What is happening in Haiti?
We were all set to start the Positive Periods workshop in Haiti, it had to be delayed, but not for long. The project is up and running despite the current challenges in Haiti, more about this shortly.
Here is some news about the current situation in Haiti, which you may not have seen or heard in the National News here in the U.K.
On the 7th July the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home, and the first lady is in a critical condition. It is still not clear what happened and rumours abound as to who could be behind this.
Martial Law has been declared and the Dominican Republic has closed its borders with Haiti. To complicate matters, due to an extraordinary array of circumstances, there was no-one who could step in to replace the president.
The country’s constitution indicates that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, René Sylvestre, should have stepped in and taken charge. However, he was a victim of Covid-19 and died just a week before the assassination of the President. So the next in line to take over was the Prime Minister.
But which Prime Minister? Just a day or two before his death, the President had changed Prime Ministers. He had named Ariel Henry for the office but his nomination did not have time to be confirmed so he was not yet sworn in before the assassination, and neither was his new cabinet.
Only one third of parliament was functional at the time of the assassination. It would take too long to organise elections to find agreement on a replacement, so consensus was proposed by all members of other parties that Claude Joseph, the outgoing Prime Minister, would assume the role until elections can be organised. Ariel Henry contests his right to do this and claims that the national leadership should fall to him.
No one knows what is next for Haiti. The constitution doesn’t have a clause for this particular situation. There are only 10 functioning members in parliament right now so nothing in the constitution can be called on, it is certainly unchartered territory and the repercussions are felt throughout the Caribbean.
This is the 5th president in Haiti’s history who has been assassinated. The U.S. has helped in the past, and may at times have got too involved. There has been a history of outside interventions harming Haiti. There is a feeling among many Haitian groups that Haitians need to discuss together their own Haitian solution, and find a solution from the Haitian people, rather than have a solution imposed from outside.
People are still in a state of shock. With a lot of uncertainty and fear, people are understandably very uneasy right now. There is a distrust in the armed forces. Many do not want another US or UN occupation. They want the support of the international community, but don’t want unnecessary interference. They want humanitarian help, businesses are not able to function right now, and there will be difficulty to supply food and medicine at some point. Doctors Without Borders there are concerned about their safety. Schools had ended for the term, but the situation is too tense for the exams to take place.
The government is not asking for a formal occupation, just support to keep vital services open. Haiti is asking help from the OES, UN and US, to secure the vital sites like gas, airports, hospitals. They want to work on capacity building in sectors that were struggling before this event, and even more so now. Maybe it would be more beneficial for the international community to be sending key people to Haiti to help build capacity together.
As an added layer of complication in the years leading up to this, the level of violence and insecurity and active gang activity in the area of the law courts, has paralysed the justice system for the last three years. There is currently a total collapse of the judiciary institutions, the judiciary council is currently not functional.
There is also freedom of information in Haiti, but Haiti has insecurities, and freedom of information is one of the most important issues to solve at the moment too. Only ten days ago, two leading journalists were murdered in the streets and, a day or so later, sixteen civilians were massacred in broad daylight in Port-au-Prince.
The question now is; how can one assist Haiti, not control, not give charity. How can we give hope? Haiti was the pearl of the Caribbean, Haitians from all walks of life will put their minds together, they did something in the past that no-one else could do. They still have that, they will find the solution that works for them.
That’s what The Steve Sinnott Foundation is doing in Haiti. Enabling Haitians on the ground through supporting projects that will enable rather than make others reliant, giving ownership to the projects and enabling others to adapt them, make them their own and use them as their own springboard to success.
Sadly this situation is not headline news in the UK. It’s true that we have a sudden increase in Covid and there was a Football match at the time. The information in this article has come from the Haiti All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) meeting in July 2021. We need to bring Haiti into the news and let people know what is happening there.
Steve Sinnott • July 20, 2021
On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity.
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here
