United Nations unanimously passes sanctions targeting Haiti gang leader amid unrest
Global News
The U.N. Security Council will be able to impose an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo on Jimmy Cherizier, a former policeman known locally by his alias "Barbecue."
The U.N. Security Council on Friday approved sanctions allowing it to impose an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo on anyone who threatens the peace or stability of Haiti, naming the Caribbean country’s most powerful gangster as its first target.
The 15-member council voted unanimously to adopt the resolution, which imposes the sanctions on gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, a former policeman known locally by his alias “Barbecue.”
The resolution was drafted by the United States and Mexico.
“We’re sending a clear message to the bad actors that are holding Haiti hostage: The international community will not stand idly by while you wreak havoc on the Haitian people,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a speech after the council vote.
She described the new sanctions regime as an “initial answer to the calls for help” from Haitians struggling with an escalating humanitarian disaster, adding that another resolution is being written that could authorize a non-U.N. mission to boost security and allow humanitarian aide to flow to the crisis-racked island nation, which is the most impoverished country of the Americas.
Thomas-Greenfield did not say when it would be presented to the council for a vote, but other diplomats have said that could happen as early as next week.
The text of Friday’s resolution blames Cherizier for engaging “in acts that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Haiti” as well as accusing him of human rights abuses.
Last month, gangs led by Cherizier blocked the entrance to the Varreux fuel terminal just outside the capital Port-au-Prince, to protest a government announcement to cut fuel subsidies.