Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Haiti: Key Recent Developments 2026, 5/11: Justice Deferred: Courts and Prisons
Episode 5/11 of our walk through "Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Haiti: Key Recent Developments, March through September 2026", by IJDH and BAI. Only 2 of the 15 peace courts in Port-au-Prince work, the Court of First Instance held no jury trials for eight years, and the cases of Jovenel Moïse, Monferrier Dorval, Antoinette Duclair and Diego Charles have not moved. In the prisons, 82% of detainees have never been tried, and a center built for 93 children holds more than 760 people.
Read the full transcript on Jou: https://jou.rasanblaj.ht/podcast/deep-dive/2026-10-28/transcript
Transcript
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Machine transcript. Names and Kreyòl words may be misspelled. Tap a time to play from there. Also on Jou.
Host 1 For eight years, the main court in Port-au-Prince held not one single jury trial.
Host 2 Wow.
Host 1 Yeah, I want to ask you listening to this right now to just, you know, let that sit with you for a moment.
Host 2 Eight entire years.
Host 1 Eight years. The very first one just took place in July 2026.
Host 2 It's just wild to think about.
Host 1 Right. I mean, think about the passage of time there. An entire generation of law students went through university, they graduated, and they began practicing law without ever once, like, seeing a jury seated in their capital city's main court.
Host 2 Yeah, never seeing the system actually work.
Host 1 Exactly. Kal and S. individuals were arrested, accused, locked away, and for nearly a decade, the ultimate step in the criminal justice process simply did not exist.
Host 2 It is a staggering reality to try and comprehend, honestly. Yeah. I want you to really imagine a society operating for nearly a decade without, you know, the most fundamental mechanism of criminal justice functioning in its capital.
Host 1 Right.
Host 2 Because when we talk about the rule of law, the jury trial is the anchor.
Host 1 The ultimate check on power.
Host 2 Exactly. It is the moment where the state has to prove its case to the people. No juries means no peers weighing evidence.
Host 1 Which means no public accountability.
Host 2 Right. No accountability for the accusations the state makes. It leaves this gaping void where the rule of law is supposed to be. And when you remove the anchor, everything else in the justice system begins to drift. And eventually, I mean, it sinks entirely.
Host 1 Welcome back to the deep dive from Zhu on the NHG Marone podcast. This is Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Haiti, Key Recent Developments 2026, Episode 5 of 11. It's good to be back. So, in our last deep dive, we saw a state that fires the people who expose corruption, works with the groups it claims to fight, and kills civilians in the name of security.
Host 2 Yeah, we really established the terrifying reality of state-sanctioned violence.
Host 1 We did. Today, we are continuing our journey through the vital document we have been unpacking, which is the full report, Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Haiti, Key Recent Developments March through September 2026.
Host 2 Such a massive, critical piece of work.
Host 1 It really is. And that's published by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, or IJDH, and the Bureau des Avocats International, or BAI.
Host 2 Right.
Host 1 We are covering part four today, focusing on the lack of access to justice and chronic impunity, specifically looking at the justice sector and prison conditions. Today, justice deferred, courts, and prisons.
Host 2 We really have to begin where that shocking lack of jury trials leaves off.
Host 1 Yeah, because the conceptual failure is just part of it.
Host 2 Exactly, because we are moving from the conceptual failure of the justice system into its literal, physical crumbling.
Host 1 The actual buildings.
Host 2 Yes. We often speak of justice as an abstract idea, right? Like fairness, equity, the balancing of scales. But the administration of justice is intensely physical.
Host 1 It needs a physical space.
Host 2 Right. It requires a room. It requires paper. It requires clerks to stamp that paper and electricity to light the room where the judge sits.
Host 1 Right. If you are going to hold a trial, you literally need a courtroom.
Host 2 Exactly.
Host 1 Right now, the physical infrastructure of the Haitian justice system is in a state of absolute undeniable collapse.
Host 2 Yeah. Let's look at the peace courts to understand the scale of this physical collapse.
Host 1 Yeah, that's a perfect place to start.
Host 2 Yeah.
Host 1 The report details this extensively. And we need to understand what a peace court actually is.
Host 2 They're the foundation, basically.
Host 1 Right. In the Haitian legal system, peace courts are the lowest level of the justice system.
Host 2 The entry point.
Host 1 Exactly. They are the entry point for everyday people seeking justice for everyday issues. Like if you have a property dispute with a neighbor, a minor debt collection, or, you know, a petty theft, you don't go to the Supreme Court.
Host 2 No. You go to your local peace court.
Host 1 Right. They are the neighborhood shock absorbers for conflict. And in the Port-au-Prince region, out of 15 peace courts, only two are fully functional.
Host 2 Two out of 15.
Host 1 It's just... And the reason for this is armed group violence.
Host 2 We really need to dwell on what it means for 13 out of 15 local courts to just cease to exist functionally.
Host 1 Right.
Host 2 Like if you look at EndNote 171 in the report, it lists the municipalities where these courts are non-functional.
Host 1 Read that list because it really puts it in perspective.
Host 2 Yeah. It's Carrefour, Croix des Bouquets, Croix des Mission, Mirabellet, Gracie, Cité Soleil, Lyoncourt, Arkea, and the north, south, and east sections of Port-au-Prince.
Host 1 That's practically everywhere.
Host 2 Exactly. This isn't just a minor administrative hiccup in one isolated neighborhood.
Host 1 No, it's massive.
Host 2 It is a sweeping systemic erasure of legal recourse across massive population centers. Right. When you eliminate the peace courts, you basically eliminate the pressure valve for society.
Host 1 Because the conflicts don't just disappear.
Host 2 Exactly. If a person cannot go to a local magistrate to resolve a land dispute, they don't just forget about the land.
Host 1 No.
