Members’ question time: What’s happening in Haiti?

Ben Horton

Hello, and welcome to today’s Chatham House virtual event. It’s wonderful to welcome you to this, which is the first event in a new format that we’ve been working on here at Chatham House. Thank you very much for joining us. My name is Ben Horton. I’m the Head of the Director’s Office here at Chatham House. I’m very excited, personally, to be unleashed upon our events programme with this series. I’m not sure what the Events Team know that they’ve – they’ve got themselves into, but thanks very much for the invitation to do this.

So, as I said, this format is a new one for us. It’s designed to be completely driven by our audience, by you, our members. It’s an opportunity to get your questions answered by the experts that we have here at Chatham House. We’ll be hearing shortly from today’s speaker, Dr Chris Sabatini, who will be, sort of, setting the scene for us before we then dive straight into a whole series of really fascinating questions which have been presented to us ahead of this event by members. But also, we will hope to cover as many questions as you might have for us, as well, during this session.

So, firstly, just a little bit of housekeeping. This discussion is on the record today and is being recorded. I believe the recording will be shared with members after this, or at least will be made available to them. If you’d like to tweet about this event or any of the things that you hear, please do. Tweet us using the hashtag #CHEvents and @ChathamHouse. Chris and I are both on X as well, so, yeah, find us and include us. Always welcome any feedback that you might have through social media.

So, before we dive into the topic, I just wanted to emphasise that we are very much looking forward to your questions today, as well as the questions that we’ve had submitted in advance. You can submit questions in two different ways. You can share them in the Q&A box that will appear at the bottom of your Zoom screen if you just want me to read them out. However, if you would like to raise a question and ask it yourself, please when I invite people to do so, please, sort of, raise a hand and a member of our Technical Team will enable you to unmute so that you can ask your question directly to Chris.

At the end of the event, we will be having a short, sort of, poll just because we’d love to know what you guys think about what you’ve heard so far and your general reflections on our topic today, which is, of course, “What’s Happening in Haiti?” We will cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m not a poll aficionado, but essentially, the poll will appear on your screen and then, you’ll have an opportunity to vote on your answer as well, and then we’ll reflect a bit on the results that we get there.

Okay. So, onto the subjects of our discussion today. So, I think it’s very easy to be distracted by, you know, the major, kind of, pressing challenges ongoing, of course, in our newsfeeds at the moment. Of course, the situation in Gaza and the various other ongoing crises, Ukraine, which have been dominating so much of the world’s attention. But as we saw earlier this year, in March, the, sort of, violence and crisis is not just confined to those places, unfortunately. And we wanted to start with the situation in Haiti for this series because it very much erupted back into the attention of us here through our news cycle in the past month, as widespread violence broke out across the capital of Port-au-Prince.

So, we’re here today to answer all of your questions about what that crisis means, what exactly has been going on on the ground and what – who the different players are, and what the likely scenarios are for Haiti moving forward. I think, obviously, it’s a bit of a complicated situation, but I’m delighted that we have Chris Sabatini with us today to make sense of it all. Chris is Chatham House’s Senior Research Fellow for Latin America and a Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics. Chris, thank you so much for joining us today with your excellently on brand background. Much appreciated. Our Comms Team will be delighted.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Thank you, Ben. First of all, I want to thank our very entrepreneurial Events Team, Tom Chapell and Moora Heil, for their initiative on this. It’s – the idea is a conversation and I’m – hope to get started. When they pitched the idea to me, they said, “We have a new idea. Would you like to be the guinea pig?” And I said, “Sure. I mean, nothing ever bad happens to lab animals, so happy to do that.” So – but I hope it goes well and the idea is to hear your thoughts. So – but let me start out a little bit on this is, I’ve been going and traveling to Haiti since 1997. I won’t take you all the way back in my experiences, although some of my experiences will affect and colour what I’m going to say in this brief five minutes.

And I won’t take you back to the independence of Haiti in 190 – 1804 when the French Government sued the Haitian, the new Haitian Government for the equivalent today of £140 million, just for – just to be independent, which is then ballooned to several hundred million – billion dollars, by the way, in today’s dollars. Won’t take you back to the Duvalier years when – sort of, the pattern of creating private militias and gangs was created in 1964 with the Tonton Macoute. And I won’t take you back, also, to the 28 years of cycles of interruptions and interventions post-Duvalier. The truth is, and this will be a common theme, is the international community has not served Haiti well, even going back to its independence.

