Haitian Accord (Governor’s Island Accord)



Haitian Accord (Governors Island Accord)

When President Clinton was inaugurated in January of 1993, he adopted an openly supportive attitude toward the people of Haiti. During the presidential campaign, he had criticized President George H. Bush for blockading Haitian immigrants, but the new President’s commitment to friendlier relations ultimately unleashed a number of unexpected difficulties.

President Clinton, prominent American liberals, and the Congressional Black Caucus were all supporters of Haitian leader and Jesuit priest Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In 1991, the people of Haiti elected Father Aristide to be president in Haiti’s first popular election, but Aristide was only able to serve eight months of his five-year term. A vocal supporter of Haiti’s impoverished majority and economic redistribution, Aristide unsettled Haiti’s small but powerful group of wealthy families. Working with Haiti’s military, this group, under the command of Gen. Raoul Cedras, staged a bloody coup that reinstituted military rule and forced President Aristide to flee the country.

In July of 1993, the United States mediated the Governors Island Accord between Father Aristide and Haiti’s military leaders. By its terms, the military would allow Aristide to return as president on October 30, 1993. Prior to that date, the military promised to protect Aristide supporters and begin allowing civilian control, while the former President was to guarantee amnesty for participants in the 1991 coup. Neither side lived up to its bargain until the last instant, but, unwilling to give up on the political solution, the Clinton administration continued its assistance. On October 11, the USS Harlan County arrived in the waters off Port-au-Prince, Haiti, filled with two hundred lightly armed military trainers and engineers. By the terms of the accord, this team was to train and aid the Haitian military in improving its infrastructure—bridges, roads, schools—and in building a more professional police force.

The Harlan County was met at the docks by a group of armed and hostile Haitians, apparently acting in league with the military. Coming only days after a disastrous military operation in Somalia resulted in the deaths of eighteen American soldiers, the Clinton administration was reluctant to risk more losses for what now seemed an unlikely objective: the peaceful reinstatement of President Aristide. An embarrassed President Clinton ordered the Harlan County back to the United States and reinstituted economic sanctions against Haiti. Another year passed before President Jean-Bertrand Aristide would be reinstated. The Harlan County episode constituted yet another example of President Clinton seeming more competent at managing domestic affairs than international ones.

The Price in Haiti –Comment - The New Yorker, October 25, 1993 at

Elizabeth Drew On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994)

Joe Klein The Natural: the Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton (New York: Doubleday, 2002)

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