Host 2 They are forced to resolve it through other means, which usually means appealing to the armed groups who control the area or resorting to violence themselves.
Host 1 Right. So the physical destruction of the courts actively breeds more violence.
Host 2 Exactly. And the collapse isn't limited to the lower courts either.
Host 1 Right. Let's talk about the court of first instance.
Host 2 Yeah. Which handles the major criminal and civil cases. It has been forced to relocate three separate times since 2022.
Host 1 Just moving constantly. I want you to imagine running a vital public service like an emergency room or a massive logistics business.
Host 2 Right.
Host 1 Now imagine your office is constantly being chased from building to building by heavily armed groups.
Host 2 How do you function?
Host 1 Exactly. How does the work possibly get done? Where do the physical case files go?
Host 2 That's the thing. We are talking about a system that relies heavily on physical dossiers.
Host 1 Right. Paper files. When you have to evacuate a building under gunfire, you don't neatly pack up the archives?
Host 2 No. Files are left behind.
Host 1 Evidence is lost?
Host 2 Yeah. When the court moves, the institutional memory of thousands of cases is just scattered to the wind.
Host 1 It creates chaos by design, doesn't it?
Host 2 Oh, absolutely. Endnote 173 brings in the vital reporting of Haitian journalist Michel Saint-Césaire in La Nouvelle East.
Host 1 What did he find?
Host 2 Well, he meticulously tracks these relocations to show the absurdity of the situation. The court was initially moved to the former Labor Court building.
Host 1 Okay.
Host 2 But then when that became untenable due to security, it had to flee again to a building in La Loue. Wow. And this was a cramped, highly expensive building completely unsuited for a major tribunal.
Host 1 So not a real courtroom.
Host 2 No, not at all. And most recently, it was moved again to a new building in Delma.
Host 1 Right.
Host 2 And even there, Césaire reports that it still lacks sufficient space, lacks security officers, and crucially lacks actual courtrooms.
Host 1 Courtrooms.
Host 2 In a court. I know. The BAI's Dionèle Fleury-Jean actually notes that the court operates at a severely reduced pace because the space is fundamentally unsuited to its mission.
Host 1 Well, yeah. You cannot prosecute complex, violent, multi-defending crimes out of a cramped temporary office space that you just fled to.
Host 2 Exactly. So what does that mean for the person who actually needs that court?
Host 1 The report makes it clear that this isn't just an administrative headache for the judges or the clerks.
Host 2 No, it's a disaster for the people.
Host 1 Endnote 175, citing the Coalition of Haitian and Solidarity Human Rights Organizations, explains the human toll. These closures and relocations effectively end access to justice for working class residents.
Host 2 Yeah, let's trace the mechanics of this.
Host 1 Okay.
Host 2 If you live in a working class neighborhood or the city center and you are the victim of a crime, you now face an impossible hurdle.
Host 1 Right. You have to travel to reach the few courts that are still functioning in other areas.
Host 2 And that travel is incredibly dangerous, right? It requires you to cross checkpoints controlled by armed groups.
Host 1 Yeah.
Host 2 It is also incredibly expensive because the transit routes are disrupted and taxed by these same groups.
Host 1 So it creates a geographic and economic fortress around justice.
Host 2 Exactly.
Host 1 If you have to risk your life and pay exorbitant transit fees just to file a piece of paper or attend a preliminary hearing, you simply aren't going to do it.
Host 2 You literally can't.
Host 1 The system has passively barred the door to the poor by failing to maintain a safe, accessible physical presence.
Host 2 Right.
Host 1 It becomes a justice system exclusively for those who can afford armored transport or private security to reach the building in Delmas.
Host 2 And a huge part of why the state cannot maintain that presence comes down to the budget.
Host 1 Yes, the budget. The financial strangulation of the justice sector is a deliberate choice that is honestly hard to wrap your head around.
Host 2 It really is.
Host 1 Let's pull the raw figures directly from EndNote 176. The justice sector budget in Haiti was already incredibly tiny in the previous fiscal year, sitting at just 1.9% of the total national budget.
Host 2 Which is already basically nothing.
Host 1 Exactly. Now, logic would dictate that during a massive security and rule of law crisis, you would increase funding to the courts.
Host 2 Right. You'd think so.
Host 1 Instead, the government has slashed it further. The rectifying budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year allocates just 1.2% to justice.
Host 2 I really want to pause and digest the mechanics of that number. 1.2%.
Host 1 It's absurd.
Host 2 A modern state cannot maintain the rule of law on 1.2% of its budget. That isn't just underfunding. That is active, intentional starvation of the judicial branch.
Host 1 Intentional starvation.
Host 2 Yeah. When a government only allocates 1.2% to the courts, they are making a crystal clear statement of priorities.
Host 1 Right.
Host 2 Consider what that money has to cover. You know, salaries for judges, clerks and bailiffs, building maintenance, electricity, paper, transportation for investigators, and crucially, security for the judicial staff.
Host 1 Which they desperately need.
Host 2 Exactly. So when you slash the budget, you guarantee that salaries remain far below a living wage. You are asking judges and clerks to investigate and prosecute heavily armed, incredibly wealthy criminal syndicates. And you aren't even paying them enough to feed their families.
Host 1 Let alone providing them with security details to protect their lives.
Host 2 Exactly.
Host 1 And the real world fallout of that 1.2% budget is immediate and devastating. The report highlights frequent strikes by court personnel in response to these impossible working conditions.
Host 2 And we are not talking about a one day walkout here.
Host 1 No. We are talking about strikes that sometimes last for months at a time. Completely paralyzing the entire judicial apparatus.
Host 2 Right.
Host 1 Dianele Fleury-Jean from BAI explains this perfectly in EndNote 178. He states that when clerks strike, the entire system stops.
Host 2 The whole thing.
