THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2024 17 Haiti Evacuation On March 10, as local gangs took control of the capital city of Portau-Prince, the U.S. military arrived in Haiti to strengthen security at the U.S. embassy and to evacuate nonessential personnel from the mission, according to NBC News. Family members and others had already left post in July 2023. Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry was in Kenya to finalize a U.N.-approved deal to send a Kenyan-led international police force to Haiti when gangs attacked the main airport, shutting it down and preventing Henry from returning to the country. On March 17, the State Department chartered a flight to evacuate U.S. citizens to Miami. On March 20, Reuters reported that the department chartered helicopters to fly to neighboring Dominican Republic, continuing the evacuation. Although the State Department has been warning U.S. citizens not to travel to Haiti since at least 2020, there were still hundreds of Americans in country and trying to leave as of late March. Silence on Sudan U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield penned an op-ed on human rights violations during the Sudanese civil war, writing on March 18 in The New York Times: “The world’s silence and inaction need to end, and end now.” Thomas-Greenfield called on the U.N. to “appoint a senior humanitarian official based outside Sudan to advocate humanitarian access, scale up relief efforts, and mobilize international donors.” On Feb. 26, President Biden appointed Tom Perriello as special envoy for Sudan. A release announcing the appointment stated that Perriello “re-joins the Department having previously served as the Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and the Democratic Republic of Congo and as the Special Representative for the second Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.” The U.N. Security Council called for an “immediate cessation of hostilities” on March 8. n This edition of Talking Points was compiled by Donna Scaramastra Gorman.
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