Haiti’s prime minister breaks his silence to call for “calm” after days of unrest

Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry has broken his silence and called for “calm” after a wave of unrest that has become especially palpable in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and which is marked by the rise in fuel prices.

Henry has addressed the nation to recognize on the one hand the “frustration” of those who fear losing everything and on the other call to solve “together” the “problems”. In this sense, he pointed out that “anger” cannot justify violence.

It was precisely an earlier speech by Henry that triggered the riots, since it implied a drastic increase in the price of petroleum products. “It is not due to the price of fuel that schools, universities, hospitals are being looted,” he said, according to the newspaper ‘Le Nouvelliste’.

The World Food Program (WFP) denounced the assault on one of its warehouses, something that Henry has also recalled in his speech, in which he has shown no signs of reversing the measure on prices and has defended his reform plan to serve the most vulnerable families.

The UN estimates that almost 5 million people, 43 percent of the population, are in need of humanitarian aid in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Protesters are demanding the resignation of the prime minister, who is ruling Haiti in a power vacuum, as the country lacks effective institutions and there are no short-term plans to hold elections. The situation worsened in July 2021 with the assassination of the then president, Jovenel Moise.