Host 1 No trials can take place. No judgments can be issued. No warrants can be processed. It is a complete institutional freeze.
Host 2 And we really have to ask ourselves, can we blame them for striking?
Host 1 Definitely not.
Host 2 I mean, if you look at EndNote 177, the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights, or RNDDH, provides a window into what these working conditions actually look like outside the Capitol, where the spotlight rarely shines.
Host 1 Yeah, what's happening out there?
Host 2 So they investigated the magistrates' courts in Pointe de Raquette and Ensegale, which are communes on the island of Lagonave.
Host 1 Okay.
Host 2 RNDDH found these courts to be in states of, quote, advanced disrepair. They literally lack basic office supplies.
Host 1 Wow.
Host 2 We are talking about a lack of pens, a lack of paper to write down a witness statement.
Host 1 They don't even have pens.
Host 2 No pens. They have no transportation to visit a crime scene. They do not even have electricity.
Host 1 That is just bleak.
Host 2 It is. RNDDH noted that numerous requests made to state authorities for help have gone completely unanswered. How does a magistrate administer the law in the dark without paper to write the verdict, without a vehicle to investigate a murder?
Host 1 They can't.
Host 2 They absolutely can't.
Host 1 And if you starve a judge of a living wage, strip away their physical security, and force them to work in a crumbling building without electricity, you aren't just creating a dysfunctional court.
Host 2 No, what are you doing?
Host 1 You are actively creating a marketplace for bribery.
Host 2 Ah, yeah.
Host 1 Which forces us to look at the transition from physical collapse to moral and systemic collapse. When the state abandons the courts, the system becomes incredibly vulnerable to the highest bidder.
Host 2 Oh, absolutely.
Host 1 The illusion of judicial independence shatters very quickly under these conditions. The report details how corruption and politicization are deeply entrenched throughout the judiciary.
Host 2 Yeah.
Host 1 Let's examine the Superior Counsel of the Judiciary, or the CSPJ. For those unfamiliar, think of the CSPJ as the Internal Affairs and HR Department rolled into one for the judicial branch.
Host 2 Right.
Host 1 They are the independent body responsible for the administration, certification, and discipline of judges in Haiti.
Host 2 Their role is supposed to act as a firewall against corruption, ensuring that only qualified, ethical magistrates are allowed to sit on the bench.
Host 1 Right. But I have to push back here on the narrative of total failure, because the data presents what looks like a major counterpoint.
Host 2 Oh, interesting. What do you mean?
Host 1 Well, according to EndNote 182, citing reporting from Le Nouvelle East and Vont Bef Info, since June 2026, the CSPJ has upheld the non-certification of 43 judges for a lack of moral and professional integrity. Right. 26 magistrates were rejected in June, and another 17 were refused certification in September.
Host 2 Yeah, those are big numbers.
Host 1 To me, firing 43 corrupt judges shows the CSPJ actually has teeth. That is a massive purge of bad actors from the bench.
Host 2 It looks like it, yeah.
Host 1 Why shouldn't we view this as a massive win? Doesn't this prove the system is recognizing its flaws and aggressively self-correcting?
Host 2 I mean, it is a very tempting conclusion to draw. You see 43 bad judges removed, and you think the system is cleaning house.
Host 1 Exactly.
Host 2 But the report and the human rights organizations doing the grueling work on the ground dismantle that optimism entirely.
Host 1 Really? How?
Host 2 If we dig into the mechanics detailed in Endnotes 181 and 184, we see a much darker picture of how this machinery actually operates.
Host 1 Okay, lay it out for me.
Host 2 The removal of judges can often be weaponized. Executive control over the judicial budget and over judicial mandates is a tool used to punish the uncooperative.
Host 1 So they fire the ones they don't like?
Host 2 Yes. The Haitian human rights organization ORDEDH provides a chilling analysis of this in Endnote 184. They explain that the politicization of the judiciary isn't just about who gets fired. It is blatantly evident in how criminal cases are assigned in the first place.
Host 1 Let's unpack the mechanics of that. How does the simple assignment of a case become a political weapon? Should there be a randomized system to prevent tampering, like a blind draw?
Host 2 In a functioning, independent system, yes, you would have blind assignment to prevent judge shopping. Right. But here, the presiding judge holds discretionary authority over case assignments. According to ORDEDH, within the Port-au-Prince Court of First Instance, the presiding judge acts as a de facto political figure.
Host 1 Wow.
Host 2 Let's use a metaphor to understand this. Think of case assignment like a rigged roulette wheel.
Host 1 Okay, I'm following.
Host 2 The ball isn't landing randomly. The House has tilted the wheel so that whenever a politically sensitive case comes in, say a massive corruption scandal or an assassination involving elites, the ball always lands on a compliant investigating judge.
Host 1 Oh, wow. So, they systematically route these matters to judges who are known to be sympathetic to the political elite.
Host 2 Yes, or susceptible to pressure. By doing this, they exploit the criminal justice system to achieve two simultaneous goals.
Host 1 Which are?
Host 2 They guarantee absolute impunity for their allies, and they guarantee relentless, bad-faith legal persecution of their opponents.
Host 1 That is terrifying.
Host 2 The system isn't broken. It is functioning exactly as it was redesigned to function. It is a targeted weapon. State capture at its most refined.
Host 1 That reframes the entire concept of the court for me. So, if an honest investigating judge actually does get a sensitive case and refuses to back down, the state has another tool.
Host 2 What's that?
Host 1 When that judge's mandate comes up for renewal, the executive branch simply lets it lapse.
Host 2 Oh, right.
Host 1 They don't have to fire the judge. They just don't renew their contract.
Host 2 Exactly.
Host 1 The investigation is permanently stalled, and a new compliant judge is brought in to bury it.
Host 2 It's so clean on paper.
