When a Nation Falls: Why Haiti’s War Budget Should Shake the Caribbean Conscience - An Opinion Piece By Malik Mikel

Overview

In April 2025, Haiti's transitional government approved a $275 million "war budget" to combat rampant gang violence that has destabilized the nation. Approximately 40% of this budget is allocated to bolstering police and military forces, with 20% dedicated to strengthening the border with the Dominican Republic. An additional 16% will support social programs in education, healthcare, and humanitarian aid. This fiscal strategy aims to restore order as gangs control significant portions of Port-au-Prince and have expanded their influence on towns like Mirebalais and Saut-d'Eau. The violence has led to over 1,500 deaths and displaced more than 1 million people. The budget appears to be aa last-ditch attempt to hold the line between a fragile state and complete anarchy. Should it fail, the likelihood of increased refugee migration, transnational gang activity and regional instability grows. For CARICOM, this may catalyse more robust regional security coordination in a de facto “Caribbean NATO-lite”, or at least prompt formal discussions on joint peacekeeping, migration management, and intelligence sharing.

Why does this matter?

This is not merely a Haitian crisis, rather, a regional signal of what happens when governance capitulates, international aid falters and security vacuums are filled by organised violence. Haiti’s descent into chaos is both a humanitarian disaster and a political challenge for the region and raises urgent questions such as whether CARICOM can afford to continue to ignore its most vulnerable member state, or whether the international community will allow a “Black” republic born of rebellion to fall.

Fundamentally, we are observing the long shadow of abandonment, cast over centuries. Haiti, unlike a lot of former colonies was not afforded the dignity of recovery. From its declaration of independence, it was punished for its defiance, and burdened with reparations to its former colonisers, isolated from global markets and treated as an anomaly rather than a triumph of emancipation; Haiti’s future was mortgaged before it began; The international community has long framed Haiti’s crises as misfortunes of its own making. However, such framing is a form of violence which erases the long architecture of exclusion. A common trend of how global powers extracted wealth, withheld investment, propped up dictators, and disbursed aid not to empower, but to pacify. Haiti’s (like many African and Caribbean countries) condition was not born of chaos; it was cultivated through policy, enforced through debt, and legitimised through indifference.

What does it mean for the locals in the Caribbean?

For locals across the Caribbean, Haiti is the canary in the coal mine. It shows us what happens when underinvestment in social infrastructure meets debt dependency, when urban poverty collides with a youth bulge, and when governance is outsourced to international NGOs. The Caribbean should not view this as an isolated tragedy. Our own cities are seeing an entrenchment of informal violence. Many Caribbean nations are, in many ways, only one economic shock or one bad election away from a similar trajectory if we don’t rethink how we build public trust, economic inclusion, and internal security.

What does this mean for the Diaspora?

For the diaspora, Haiti’s implosion is a cultural and political liability. In the Global North, refrences to “Haitian” has frequently served as a proxy for dysfunction, a crude and reductive caricature rooted in racist tropes and historical erasure. Quite the paradox; the descendants of enslaved people who built the wealth of Europe and America are today framed as burdens when they seek asylum and remedies to the problems created by others. In this vein, members of the diaspora must ask themselves how they challenge these narratives while holding their own governments accountable for policies that sustain this instability – through trade, aid, or migration control? This crisis demands not pity, but solidarity. Not charity, but structural critique.

The Takeaway

Haiti is a test case for the moral bankruptcy of international development. Billions of dollars have flowed through international aid organisations, yet few Haitians can point to lasting improvements. The Kenyan-led UN force (touted as a regional solution) is still underfunded and faces legal and cultural challenges. The West wants stability without responsibility. However, Haiti’s crisis is a direct consequence of centuries of foreign exploitation and recent cycles of imposed neoliberal reform. To that end, we must ask ourselves: what does it mean that a nation forged in the name of liberty has become a cautionary tale? What does it say of us (Carribean neighbours, members of the diaspora, citizens of nations that built wealth on the backs of slaves) if we accept this outcome as inevitable? If Haiti, the world’s first "Black’ republic can be so thoroughly abandoned, what precedent does that set for others that dare to imagine themselves free?

From a macrocosmic perspective, Haiti serves as an exemplar of how the world responds to “Black sovereignty, to post-colonial struggle, to histories that demands redress rather than pity. As a final remark, the question is not whether Haiti can survive, rather, whether we can live with ourselves if we allow it to fail.

Sources/Footnotes
[1]https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/haiti-approves-war-time-budget-criminal-gangs-wreak-havoc-2025-04-14/.
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/world/latin-america/haitian-government-adopts-war-budget-town-town-falls-gangs-rcna201362.
[3] https://apnews.com/article/haiti-gangs-violence-war-budget-mirebalais-saut-deau-daa19487d58e9ada1846ad674bca0e54
[4]https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/addressing-haitis-turmoil-starts-with-its-caribbean-neighbors/.
[5] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2749204.
[6] https://caricom.org/statement-on-haiti/.
[7]https://debtjustice.org.uk/countries/haiti ; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/haiti/1988-09-01/haitis-past-mortgages-its-future
[8] https://mwi.westpoint.edu/security-force-assistance-in-africa-is-shoring-up-dictatorships/
[9] The New Scramble for Africa ; https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/06/28/enabling-dictator/united-states-and-chads-hissene-habre-1982-1990
[10]https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/Governance%20and%20Security%20in%20the%20Sahel%20Tackling%20Mobility%2C%20Demography%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf.
[11]http://www.pvmarquez.com/violenceinthecaribbean#:~:text=The%20LAC%20region%2C%20particularly%20some,sector%2C%20and%20constrained%20economic%20activity.
[12]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/05/1042518732/-the-greatest-heist-in-history-how-haiti-was-forced-to-pay-reparations-for-freed&ved=2ahUKEwjI-cn-tOaMAxVmgP0HHf__GloQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1PbMNT_btN12CGTTHNPgGc
[13] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/world/haiti-foreign-aid.html
[14] https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20250417-haiti-independence-ransom-macron-offers-truth-haitians-want-reparations-slavery.
[15] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigations/2025/01/13/haiti-depth-why-kenya-led-security-mission-floundering&ved=2ahUKEwjN2e7wtuaMAxXq87sIHf_ILvwQFnoECBsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1aqnvU2gfUhuvLaVULLL-x.
[16] https://issafrica.org/iss-today/in-burkina-faso-traore-s-legacy-could-extend-beyond-popularity-and-promises
[17]https://caricom.org/barbados-becomes-fourth-caribbean-republic/https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2025/04/10/meet-ibrahim-traore-burkina-fasos-retro-revolutionary

Image via wikipedia. Disclaimer: we do not own the rights to this image - it is being used purely for educational/journalistic purposes. Link to Image