Haiti''s main gang coalition, known as Viv Ansanm (Living Together), launched attacks on November 19 against some of the few remaining areas of capital city Port-au-Prince not under gang control.
Though they were repelled by police and residents, the attacks marked the latest installment in a fresh wave of violence that has seen the gangs ratchet up pressure on Haiti''s electoral council, tasked with organizing elections in the tumultuous Caribbean nation for the first time in almost a decade.
SEE ALSO: UN-Backed Haiti Force Unlikely to Root Out Gangs
In a video posted on social media a day before the attacks, a prominent gang leader called for the council''s resignation, vowing that Viv Ansanm would "use all of its resources" to secure its departure, Le Nouvelliste reported. The attacks come less than two weeks after the electoral council triggered a political crisis by ousting Haiti''s interim prime minister, Gary Conille.
Shortly after Conille''s dismissal, the gangs escalated their aggression, opening fire on commercial jets approaching the capital''s main airport and temporarily forcing its closure for the second time this year.
The gangs now control most of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, according to UN estimates. They have faced limited resistance from Haiti''s threadbare police force and a Kenya-led Multi-national Security Support (MSS) mission sent for backup. Haiti''s electoral council has requested the MSS, lacking sufficient staff and equipment, be expanded into a full-scale peacekeeping mission.
With Haiti''s political transition in disarray and the MSS floundering, the Viv Ansanm coalition is capitalizing on the turmoil to consolidate its territorial and political influence in Port-au-Prince.
An alliance of once-rival gang factions has given criminal groups a unified platform to use violence to destabilize the country and quash interventions aimed at restoring state control.
Earlier this year, Viv Ansanm launched coordinated attacks on critical infrastructure – including prisons, government buildings, and the country''s main airport – as part of a campaign that forced the resignation of former prime minister, Ariel Henry.
SEE ALSO: Prime Minister''s Resignation Tips Haiti Into Uncharted Territory
Formed in late 2023, Viv Ansanm began as a means of opposing the deployment of the MSS, viewed as a threat to gang control in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. But gang unification has also helped them expand their control of territory and strategic infrastructure, increasing their financial and political capital vis-á-vis the transitional government.
Viv Ansanm now appears focused on disrupting the electoral council by tightening its grip on the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, which concentrates a sizable chunk of Haitian voters.
Featured Image: A police officer clears burning barricades laid by residents to deter gang attacks in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Credit: Odelyn Joseph (Associated Press)
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The task will require transforming an "underdeveloped, unreliable, and expensive" electricity generation system based on fossil fuels into a modern, sustainable system that relies on diverse sources of power, including domestic renewable energy, according to Evenson Calixte, Managing Director of the Energy Regulatory Authority of Haiti (Autorité Nationale de Régulation du Secteur de l''Energie, ANARSE).
At the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA), Calixte talked about some of the steps the Haitian government has been taking in the energy sector. The first "big breakthrough," he said, came in February 2016, with the adoption of a new legal and regulatory framework that ended the public utility''s monopoly on producing, selling, and distributing electricity, and opened the door to private investment.
The government is now pursuing a three-pronged electrification strategy. It plans to strengthen and expand the metropolitan grid that serves the area in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince; expand and refurbish the isolated regional grids that serve other urban areas; and deploy off-grid solutions, including microgrids and solar home systems, in more rural and remote areas.
Currently, only about a dozen cities in Haiti have electricity around the clock, Calixte said in interview. In some cases, these are the result of electrification efforts carried out over the years with support from donors, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
In Port-au-Prince, which is home to about 1 million of the country''s 11 million people, electric power is available for an average of 10 hours a day. The plan is to supplement the metropolitan area''s power supply with a 300 MW natural gas-fired plant and solar photovoltaic (PV) plant with storage technologies, as well as to add substations and transmission lines.
Haiti also intends to offer concessions to private companies to expand and strengthen eight regional grids and add generation capacity, including small-scale gas-fired plants and solar PV. (The country does not have a national grid, and creating one is not contemplated in the short or medium term.) In the case of three regional grids, bids are underway to find a private operator to replace the public utility (Electricité d''Haiti). ANARSE has published the results of the prequalification on its website ()
For dozens of smaller communities, the idea is to put solar-powered microgrids in place, with diesel gensets for backup power. ln December, the fishing town of Tiburon, on Haiti''s southern peninsula, obtained 24/7 electricity through a microgrid, in a project carried out by EarthSpark International and supported by donor funds. It was the first microgrid project approved by ANARSE.
The regulatory agency, which grants licenses and concessions in the energy sector, hopes to have 51 microgrids in place over the next two years, Calixte said. Seven projects were awarded under a first request for proposals (RFP); ANARSE is now revising the RFP to try to attract more investors. Through a mechanism known as results-based financing, developers would be able to benefit from donor subsidies for the initial capital expenditure, contingent on the number of connections to the microgrids.
This effort has received considerable international technical support and financing, including from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Caribbean Development Bank. A $20 million concessional loan from Taiwan is expected to help fund local distribution networks in places where microgrids will be built.
Last year, Haiti and the World Bank established the Off-Grid Electricity Fund—with an initial $17 million in funding from the global Clean Technology Fund and the Scaling up Renewable Energy Program—to support access to electricity in remote areas.
For the most isolated parts of the country, especially in the mountainous areas, the short-term plan is to provide households with solar home systems that generate enough electricity to power lights and charge phones. So far, a pilot project has been done to serve some 10,000 households, but this approach has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of people, Calixte said. This program will be subsidized by the government, and the service will be structured under a "pay-as-you-go" model.
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