Resistance in the Time of Cholera: The Limits of Stabilization through Securitization in Haiti

Abstract

The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is the latest of seven UN missions in the country, stretching over 20 years of international involvement. If the UN's Security Sector Reform (SSR) mission has had a ‘stabilizing’ influence on the country following Aristide's forced exile since 2004, a string of sexual scandals and the cholera scandal has progressively contributed to modify the local perception of the mission, seen as yet another foreign ‘occupation’ in Haiti. This article argues that while the resistance to the UN in Haiti is clearly contextual – linked to certain events and actions of certain individuals – it is also, and more fundamentally, structural in form. The article explores themes around the local resistance encountered by the UN in Haiti, using James Scott's multi-levelled approach of the landscape of resistance to highlight the complex nature of statebuilding in Haiti, while linking the more recent form of resistance to MINUSTAH to the specific securitization approach adopted by the mission and its restrictive mindset.