What I’m going to do is start with the murder, the assassination of Jovenel Moïse. This occurred in July 7th 2021, and to be honest, the assassination occurred in his house with his wife, who was also shot, but he, himself, was not a pristine figure. He had postponed elections to an indefinite date. Elections had not been held in Haiti since 2015 and he was planning on holding a referendum on whether to rewrite a constitution that he, himself, had drafted in a closed group. But he also had ties to gangs himself, stemming back from his predecessor, proto – and his mentor, Michel Martelly.

And so there, you know, this context of Politicians with gangs has been a chronic feature in Haitian politics. Gangs, illicit groups, serve to deliver justice against – or revenge, better put, against political rivals. It helped build client holistic networks and also helped conduct, if you will, politics and economics by other means, to misquote Clausewitz. And that’s been a prominent feature. And so, what happened with his assassination in 2021 was a recently nominated, but not yet sworn in Vice President, Ariel Henry, who was a relatively unknown Neurosurgeon, became the Interim President. This was in 2021, and things quickly spun out of control. Many people didn’t see him as a legitimate President. The – who was – the authors behind the assassination in 2021 was never clear. The Haitian justice system has spun its wheels trying to find someone, even accusing his wife, his widow now, of being behind it somehow. They did arrest about a half dozen Colombian assassins, but who had hired them? We don’t know.

And so, Ariel, became very deeply unpopular and by October 2023, it was clear that something had to be done. Gangs had filled the vacuum left by, basically, Moïse’s assassination and Ariel Henry’s lack of popularity and the lack of any elected government. As I mentioned, elections hadn’t been held since 2015. Parliament had been dissolved. There was no effective government in a very weak state. At the same time, the Police Force in Haiti, for a country of 11.4 million people, had been reduced to 9,000 Police. And there’s really only a very, very small standing army, and 3,000 of those Police Officers, before it used to be 12,000, had defected because the security situation was so wrong.

What changed, too, in this was criminal groups moved from just being, if you will, arms of Politicians, to become political actors on their own. One particularly charismatic former Police Officer, gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, became, sort of, this – he formed an alliance, what became the G9 Family, with another actually coup leader, Guy Philippe, who had staged a coup in 2004 against Former President Aristide and then had recently been sprung from prison for money laundering from the United States.

They formed this alliance, and Chérizier with – you know, appearing in the media, appearing with a – toting a gun, was the man, by the way, who had been sanctioned by the UN for human rights violations and well-documented massacres, began to say that he was speaking for the people. He really rode the disillusionment and dis – unpopularity of Henry and the vacuum, to project his own political career. He’s also nicknamed ‘the Barbecue’, which unfortunately is – I’d assumed it was really something more sinister, but it’s because his mother actually was well-known for chicken barbecues. Less, you know, dirty than I’d assumed. But he’s now become a major player.

So, what’s happened since? The gangs have taken over 80% of Port-au-Prince. They’ve now seized the airport. They have invade – they broke about 4,500 prisoners out of two prisons in and around Port-au-Prince. They now control all the major routes outside Port-au-Prince. 60% of the humanitarian assistance that was being delivered to Haiti was being delivered – actually was being captured and delivered by the criminal gangs to groups. So, they’ve become an effective state, and more than that, they’ve moved their presence from many of the slums of Port-au-Prince to more – from – which is Carrefour and Cité Soleil, to, in many cases, the middle-class neighbourhoods of Pétion-Ville. So, they’ve really become a presence and a force to be reckoned with.

What happened? This occurred while, basically, Henry was in Kenya trying to plead with the Kenyan Government to fulfil a commitment that was made in October 2023, for a UN mission to travel to Haiti. Now, the problem is there’d been two previous missions to Haiti, and I’ll be very quick on this, and I’ll end you on a few points so we can get to your questions. Both of those had failed miserably, and they had left scars in terms of UN missions that had actually caused a cholera outbreak, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Haitians. Many Haitian – many of the multilateral forces had been killed, 96 in a 2010 earthquake.

So, unfortunately, the US and the powers that be, outsourced this multilateral force and they enlisted Kenya, whom they promised to pay a $100 million to send 1,000 Police Officers to Haiti. Not speaking the language, Police Officers confronting gangs that were armed to the teeth, by the way, thanks to sales of US gun laws and loose US gun laws. Primarily those guns come from Louisiana and Florida. Just a brief advertisement on gun control there, but also, what happened then was Henry couldn’t return to the country.

