Open Letter to President Luis Abinader: For a Migration Policy Respecting Human Rights

Mr. President, Since the beginning of your term, the Dominican Republic has intensified its efforts to control immigration, particularly from Haiti. While national sovereignty and security are legitimate concerns, the methods employed raise major concerns about the respect for fundamental rights. Mass expulsions, arbitrary arrests, and deportations of pregnant or breastfeeding women, often directly from health facilities, have been widely documented and condemned by international organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations. These actions, perceived as discriminatory and inhumane, undermine the dignity of those concerned and contravene international human rights commitments. Furthermore, current policies seem to divert attention from the real security challenges facing the region — namely, transnational networks of arms, drug, and human organ trafficking. These very real threats require not the stigmatization of already vulnerable communities, but a concerted, strategic, and regional response commensurate with their complexity. As for the temptation to inherit, by force or exclusion, a territory that history has never sealed as indivisible, allow us to remind that no dream of domination can legitimately be rooted in oppression or injustice. A dream, when it denies the other, becomes a delusion — and sometimes, a fatal delusion. It is not through exclusion, but through mutual respect, that the Dominican Republic can truly affirm its political and moral maturity in the region. We therefore urge you, Mr. President, to reconsider current political choices, to show magnanimity by engaging in sincere dialogue with Haitian authorities, civil society organizations, and international partners. A diplomacy of lucidity, supported by compassion, can still breathe new life into bilateral relations too often suffocated by reflexes of fear and rejection. Done in Port-au-Prince, April 30, 2025. Jean Rodlet Jean Baptiste, President Platfòm Jenès Prezan (PJP)
jeanbaptistejeanrodlet@gmail.com