Host 1 Yeah. The report notes that alleged criminals with links to political and economic elites, people with access to immense wealth or deep connections with armed groups, generally avoid prosecution altogether.
Host 2 Always.
Host 1 D'Anne Fleury Jean notes in EndNote 183 that the oligarchy ensures they are entirely exempt from all criminal and civil proceedings related to corruption.
Host 2 They operate above the law because they own the mechanisms of the law.
Host 1 Right. And we must spend time acknowledging the immense, terrifying human cost to the honest legal professionals who refuse to play this corrupt game.
Host 2 Because there are people fighting this.
Host 1 There are. There are judges, lawyers, and clerks who do not give in to the bribery, who refuse to tilt the roulette wheel.
Host 2 Yeah.
Host 1 But the danger for those who stand firm is severe. It is not just about losing your job. It is about losing your life.
Host 2 The report highlights persistent targeted attacks against judicial actors.
Host 1 Let's talk about those.
Host 2 Like in EndNote 186, we see the documentation of an assassination attempt on Ronel Telside, the sitting president of the Haitian Bar Federation, in April 2026.
Host 1 An assassination attempt on the bar president.
Host 2 Yes. The International Observatory of Lawyers at Risk noted that this attack sent a blaring, threatening message to all lawyers in the country.
Host 1 We can get to anyone.
Host 2 Exactly. And then in September 2026, as reported by Juhakenson Blaise in the Haitian Times, there was the kidnapping of a lawyer, drawing renewed attention to the severe risks legal professionals face as armed groups continue to use kidnapping as a tool of terror and leverage.
Host 1 Consider the psychological toll of this environment.
Host 2 It's unbearable.
Host 1 You are wildly underpaid due to the 1.2 percent budget. You are working in a crumbling building without electricity or, you know, a cramped office you just had to flee to.
Host 2 Right.
Host 1 You are constantly pressured by powerful elites to rule corruptly. And if you attempt to actually uphold the law, you are threatened with kidnapping or assassination.
Host 2 Yeah. What would anyone do in that situation?
Host 1 The inevitable result of these combined pressures is a massive brain drain. Endnote 179 confirms this reality. Well-trained, highly capable judicial professionals are simply fleeing Haiti altogether.
Host 2 They have to, to survive.
Host 1 They are seeking asylum or migrating, which only deepens the chronic understaffing across the judiciary. The justice system is literally bleeding out its most honest and capable people.
Host 2 Which forces us to look at the core consequence of all of this. If the physical buildings are vanishing, the budget is starved, cases are steered by political operatives, honest judges are chased out of the country, and the CSPJ's actions are part of a deeply compromised ecosystem, what does this look like in practice for the nation?
Host 1 What does it look like?
Host 2 It looks like a graveyard of high-profile, unresolved crimes. It is impunity, case by case, cemented into the foundation of the state.
Host 1 Yeah.
Host 2 As we move into the middle of our deep dive, I want to re-anchor us to the document we are analyzing. Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Haiti. Key Recent Developments March through September 2026.
Host 1 A vital report.
Host 2 Yes. What this report documents in terms of stalled justice is truly devastating, because it shows how impunity is not an accident, but a policy.
Host 1 That is the crucial distinction, right?
Host 2 Mm-hmm.
Host 1 When we talk about impunity in this context, we aren't just talking about minor theft or localized violence falling through the cracks.
Host 2 No, no.
Host 1 We are talking about the most visible, high-stakes, nation-altering crimes a country can experience. Crimes that strike at the very heart of the state's sovereignty and public trust.
Host 2 Let's start with the most glaring, undeniable example of this paralysis. The assassination of President Jovenel Moise. Right. The sitting president of the country was tortured and assassinated in his own home in July 2021.
Host 1 And here we are.
Host 2 We are now over five years out from that event. Five years of investigations. Multiple investigating judges stepping down due to death threats, massive public outcry, and international scrutiny.
Host 1 And the result?
Host 2 According to the report, five years later, not a single person has been charged with a crime in Haiti.
Host 1 The contrast here is what really exposes the intentional dysfunction of the Haitian courts.
Host 2 It really is.
Host 1 To understand how deeply compromised the system is, we only have to look at the United States. Endo 191 details this stark difference in jurisdiction and capability.
Host 2 Yeah, the numbers are crazy.
Host 1 By September 2026, 18 suspects have been extradited from Haiti to the U.S. In the federal court in Miami, 12 people have already been convicted and dozens more are awaiting trial.
Host 2 Twelve convictions.
Host 1 You have to ask why. Why can a federal court in Florida successfully untangle the conspiracy, secure evidence, and convict a dozen individuals, while the Haitian justice system cannot even formally issue a single charge that sticks?
Host 2 The answer brings us right back to the rigged roulette wheel.
Host 1 Exactly. The U.S. courts aren't subject to the physical relocations, the 1.2 percent budget starvation, or the political case steering of the Port-au-Prince Court of First Instance. Right. The U.S. federal courts are prosecuting the assassination of Haiti's president because Haiti's own courts have been deliberately engineered to fail.
Host 2 But the state doesn't just passively fail to investigate. Sometimes they actively deploy the justice system to intimidate the people asking questions.
Host 1 Yeah, this part is infuriating.
Host 2 Let's look at EndNote 190. RNDDH has been highly critical of the judicial investigation into the Moise assassination.
Host 1 Naturally.
Host 2 They have pointed out the flaws, the delays, and the potential corruption. In response to this advocacy, the state didn't transparently address the concerns.
Host 1 What did they do?
Host 2 Instead, a disproportionate search order was issued, targeting RNDDH's own offices.
Host 1 They raided the advocates.
Host 2 Yes. Civil society advocates like the platform POHDH viewed this as a transparent, heavy-handed attempt to intimidate civil society and cast unjustified suspicion on human rights defenders.
