October 7, 2025
In light of the recent expiration of the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act and the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) Act, two cornerstone trade preference programs that have sustained Haiti’s textile sector for over a decade it is imperative to underscore the grave consequences of this policy lapse. If stakeholders in the U.S. textile industry and policymakers genuinely intend to support Haiti’s implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution of September 30, which authorizes the deployment of a 5,500-member multinational security force to combat gang violence, then undermining Haiti’s economic foundation at this critical juncture is both counterproductive and morally indefensible.
Let us be unequivocal: you cannot fight gangs by fueling unemployment. Every factory shuttered, every worker dismissed, is not merely a statistic it is a life destabilized, a family imperiled, and a community pushed closer to the brink. In a nation where over 24,000 textile jobs have provided a rare lifeline amid pervasive insecurity, the withdrawal of U.S. trade support threatens to dismantle one of the few functioning pillars of economic resilience.
Security interventions, no matter how well-intentioned or well-resourced, will falter without parallel investments in economic opportunity. The textile sector has not only generated $538 million in exports to the U.S. over the past year it has offered dignity, purpose, and a viable alternative to the lure of gang affiliation. To erode this sector now is to sabotage the very conditions necessary for peace.
What Haiti needs today is not abandonment, but engagement more employment, not less; more investment in industrial capacity, not retrenchment; more infrastructure repair and vocational training, not austerity. Work is the most potent antidote to gang recruitment. It fosters stability, reinforces community cohesion, and restores faith in the possibility of a better future.
Reducing employment opportunities at this pivotal moment will deepen social fragmentation, exacerbate desperation, and render the mission of the multinational force exponentially more difficult. Already, the deployment faces logistical and political hurdles. We must not compound these challenges by stripping away one of the few sectors still offering Haitians a semblance of hope.
Haiti’s path to peace and security will not be paved with layoffs and closures. It will be built through jobs, opportunity, and international solidarity. We call upon U.S. lawmakers to act swiftly to renew the HOPE and HELP Acts retroactively, and to recognize that economic empowerment is not ancillary to security it is its foundation.
Dr. Jude Elie
Attendons voir, l”avenir nous dira la Vérité