So, what’s happened since is the international community has forced a Transition Council of seven people in two alternates. Most of those transition people are Politicians or businessmen from the old guard. They’re not new faces and there’s only one woman on that entire council. The idea was that they would then – once they were established, they would appoint a President, a new President, and an international force will come in. Well, as you can understand, Haiti’s – rather, Kenya’s gotten cold feet. The Haitian gangs are saying that they’re not represented on this council. They want to have a seat at the table, even though a few of them have ties, indirectly, to these Politicians, and so, we’re in a holding pattern.

At the same time, just recently, 50,000 Haitians had to flee Port-au-Prince because of the violence, and there’s now about 1.6 million Haitians that are facing famine. The situation is dire. The international community is paralysed, largely overtaken by other very serious problems. At the same time, the US, while it’s providing some assistance to the Police there, has really outsourced this, as has Canada, as has the EU, as has much of the developed world. So, I want to leave you with that and leave you at the end with a few questions about what can be done. So, with that, I’m going to turn it over to questions, honouring the spirit of this interesting initiative. Go ahead.

Ben Horton

Chris, thank you so much for that overview. All very clear, all very worrying. So, I’ll get straight into our first question then, if I may, which – and I might build on it a bit myself. But we had a question come in from Emily Thompson who asked, “What in your opinion would be the most effective method of getting Haiti’s armed groups back to a negotiating table to engage with them to stop this violence?” And I suppose, if I can just add a – sort of, tack a bit onto the end of that question, what ultimately, is the endgame for these groups? Like, what are they trying to get out of this situation? Do they expect to be running the Government? Is it something else? I mean, it seems like a – that this situation can’t really be in their interest either, in it ongoing for a long time.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Yeah, I think the first question – answer to Emily’s question is, should they be at the table? I mean, these are, you know, Guy Philippe has served jail time for money laundering. He’s deeply involved in narcotics trafficking. I can tell stories about witnessing narcotics traffickers cutting deal out in the open in restaurants in Port-au-Prince. So, should they be given a seat at the table? What does this mean in terms of recreating with international, or in premature, a criminal state run by, effectively, gangsters? But it goes to the question then, is how – but they have to be dealt with, and they have to be dealt with primarily in the issue of security, of establishing some, sort of, presence that re-establishes state control, the rule of law, over much of the island, or the – well, say, half an island. So, the half the island that is Haiti, I suppose.

The second is the question is what is the end game? And clearly, as I mentioned, Ben, it’s a good question. They’re clearly moving into more of a political, even partisan protagonist role. Guy Philippe staged a coup in, as I mentioned, 2004. He was running for President, looked like he would probably win, but Chérizier is – comes from more of a, sort of, left-wing. When he appears in the media and he likes to appear in the media, he often does it with a backdrop of Che Guevara. He’s talking about social justice, although to be honest, these people are extorting the poor. So, they’re hardly great advocates of social justice, but they clearly want to be players now. And it’s difficult, given this vacuum, especially even now, with the Transitional Council, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which they won’t play somewhat – some sort of role, even if it’s just extorting concessions from the international community.

Ben Horton

That’s great. Thank you so much. Now, our next question has come in from Margaret Boca, who wants to ask something about the international response to this. And she notes that a whole range of countries, “Canada, Benin, France Jamaica,” and then obviously, “Kenya,” which you’ve already mentioned, “are in the process of trying to form some sort of security force that could bring order to Haiti. And she’d like to know, how far away do you think we are from something like that happening from an international intervention that could, effectively, stabilise the situation?” Is this, sort of, pie in the sky?

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Thank you, Margaret. It’s a great question because, first of all, as I tried to, as I tried to, you know, hint, the Kenyans were sending Police Forces, not security, and they’re going up against well-armed brutal gangs. So, first of all, it has to require some sort of armed response, a security response, and the mandate has to be much more powerful from the UN. And the – again, I used this word before, you know, the US and Canada and others outsourcing of this to the Kenyans was deeply unfair and they also severely underfunded it. The US was only going to pay about $200 million for this security force. It’s now upped the ante to $330 million, still insufficient, and they were hoping to get contributions from the Caribbean and from West Africa. Clearly, the truth is there needs to be real boots on the ground and I hate to sound dire about this, but it’s going to require re-taking territory.

