Civil-society experts urge funding for Haitian-led transitional justice and digital public infrastructure

Isabelle Clerier, a Haitian anthropologist and transitional justice expert, told the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission briefing that resourcing Haitian civil society and strengthening digital public infrastructure are immediate, scalable steps to address impunity and mismanagement.

"Haitian civil society needs the time and resources to design and implement transitional and restorative justice mechanisms," Clerier said, recommending community-led truth initiatives, commemorative activities and locally adapted restorative forums. She argued these approaches can begin now and offer more sustainable, lower-cost pathways to reconciliation than mass prosecutions in the current institutional context.

Clerier also illustrated how weak paper-based public records enable fraud. She described being issued an ID where handwritten cursive led to a near-name change: the official misread a cursive capital I as a Y, she said. "Digital infrastructure is not only timely, it is in line with already proposed G7 goals," she said, urging donor support for secure public accounting, identification, and record-keeping systems.

Why it matters: speakers said Haiti lacks sufficient judicial capacity to prosecute every participant in large-scale violence, so complementary transitional justice and restorative models can help guarantee non-repetition and community healing. Panelists emphasized Haitian leadership in designing these mechanisms and warned that externally imposed models risk repeating past harms.

Panel recommendations included funding community-based truth collection and restorative mechanisms, piloting specialized courts where feasible for mass and financial crimes (noting a decree for creation of specialized courts was mentioned in the briefing), and investing in digital systems for identification, payroll, and elections to reduce ghost employees, duplicate IDs and opportunities for corruption.

Panelists stressed practical, immediate steps: facilitating local dialogues, supporting mental-health and trauma interventions for youth, and providing technical assistance for digital public systems that enable audit trails and transparency rather than depending only on donor reporting procedures.

Ending: Panelists framed these measures as empowering Haitian actors and lowering the risk that external funds are captured by elites. "We can start changing the course of this crisis today," Clerier said, urging donors and policymakers to prioritize Haitian-designed transitional processes and robust, auditable digital public infrastructure.