Port-au-Prince, Haiti, May 12, 2022 / 13:33 pm
A Haitian priest has said a border wall being built by the Dominican Republic to stop Haitian emigration “is not the solution” to the problem.
“Building a wall between countries is not the solution, it’s important to build bridges,” Father Pénès Célestin, a priest of the Diocese of Jérémie, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister news agency.
"I invite Dominicans and Haitians to build bridges," he said.
Haiti has seen a surge of violence in recent years. There were as many as 1,200 kidnappings last year, and President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. Poverty in the country, considered the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, has progressively worsened following the earthquakes of 2010 and 2021.