On
Jul. 14, 2015, the International Organization for
Migration (IOM)
released a
statement
regarding the situation on the Haiti-Dominican Republic
border. The IOM interviewed some 1,133 individuals who
had crossed the border between Jun. 16 and Jul. 3,
finding that “408 persons (or 36%) said that they had
been deported by different entities, including the
military, police, immigration officials and civilians.”
These findings
directly contradicted statements from the Dominican
Republic and U.S. officials that no deportations had
occurred.
However, within two days the press release was
pulled from the IOM website and on Jul. 21, IOM issued a
new press release
making no mention of deportations.
U.S. Special Coordinator for Haiti Thomas Adams,
testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
on Jul. 15, 2015, stated, “They -- they [the Dominican
Republic] have assured us that there will be no mass
deportations and none have begun yet.” He added: “There
were reports of others that when they investigated, they
found out that they weren't -- they weren't really
deportees.” A day later, the IOM press release had been
pulled from the website.
When contacted by the CEPR’s Haiti Relief and
Reconstruction Watch [HRRW] last week, Ilaria Lanzoni, a
press officer with the IOM, e-mailed that: “They [IOM
Headquarters] are currently revising the note.” When the
release was re-posted, however, all mentions of
deportations were removed. The original release
contained a quote from Gregoire Goodstein, IOM’s Chief
of Mission in Haiti, stating: “A proper monitoring
system is essential to overcome the current uncertainty
about the conditions and number of deportations …”
However in the updated release, Goodstein’s quote has
been changed to “… the current uncertainty about
returns.” The rest of the changes can be seen in the
screen grabs, below.
In response to an HRRW inquiry, IOM released the
following statement on the changes: “Accuracy is
extremely important to us and the note was revised to
reflect the absence, thus far, of formal deportation
orders from the Dominican Government. The more accurate
description - forced expulsions - was substituted to
characterize what’s being reported from the borders. IOM
is working, together with the Haitian and Dominican
governments, UN agencies and civil society, to collect
and systematize available data, and hopes soon to deploy
monitoring teams along the entire border.”
But the term “forced expulsion” does not actually
appear in the IOM release. Instead, references to
deportations were replaced with the much more neutral
phrasing of “returns.”
HRRW also asked at whose instruction the changes were
made. “We edit our external communications for accuracy
on an ongoing basis and this is such a case,” press
officer Ilaria Lanzoni responded. Much of the IOM’s work
in Haiti is currently being funded by the United States,
which has disbursed nearly $2 million to the
organization since early 2015, including $642,792
earlier this month, according to the USASpending.gov
website.
While any mention of “deportations” was removed from the
release, the underlying numbers have not been changed at
all. What they show is that a significant percent of
those who have left the Dominican Republic report having
been deported. At least 36% of those interviewed said
they had been deported, over 33% of those who crossed
the border said they were born in the Dominican
Republic, and around 8% had registered with the PNRE
(National Plan for the Regularization of Foreigners). In
both of those cases, individuals should be able to
become regularized Dominican citizens.
Whether the IOM removes the word from their press
release or not, the data show the same thing: Dominicans
of Haitian descent are being deported to Haiti. |