Host 1 Think about the message that sends.
Host 2 Mm-hmm.
Host 1 Instead of finding the killers of the president, the state apparatus is utilized to raid the offices of the people demanding justice.
Host 2 It is a classic tactic of a captured state. RNDDH actually wrote a formal letter to the CSPJ about this entire debacle.
Host 1 Oh, really?
Host 2 Yeah. They highlighted deeply troubling information suggesting that certain actions in the investigation may have involved corrupt practices, including financial transactions between the investigating judge and the defendants themselves.
Host 1 Wait, the judge was taking money from the defendants?
Host 2 Allegedly, yes. When the judge investigating the assassination of a president is allegedly taking money from the defendants, you are dealing with a labyrinth of compromised integrity that no standard legal maneuver can pierce.
Host 1 Wow. And this engineered apathy extends to the massacres that have torn communities apart.
Host 2 It really does.
Host 1 We are not going to rush through this list because it is vital to understand the sheer scale of the trauma that is being legally ignored.
Host 2 Yeah, let's go through it.
Host 1 The investigation into the horrific 2024 Wharf-Jeramee massacre, where armed groups slaughtered civilians, was suspended for five solid months. It finally restarted into March 2026, but the report notes absolutely no material progress has been made.
Host 2 Unbelievable.
Host 1 Then we have the Petro-Caribe corruption scandal, arguably the most significant financial crime in modern Haitian history, where billions of dollars of public funds meant for infrastructure and social programs were squandered and stolen.
Host 2 Billions.
Host 1 A full decade after the first Haitian Senate report detailed that scandal, no one has been convicted.
Host 2 And then there are the targeted assassinations of public figures.
Host 1 Yeah.
Host 2 The voices that dared to speak out, the people who tried to use their platforms to force accountability. We must name them, honoring their memory and acknowledging the void their murders left in the country's civil society.
Host 1 Let's name them.
Host 2 Monferrier d'Orval, the former Porter Prince Bar Association president. A brilliant legal mind who was shot and killed outside his home just hours after publicly denouncing the government's management of the country on a radio broadcast.
Host 1 And Antoinette Duclair, a fierce, dedicated political activist and feminist who fought tirelessly for a more just Haiti. Diego Charles, a courageous investigative journalist who exposed corruption. Both of them were shot and killed by unidentified individuals on June 29th, 2021.
Host 2 June 2021.
Host 1 Over five years later, there is zero information provided to the public or their families about the status of the investigation. No one has been held accountable. End note 196 highlights the organization, Negus Mahon continuously renewing their calls for justice for Antoinette Duclair five years on, shouting into the void of the justice system.
Host 2 The government is deeply aware of how this absolute impunity plays on the international stage, though.
Host 1 Oh, they definitely care about optics.
Host 2 Exactly. They know that to secure foreign aid and maintain diplomatic legitimacy, they must present the illusion of action.
Host 1 The illusion.
Host 2 So they make public commitments to tackling impunity. They draft decrees and announce new initiatives. But the report argues these actions are entirely ineffective at best and deliberately obstructive at worst.
Host 1 It is a carefully constructed facade of reform designed to appease international observers while changing nothing on the ground.
Host 2 Exactly.
Host 1 Let's dismantle that facade and look at the actual mechanisms of these supposed reforms. In April 2025, the transitional government created two specialized judicial units.
Host 2 Sound great on paper.
Host 1 Right. These were meant to specifically investigate and prosecute financial crimes and mass crimes. On paper, it sounds like exactly what the international community asked for. Specialized courts with focused mandates.
Host 2 Yeah, but.
Host 1 But here we are months later and they are still not fully operational. And the delay isn't even the worst part.
Host 2 Oh, the staffing part is wild.
Host 1 Right. And note 199 cites Pierre Esperance writing in Just Security. He points out that some of the specific judges and prosecutors named to staff these new anti-corruption courts have documented histories of the exact behavior they are supposed to be rooting out.
Host 2 This is where the facade becomes truly cynical. Yeah. Esperance specifically names Bernard St. Ville, a selected judge who previously presided over highly sensitive stalled cases involving corruption and armed group violence. Okay. These were cases that had clear signs of insider involvement, where St. Ville allegedly manipulated outcomes by utilizing his authority to steer cases to favored compliant judges.
Host 1 Back to the roulette wheel.
Host 2 Exactly. When a government staffs a brand new, highly touted anti-corruption unit with a judge known for utilizing the rigged roulette wheel to protect elites, you aren't reforming the system. No. You are just rebranding the impunity. You are putting the fox in charge of the newly built hen house and asking the international community to applaud the architecture.
Host 1 And the delays surrounding legislative reform are almost comical if they weren't so profoundly tragic.
Host 2 You mean the penal code?
Host 1 Yes. Let's look at the new penal code. A penal code is the foundational rule book of a justice system. It defines what a crime actually is and dictates the proportional punishment.
Host 2 Right. You need it for modern crimes.
Host 1 Exactly. Haiti's current penal code is antiquated, and modernizing it is essential for prosecuting modern financial and cyber crimes. According to EndNote 197, this new code was adopted by decree in March 2020.
Host 2 Which was a long time ago.
Host 1 It was supposed to be a major step forward. Then its implementation was delayed in 2022. Then it was delayed again in January 2024, pushed back to 2025.
Host 2 Oh, my God.
Host 1 Then delayed again in December 2025. It is now set to go into effect in January 2027.
Host 2 That is just ridiculous.
Host 1 That is a seven-year delay on simply implementing a rule book. At what point does administrative inefficiency cross the line into deliberate calculated obstruction?