Sure, some of the gangs and their foot soldiers are poorly equipped young teens, sort of, enlisted or – into gangs, who will quickly, you know, retreat back into the slums, but the truth is these gangs have – really are feeling their power right now. It’s going to require real force. And if I can be, again, set up on a soapbox, it requires United States, Canada and – you know, again, France sued for peace in 1804. Where are the French? And unfortunately, Brazilians and the Chileans, who had manned an earlier, and led an earlier UN force, are also not particularly enthusiastic in getting in and it’s understandable. They paid a very high price in terms of Diplomats and their Soldiers’ lives, but someone has to step up and it can’t be left just to the Kenyans.

Ben Horton

That’s great, yeah. I mean, we had a whole range of questions about what the different, sort of, stakeholders internationally are likely to do in this situation. I think you covered quite a lot of that there, but could you maybe give us a bit more on the US’ role in resolving this? And do you think there are any prospects for the Biden administration to actually, sort of, raise this up their priorities list? That’s based on a question from Jack Otieno.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Yeah, Jack, it’s a good question, and first of all, the standard response, and you just Google this and you’ll see, you know, “Haiti Blinken, Haiti White House,” and it’s – the response has to come from the Haitians, and they’re right. That was probably – the problem with past interventions missions is that it wasn’t driven directly by Haitians, but that raises the questions, which Haitians? And again, that nine member, or seven member, Transition Council is largely the ancien régime. These are not fresh faces. They – many of them do have ties themselves to the gangs.

And the truth is, to get to the point, is that the US has to lead on this. It – I understand and accept that Haiti – that solution has to come from Haiti, but it – and it also has to come from neighbours. The CARICOM, the Community of Caribbean Nations were the ones who’d gather diplomats together to, basically, foresee resignation of Ariel Henry and to form a Transition Council. But the US has to step up and it has to take it back to the UN ‘cause the truth is the UN’s mandate of 2023 was actually quite weak. It needs a stronger mandate and it’s going to need leadership that goes beyond just a Haitian admirably defined solution.

Ben Horton

Fantastic, thank you. We’ve had a couple of questions come in through the Q&A box. Thanks everyone who submitted them. Keep them coming. Two of them actually touch on the question of what this means for the Dominican Republic and any, kind of, likelihood or prospects for the instability spreading to the rest of the island.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Another good question. So, first of all, it’s quite telling that when Henry was trying to make his way back into Haiti, he wasn’t allowed back in because the gangs had seized the airport. He tried then – he tried to divert his flight to land in the Dominican Republic and the Dominican Republic said, “No, we” – and he ended up in Puerto Rico, actually, because they simply don’t want to be involved in this mess. There’s a long tradition of tension between Haiti and the Dominican Republic and sadly, a very long tradition of racism among the Dominicans against Haitians, even Dominicans of Haitian descent. Some of them have been sent back and had their citizenship rejected.

They’ve armed the border, but, you know, this is a very delicate situation. First of all, there are elections this year in the Dominican Republic presidential elections. This has always been a very hot topic. The – unfortunately, the Haitians have always been, sort of, a way of placing blame for insecurity. We will probably expect to see this, sort of, wrapped around the election, but, you know, this is a – comes at a time when Dominican Republic’s economy is growing very, very well, it’s doing very well. People are going to see this as a drag on the economy, but there’s a real risk of hardening that border across the island that will, again, result in more human rights abuses and more examples of violence for reasons of undocumented migration and racism.

Ben Horton

Yeah, thank you so much. And actually, just on that last point you made there about migration, we have a question in from Terri, which is – she’s just asking, “What effect might this crisis have on the so-called crisis at the southern border of the United States in an election year? Are we going to see flows of refugees from Haiti? Where will those people end up? Is a lot of it internal displacement?”

Dr Christopher Sabatini

That’s a good point, and hello. The – first, it is going to play into elections. You know, if you’d only look back in 1994 when there’s a coup against Aristide and – there was fear of having a dramatic outflow of Haitian refugees to Florida, to the South, and creating a backlash against Bill Clinton’s re-election. That’s very much present. Unfortunately, and this is not pretty news, I’m very saddened to say, the US is already making arrangements to have any refugees from Haiti housed in Guantanamo. Not the prisons, but still in Guantanamo, yes.

