Earlier last week, United Nations agency, the International Organization for Migration, said that they were going to open a care and resource center to serve the vulnerable population in the Punta Cana area. The announcement of the opening of the CARE center generated great controversy.
The invitation signed by the head of the IOM mission in the Dominican Republic, Josué Gastelbondo Amaya, indicated that this center is part of the work of the IOM “as a cooperation agency in the country for the fair and regular orderly management of migration.”
The UN Chief of Mission in the Dominican Republic, Josue Gastelbondo Amaya, told reporters that their task was for “organized, fair, and regulated management (of refugees).
Apparently, there was a lot of confusion regarding this statement.
President Luis Abinader was prompt to state in no uncertain terms that the Dominican Republic will continue to deport illegal Haitian immigrants and that he will not authorize any refugee camps in the country. These statements were part of an interview with a reporter from the BBC program “Hardtalk.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has asked the Dominican Republic to cease the deportation of undocumented, illegal Haitians residing in the country.
Abinader told the BBC that it was the United Nations that needed to act more effectively. He recalled that for the past three years, he (Abinader) has been calling for international assistance for Haiti, noting that the Dominican Republic was the first to call the situation in the neighboring country a case of “Somalization,” referring to the terrible situation of chaos in Somalia in Africa.
Nearly every Dominican politician has issued a statement rejecting the proposal from the United Nations for refugee camps in the Dominican Republic.
The Ministry of the Interior and the Police (MIP) reported on Friday that the UN agency had decided not to inaugurate the Center for Attention and Resources for Migrants (CARE) on Saturday, 23 March 2024.
And to further muddy the waters, the United Nations Refugee Agency issued a 106-page report on how the Dominican Republic violates human rights by deporting Haitians that are in the country illegally.
Meanwhile, in Haiti, the violence continues to grow, and thousands abandon the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Dominican military aircraft and commercial aircraft have evacuated dozens of Dominicans and persons of other nationalities from Haitian territory.
The Ministry of Foreign Relations, nevertheless, defended the opening of the office and says the office has been open since December 2023. The Ministry of Foreign Relations says the services offered by the office help to lighten the burden of the Dominican government in dealing with irregular migration and in no way impedes the application of General Migration Law. A Ministry of Foreign Relations statement indicates the International Migration Organization has never prevented the Dominican state from exercising its sovereign powers.
Listin Diario reports that thousands of undocumented Haitians live and work in Punta Cana. Indeed, most resorts were built by the undocumented Haitian labor that accepted to live in barracks. Clusters of Haitians have stayed in the area and thousands have found jobs in the resorts themselves.
An editorial in El Caribe recalls the international pressures the Dominican government faces from other countries in regards to Dominican solutions to the Haitian-created problems.
Read more in Spanish:
Noticias SIN
El Caribe
El Caribe
Ministry of Foreign Relations
Listin Diario
Hoy
Noticias SIN
Listin Diario
Listin Diario
Listin Diario
Diario Libre
Diario Libre
25 March 2024