Host 2 Well, when you look at the totality of the mechanics that we've discussed, the physical courthouses constantly shifting and losing files, the budget intentionally starved to 1.2 percent, the case assignments steered by compromised presiding judges, the uncharged assassins walking free, the specialized anti-corruption units staffed by the very judges accused of corruption, and a foundational penal code perpetually kicked down the road. You do not see a broken system trying its best. You see a system perfectly calibrated, highly engineered to do exactly nothing.
Host 1 Which brings us to a massive, incredibly dark question that we have to answer.
Host 2 What's that?
Host 1 If the political elites, the armed group leaders, the corrupt officials, and the assassins are all walking free because the courts are intentionally stalled and engineered to protect them, who exactly is filling up Haiti's prisons?
Host 2 Yeah.
Host 1 If the system is paralyzed, who is locked inside these walls?
Host 2 The answer to that question is where the administrative failure of the courts translates into a massive, ongoing, and lethal humanitarian disaster.
Host 1 It's the poorest people.
Host 2 Exactly. The people inside the prisons are the ones without the money to buy a compliant judge or the weapons to intimidate one.
Host 1 Right.
Host 2 The numbers are simply staggering. According to UN statistics detailed in the report, Haiti's prisons are operating at over 300 percent capacity.
Host 1 Let's try to deeply visualize what 300 percent capacity actually means for a human body.
Host 2 It's hard to even picture.
Host 1 I want you, the listener, to look around the room you are currently in. Gauge the square footage. Notice the air you are breathing. The distance between you and the walls.
Host 2 Okay.
Host 1 Now imagine three times as many people as this room was designed for crammed into that exact same space with you. You have barely one square foot of space per person.
Host 2 One square foot.
Host 1 You cannot lie down to sleep. You cannot stretch your arms. The plumbing has failed entirely. The air is stagnant and suffocating. And you are not allowed to leave. For years.
Host 2 And we must connect this back to what we discussed earlier about the armed group attacks on infrastructure.
Host 1 How so?
Host 2 Those attacks didn't just target courts. They forced major prisons to close entirely or be destroyed.
Host 1 Oh, right.
Host 2 So the population of the destroyed prisons was folded into the remaining ones. Now there are only 14 operational prisons left in the entire country. And they are holding approximately 7,294 individuals.
Host 1 That's a huge bottleneck.
Host 2 But here is the most horrifying statistic of all. The absolute crux of this crisis. And it directly connects back to the lost files of the fleeing courthouses.
Host 1 What's the number?
Host 2 82% of the people locked in these hellish conditions are in pre-trial detention.
Host 1 82%. We need to define that clearly. That means 82% of the people trapped in that one square foot of space have never been convicted of a crime.
Host 2 Never convicted.
Host 1 They are legally presumed innocent.
Host 2 Never convicted. Some of them have been waiting for a trial for over 15 years.
Host 1 15 years.
Host 2 Without a trial. Well, let's trace the hypothetical timeline of a 15-year pre-trial detainee. Imagine a young man arrested in 2011 on a minor charge. He is sent to a holding cell to await his preliminary hearing.
Host 1 Okay, 2011.
Host 2 The court clerks go on a multi-month strike due to their 1.2% budget. His hearing is missed. The presiding judge is rotated out. Years pass.
Host 1 Wow.
Host 2 Then the court of first instance comes under gunfire in 2022 and has to flee to Lelou and then to Delma.
Host 1 And we know what happens during those relocations.
Host 2 Exactly. During that chaotic relocation, the physical paper file detailing his arrest, the only proof he legally exists in the judicial matrix, is dropped in the street or left in a burning filing cabinet.
Host 1 So he's lost in the system.
Host 2 He legally ceases to exist. But physically, he is still locked in a cell. He is stuck for 15 years, unconvicted, because the system fundamentally forgot him.
Host 1 It's suffocating just to mentally process that reality. To really understand the human toll of this administrative erasure, the report and the experts spend a significant amount of time focusing on one specific facility, Sermacol.
Host 2 Yes, Sermacol.
Host 1 That acronym stands for the Rehabilitation Center for Minors in Conflict with the Law. The name itself is profoundly tragic when you realize what the facility has become.
Host 2 Sermacol was designed specifically for children. It was built with specialized dimensions, a specific layout, and a hard capacity designed to hold 93 children.
Host 1 93 kids.
Host 2 It was supposed to be a place of rehabilitation. But because of the collapse of the other major prisons in the capital, it was entirely co-opted.
Host 1 It became the only option.
Host 2 Exactly. It is now the only official prison still operating in the Port-au-Prince area. So a specialized facility designed for 93 youths is now warehousing an enormous, entirely mixed population of adults and children.
Host 1 Let's compare the figures from the sources to get a true sense of the chaos and the rapid deterioration. The UN reports that as of late 2025, there were 617 people crammed into Sermacol.
Host 2 Which is crazy.
Host 1 That is already nearly seven times its capacity. But the Haitian organization, Defensores Plus, conducted their own grueling investigation on the ground. And their situational report from July 2026 puts the number even higher.
Host 2 What did they find?
Host 1 They report 778 individuals detained in that single facility. They break that down demographically. 154 women, 95 children, and 529 men. All crammed into a space engineered for 93 kids.
Host 2 The physical conditions described by Defensores Plus in Note 202 are a waking nightmare.
Host 1 You can't even imagine.
Host 2 Severe overcrowding at a ratio of 8 to 1 means there is literally nowhere to put a human body. People are sleeping in the hallways. They are sleeping in the shower areas, meaning those areas can no longer be used for hygiene.
Host 1 So there's no sanitation.
Host 2 None. They are sleeping in the infirmary, surrounded by the sick. The report notes some detainees are, quote, forced to sleep suspended in a sheet tied to the bars or the ceiling, creating makeshift hammocks because there is absolutely no floor space left.
Host 1 Suspended in sheets.
