, but its transfer to MICAH has been delayed as legal requirements are dealt with and a determination is made on whether new congressional notification is necessary.
A U.N. official said that if the money is not available by May at the latest, there may be a need to report to the General Assembly that the mandate as approved in December cannot be fulfilled and there would be a need to revise its objectives. Unlike previous international missions that operated under U.N. Security Council mandate, MICAH will respond to the General Assembly. Its chief will be Alfredo Lopez Cabral, Guinea-Bissau's former UN ambassador and currently U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's personal representative in Haiti.
Michael Duval, Canada's deputy permanent U.N. representative, said at the time of MICAH's approval that ``challenge No. 1'' is the holding of ``credible legislative and local elections in order to establish Parliament, a pillar of democracy in Haiti.'' Beyond that, Duval said, MICAH ``will make it possible to complete the transition already under way from a military peacekeeping presence to a civilian police presence and eventually toward a long-term cooperation program.''
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