You know, quite frankly, if I can offer a policy proposal here, if I can be so bold, you know, the truth is, you know, as I mentioned, the guns that are arming many of these gangs are coming from the United States, primarily from states that have very loose gun laws, Florida, Louisiana, and Georgia. Those are also the states that will experience a large influx of migrants. Personally, if I were advocating for something, I guess, I’m doing it in my own small way here, I would like to see those states that supply the guns that will be most affected by immigration, put forward their National Guard forces. This doesn’t have to be a US Defence Force. This could be a localised reaction under the terms of international rule of law, to protect and defend Haitians in Haiti before they arrive and challenge, I guess, I would even say a very toxic, at best, immigration debate in the United States right now.

Ben Horton

Chris, thank you. We’ve got many, many questions still coming in.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Uh-oh.

Ben Horton

And I’m very short on time.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

I’ll talk faster then, if I can. More talking.

Ben Horton

Yeah. No, no, no, no, I mean, I massively appreciate all of this, and we’ll get through as many as we can. But I just wanted to come back to this question of the past international interventions that maybe haven’t been successful. We have a question in from Anita asking, why we have seen “the international humanitarian assistance in Haiti fail to really have an effect.” She said, “Even after the earthquake in 2010, there were real problems with funds pledged internationally actually reaching the right people in Haiti,” and she just asked, “Why is this – why has this failure been seen over a number of years?”

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Okay. Each of these questions and their answers could take even more than an hour, but I’m going to try to deal – ‘cause this is something that I’ve dealt with and written about a lot and it goes to the heart of something I feel very passionately about. The problem, primarily, has been that most of the donor assistance that has gone to Haiti has bypassed the Government. It was too messy, too complicated, risks of. You know, misspent taxpayer money from any number of countries are contributing were too great. So, they channelled it through international NGOs. That had several effects. First of all, it created what the Former President of the World Bank described as “a nation of NGOs.” It never developed a state that had the capacity to not just govern, but to deliver social safety nets, deliver public goods like education and healthcare. It was entirely reliant on, again, a nation of international NGOs. So, it never developed even the capacity within local NGOs. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that much of the international assistance was focused on getting to the next election. Elections, and this is one of the problems I fear – I mean, you know, I’m pro-democracy, I’m pro-human rights. I used to work at the National Endowment for Democracy, but the truth is, is for many – for past interventions, the hope was always to get to the next election. To create an Electoral Council, invest a lot of money in election – international election monitoring in a council, and that then, things would solve themselves. The problem is those two things didn’t align. Not creating a state and state capacity to deliver humanitarian assistance and hoping to jam the country through to elections to then pack up and call it quits, were a disaster. And that’s the fault of a number of the donors. It’s not the fault of the Haitian Government, it’s not the fault of the Haitian people, certainly, but that money was severely misspent, even if it had at best, the best intentions.

Ben Horton

Chris, that’s so clear. Thank you. I could have listened to you for an hour on that. So, maybe we can do that after this.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Don’t get me started, man.

Ben Horton

So, I think I’m going to combine two more questions here and then, we’ll move onto our poll and our, kind of, concluding thoughts. And it really brings us back to these major disruptive players that we’ve been speaking about, namely these gangs. So, Sam Wilkin has asked, “why” it is that “the violence in Haiti is so intractable?” And asks, kind of, related to that, “What ultimately is sustaining and supporting these gangs? Is it illicit economies, drug trade? Are they getting foreign funding from different actors? Why are they able to maintain what they’re doing?”

And then maybe a related question, Emily Thompson has asked us, “Are there any lessons that can be learnt from elsewhere in the region in governments learning how to deal with gang violence of this nature?” She particularly mentions “lessons from the negotiations in Colombia with FARC,” but there may be other lessons we might need to allude to.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Okay. First, let me start with Sam’s. You know, the roots of the violence, let’s put it – there are many. Again, as I said, there’s a long history of Politicians using gangs for their own partisan purposes and their own client holistic purposes. That has continued and Politicians have their own gangs lined up. Aristide referred to his gang as the ‘chimè’, the ‘chimères’ and they would exact, you know, his partisan justice on opponents. So, there’s that history. The second is poverty. 69% of Haitians are poor. They don’t have much – and if you look demographically, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, nor would I want to bore you with them, or that’s the excuse, but it’s an overwhelmingly young population, without jobs, without opportunities. Unemployment is – and underemployment is severely miscounted. So, they – it’s simply they’re looking for options.