Host 2 Yeah. And because the facility has been entirely co-opted without any structural modifications, women and children continue to be held in the exact same facility as adult men.
Host 1 That is just so dangerous.
Host 2 Children are forced to share cells with adults, which is a gross, fundamental violation of international law. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and basic human decency. It exposes them to unimaginable trauma.
Host 1 And the state provides almost absolutely nothing to keep these people alive. The humanitarian disaster inside these walls isn't just about discomfort. It is lethal.
Host 2 Deadly.
Host 1 The UN reported at least 125 deaths in Haiti's prisons since January 2026 alone. 125 people dead in just a few months. And we have to be extremely clear here. These are not executions by the state.
Host 2 No, they are dying of starvation, severe dehydration and entirely preventable diseases.
Host 1 Which is just as deliberate.
Host 2 Endnotes 210 and 211 detail this grim, mechanical reality of neglect. The state simply does not provide incarcerated persons with adequate access to food, potable water, basic sanitation or health care.
Host 1 They lock them up and abandon them.
Host 2 When the state locks you in a cage and refuses to feed you, they are effectively sentencing you to death by starvation. Detainees depend almost entirely on their family members braving the armed groups outside to bring them food. Or on civil society organizations. Or on the mercy of fellow detainees just to eat a single meal or drink a cup of water.
Host 1 We have a blunt, devastating quote from Michelle Karshan, the executive director of Alternative Chance, in the endnotes. She says plainly regarding the national prisons. They don't feed you and they don't give you water.
Host 2 It's that simple.
Host 1 The economic extortion of this neglect is horrifying. Defensor Plus notes that the water supply frequently depends on sporadic donations from religious leaders. Some detainees become so desperate they have to save small amounts of the contaminated shower water just to drink.
Host 2 Oh, that's horrific.
Host 1 Think about the economics of this. If you are poor and you lack outside support from family or charities, you are disproportionately impacted. You are essentially left to starve. The report notes that some detainees are forced to buy their drinking water inside the prison for 250 to 500 gourds a container.
Host 2 The physical consequences of this deprivation are exactly what you would expect.
Host 1 Sickness.
Host 2 If you drink contaminated shower water or if you simply live in a space with eight times the human density it was designed for with no working plumbing, you get sick. And if you get sick, there is no help coming.
Host 1 No infirmary.
Host 2 Health care is virtually non-existent. There is no effective screening, no medication, and no physical space to quarantine individuals with highly infectious diseases like tuberculosis or cholera.
Host 1 Wow.
Host 2 In the Jacques Mel prison, as explicitly noted in EndNote 209, there were serious and deadly ventilation problems that actually caused literal cases of asphyxiation.
Host 1 You mean they suffocated?
Host 2 People suffocated to death because there was no oxygen left in the room.
Host 1 Oh, my God.
Host 2 In Gnaive, the prison flooded after heavy rains, leaving detainees standing in toxic water. When you combine starvation, absolute lack of potable water, rampant infectious disease, zero ventilation and flooding, that death toll of 125 people isn't an accident. It is the mathematical certainty of the conditions.
Host 1 And this raises a massive, immediate logistical concern regarding the new international security forces operating in the country. The expert points this out clearly based on urgent warnings from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, in EndNote 207.
Host 2 Yes.
Host 1 If the new gang suppression force, the GSF, starts conducting massive offensive operations, clearing neighborhoods, and arresting hundreds of suspected armed group members, where exactly do they go?
Host 2 It is an impossible math problem. The GSF made its first official arrests in mid-June 2026 and transferred those individuals to the custody of the Haitian National Police.
Host 1 Right.
Host 2 The ICRC practically sounded an alarm, warning that any sudden increase in imprisoned people would catastrophically overwhelm a system that is already operating at over 300% capacity.
Host 1 There is physically no room.
Host 2 The system literally cannot legally, administratively, or physically absorb a single new human being.
Host 1 So, what's the point?
Host 2 Exactly. Arresting armed group members is a completely futile exercise in statecraft if the justice system is paralyzed and cannot try them, and the prison system is just a concrete death trap that physically cannot fit another body inside its doors. You cannot enforce the law if you have nowhere to put the people who break it.
Host 1 And death trap is sadly the most accurate clinical term we can use, not just because of the starvation and the disease, but because of the extreme, unchecked violence inside.
Host 2 The violence is just constant.
Host 1 As we look deeper into the end notes in this next segment, we have to talk about what happens when human beings are treated like animals in these confined spaces, stripped of all rights and oversight.
Host 2 Yeah.
Host 1 I want to preface this by saying we are going to handle this information with restraint, but we absolutely less center the brave Haitian voices documenting this reality. We cannot look away from what they are risking their own lives to tell us.
Host 2 That is entirely right. Because the extreme deprivation of food, water, and physical space creates a hyper-stressful environment where extreme violence flourishes as a means of survival and dominance.
Host 1 Right.
Host 2 Incarcerated persons in Haiti are at substantial daily risk of severe violence, not just from fellow detainees fighting over a scrap of food or a foot of sleeping space, but systematically from the police and prison officials themselves.
Host 1 Advocates have documented horrifying systemic abuses.
Host 2 We are talking about severe beatings of individuals in custody by police officers, rampant gender-based violence against detained women, and targeted sexual exploitation by guards who control access to survival resources.
Host 1 It's all about control.
Host 2 We see a highly specific incident pulled from an RNDDH report in EndNote 217. Let's return to Lagunov, the same island municipality where we noted the courts have no electricity or paper.
Host 1 Yeah, out of sight.
Host 2 In that same area, police officers tied up and severely beat three men they had detained inside a police station. The beating was so severe that one of those men died from his injuries right there in custody.
Host 1 In custody. In another documented incident, in the same end note, police beat two men during an arrest so brutally they broke one man's ribs before he ever saw a judge.
