Mexico began sending some Haitian migrants back to Haiti, and demands grow in other countries in the region to do the same (e.g., by a senior Bahamas Royal Defense Force official, who cited U.S. repatriation as a model). Four United Nations agencies—the International Organization for Migration, and the UN Refugee Agency, the Children’s Fund, and Human Rights Office—issued a joint statement on Sept. 30 warning that “conditions in Haiti continue to be dire, and not conducive to forced returns.”
The statement reminds governments that “international law prohibits collective expulsions and requires that each case be examined individually to identify protection needs under international human rights and refugee law.” And, that “discriminatory public discourse portraying human mobility as a problem risks contributing to racism and xenophobia and should be avoided and condemned.” (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?LangID=E&NewsID=27577)
Various official statistics on poverty and violence in Haiti are cited, such as that “some 4.4 million people, or nearly 46% of the population, face acute food insecurity, including 1.2 million people who are in emergency levels and 3.2 million people at crisis level.” The effects of the August 14 earthquake are already “straining any [national] capacity to receive returning Haitians,” they insist.