And the last, as you mentioned, is the placement of Haiti. It unfortunately, is situated between cocaine and marijuana producing countries to the south and to the west, and to one of the largest markets for those illicit drugs. And so – I mean, I alluded to this story at the start really quickly. I was once in a restaurant and I was just – I stopped. I was with a group of people and we stopped and we were listening and just, the talk of people just talking about – openly talking about moving drugs to the United States. Again, this is largely a US and EU problem ‘cause – which has now become a larger consumption of cocaine. This is a problem that the international community has to own.

And last, the issue of outside groups funding this. Some people have said that – oh, we’re going through a fire alarm here. Some people have said that the Russians are funding some of this disruption just to, sort of, you know, stick it to the United States. I think it’s probably true, but what’s true often with a lot of Russian efforts, that’s, sort of, stoking discontent, is it already existed. They’re simply throwing more gasoline on a fire that’s already raging. So, I wouldn’t put the blame on the Russians. It could be true, but it’s of its own making and sometimes, often the US’s and EU zone making.

Emily, good question. I’m glad you cited the case of Colombia and not the case of El Salvador. I have a whole different shtick on that, which I won’t go into now, but Colombia’s actually a very successful story. And the reason is, first of all, it again, was Colombia-owned. I was actually involved in Plan Colombia in 2000. It was Colombia-owned, it was – and it involved a number of things, but also, increasing taxes on Colombians, getting Colombians invested, US training, EU training on a range of issues, not just the military and the Police, but also in judicial sectors. But also understanding Colombia’s problem wasn’t just one of gorillas or drugs. It was a feckless, inefficient, ineffective state.

And so, what happened in Colombia that led to the eventual peace negotiations, yes, with arms traffickers and cocaine traffickers, what eventually led to it was the creation of a state that controlled large parts of the country. At the time of Plan Colombia, 40% of the country was under control of irregular troops, let’s call them that, paramilitaries and the guerillas. They took that back largely.

Ben Horton

Brilliant. Thank you so much, Chris. I think now we really have run out of time, but we are going to come to our poll, our audience interaction. So, everybody tuning in, you should have a question that’s just popped up on your screen which asks, “Given other issues in the world today, how much priority do you think governments should place on addressing the problem of state collapse and transnational crime?” And we would just love you to vote for your preference there out of the three options that we’ve given. I’ll give you 20 seconds. I can probably filibuster for that long.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Actually, can I filibuster quickly on why I like this question very much?

Ben Horton

Chris, filibuster away, please. Yeah, absolutely.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Is it – you know, working in Chatham House, which is an honour, is – you know, we deal with issues of, sort of, geopolitics, you know, state sovereignty, yeah, but the question of – and this is understandable, the question of failed states is one that, sort of, especially recently, is, sort of, receiving less attention. So, I’m very curious to see how people respond among Chatham House members and students and others that are tuned in, how they see this in, sort of, the ranking of global problems, and what is the responsibility, if you will, of the developed North?

Ben Horton

Hmmm hmm, absolutely. Okay, well, let’s see what we’ve got. I think at some point, the results are going to pop up on my screen. I should also say that we – that Chris is absolutely right, that this is a question that we do come back to across various different departments. I’m thinking in particular, of course, of our Middle East and North Africa Programme who have done such a huge amount of work on state collapse and transnational crime in North Africa. Obviously, Chris’s great work, also. Okay, great, we have some results just in, hot off the press. So, I think it looks here that very much, you’ve persuaded everyone here, Chris.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

I wondered – thank you.

Ben Horton

It’s indeed a huge priority. We have, yeah, 50% of you have responded that you think it’s one of the greatest problems that we confront. 44% have come back with it is important, but maybe not the priority, and very few of you have said that relative to other global challenges, it’s a small question. So, I think a broad consensus that this is a really, really challenging problem that Haiti is a very recent and tragic example of, and yes, I think, yeah, hopefully, we can bring more of these sorts of topics to your screens very soon.

With that, I’m going to wrap up. Thank you everybody who came to join us today for this event. Sorry it was a bit short and sweet, but I hope you enjoyed it. Hope you got through. Chris, incredible stamina and versatility to get through that many questions and to be jumping from topic to topic all the time. Thank you so much for that. A real pleasure to have you with us, and thanks, of course, to the Events Team. Look out soon, audience, we will be doing more of these sessions on a whole range of different topics that Chatham House works on. This was very much just the first of a series, and enjoy the rest of your weeks. Thanks again, Chris.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Thank you very much, Ben. Thanks Events Team, Moora and Tom.