Host 2 And because the official recognized prisons like Cermicol are overflowing beyond capacity, authorities are constantly improvising.
Host 1 And improvisation is dangerous.
Host 2 This improvisation leads to even less oversight and even darker outcomes. They are incarcerating people in makeshift, entirely unregulated cells in local police stations for months on end.
Host 1 Wow.
Host 2 EndNote 204 cites the work of human rights defender Bertid Horace, who uncovered something deeply disturbing. She reported that two individuals arrested for alleged affiliation with armed groups weren't even taken to a police station or recognized jail. They were kept detained in a residential house.
Host 1 A house?
Host 2 When the state begins detaining people in a random house, completely outside of any official registry, standard protocol, or standardized facility, they fall into a legal black hole.
Host 1 Nobody knows they're there.
Host 2 The risk for unchecked torture, disappearance, and absolute abuse skyrockets because there is no logbook, no warden, and no official record of their presence.
Host 1 The Endnotes also detail the specific findings from specialized groups like Alternative Chance, run by Michelle Karshen and AHDDP, the Haitian Association for the Defense of Prisoners' Rights, directed by Leroy Michel.
Host 2 Yeah, their work is critical.
Host 1 The details of the sexual violence they document are harrowing. Detained women face an incredibly high risk of rape and other forms of gender-based violence, often coerced by guards offering water or food in exchange for sexual acts.
Host 2 It's complete extortion.
Host 1 But the documentation also highlights the severe targeted vulnerability of gay men in these confined spaces. Michelle Karshen explicitly noted that in the now-closed Omega prison, officials actually designated specific areas for the rape of gay men by fellow detainees to occur.
Host 2 Designated areas.
Host 1 We're not just talking about guards turning a blind eye. We are talking about prison officials actively facilitating the spatial organization of sexual violence.
Host 2 It is institutionalized cruelty at its most profound level. Leroy Michel from AHDEDP states the reality plainly in Endnote 216. Quote, Cases of violence and serious mistreatment in detention happen every day.
Host 1 Every single day.
Host 2 It is the daily, ambient reality of the space. And as the report urgently notes, the children detained alongside adults in places like Sermico are particularly uniquely vulnerable to all of these forms of abuse.
Host 1 Because they're completely unprotected.
Host 2 Exactly. The victims of this violence largely refrain from seeking any legal recourse because they fear immediate reprisals. And rationally, why would they report it? Who do you report an abusive guard to when that exact same guard controls whether you get your 250-gourd cup of water that day? And the judge who was supposed to hear your case hasn't been seen in years. Impunity is not just a concept for the political elites. Impunity is the absolute governing norm inside the prison walls.
Host 1 Which really brings me to a point of profound, genuine respect. I want you, the listener, to reflect for a second on the immense, staggering courage it takes to document these facts.
Host 2 It's truly amazing.
Host 1 Think about the mechanics of what it means for organizations like RNDDH, Défenseur Plus, the BAI, AHDEDP, and local Haitian journalists to actually do this work. They are physically walking into these overflowing, disease-ridden, violent facilities.
Host 2 Yeah.
Host 1 They are sitting down in the dark and interviewing survivors who are terrified to speak. They are taking meticulous notes on the abuses committed by the very police officers standing right outside the cell door.
Host 2 Right next to them.
Host 1 And then they compile this data and publish these facts for the world to see in a country where impunity is the norm and state-sanctioned violence is common.
Host 2 It puts a massive, undeniable target on their backs. Remember the disproportionate search order executed against RNDDH's offices we discussed earlier regarding the assassination investigation?
Host 1 Yes. The raid.
Host 2 That is the state's direct response to this kind of bravery. It is intimidation meant to silence them. But despite the raids, the threats, and the kidnappings, they keep doing the work. They keep publishing the data.
Host 1 They keep doing it. This data, these numbers, these incredibly hard quotes we are reading to you today, they are a testament to an unbreakable Haitian resilience.
Host 2 They really are.
Host 1 They are a testament to a relentless, unyielding demand for human rights, even when the entire state apparatus meant to guarantee those rights has completely collapsed. It is an incredible, awe-inspiring bravery to demand the rule of law from a state that has abandoned it.
Host 2 It is the absolute insistence that, even in the darkest, most forgotten, most overcrowded corners of a broken system, human dignity still matters. It is the belief that the truth still has to be told, recorded, and witnessed, regardless of the danger.
Host 1 And that truth is incredibly heavy today. We have covered a lot of dark ground in this hour. Courts barely function. The most important cases go nowhere. And the prisons hold thousands who have never been tried.
Host 2 We have been deep in the mechanics and the details of the report Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Haiti, key recent developments, March through September, 2026. And as we wrap up this specific deep dive into the courts and prisons, I want to leave you with a final thought to mull over, extending beyond the immediate visceral crisis detailed in these pages.
Host 1 What's that?
Host 2 We have spent this time talking about a justice system that doesn't just passively fail due to lack of funds, but is actively, intentionally weaponized to protect the guilty and torture the innocent. Right. The profound question we have to ask ourselves looking forward is this. How does a society begin to trust the concept of the law again once the crisis is finally over? When the very institutions meant to deliver justice, the judges, the courts, the prisons, were the primary instruments of your oppression, how do you rebuild?
Host 1 It's a huge question.
Host 2 Can you rebuild a house using the very tools that tore it down? It is a generational psychological challenge that goes far, far beyond just pouring concrete and opening a new courthouse.
Host 1 Next time, in episode six, the report turns to women and girls and the sexual violence armed groups use as a weapon. It is a hard episode and we will treat it with care. Until then, this has been Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Haiti. Key Recent Developments 2026. The Deep Dive from Zio on the NEHG Mawang podcast.