AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHTS AGAIN TO HAITI

When American Airlines resumes service to Haiti on Tuesday, nearly four months after the borders were shut due to the coronavirus, there will be only one daily flight into Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport, and the country’s second largest city will not be on the schedule.

The first major commercial airline to land in Cap-Haïtien in 2014 after more than a decade due to a damaged runway, the Miami-based carrier told the Miami Herald that it is canceling service to the city. 

“Canceling the flight to Cap-Haïtien was very painful but a necessary decision given the current economic circumstances as a result of the pandemic,” said Martha Pantin, a spokeswoman with American. “We have had to make difficult decisions that affect many destinations around the world that we serve.”

Passenger on FLL-bound Spirit flight leaves before takeoff after refusing to wear mask

NEW YORK (WSVN) — A tense exchange unfolded prior to takeoff on board a Spirit flight bound for South Florida after a passenger reportedly refused to wear a face mask.

According to the airline, police were called onto the flight at LaGuardia Airport in New York City that was heading to Fort Lauderdale, Friday.

A Spirit spokesperson said the passenger took off his mask and refused to put it back on.

Video posted to social media captured the passenger and an officer arguing.

The airline said he eventually left the plane on his own.

A Spirit spokesperson said they will continue to enforce the use of face coverings on board all flights.

Wages of migrants sent home could drop $142bn in 2020: World Bank

The drop in money that migrant workers send home would mostly be due to a fall in their wages and employment overseas.

Al Jazeera

22 Apr 2020

Global remittances are set to tumble by $142bn in 2020, the sharpest fall in recent history, the World Bank estimates, as the coronavirus crisis chokes off a cash lifeline for hard-pressed households in poorer countries.

The World Bank on Wednesday said that a drop of almost 20 percent in the money migrant workers send home would mostly be due to a fall in their wages and employment overseas.

"Remittances are a vital source of income for developing countries. The ongoing economic recession caused by COVID-19 is taking a severe toll on the ability to send money home and makes it all the more vital that we shorten the time to recovery for advanced economies," said World Bank Group President David Malpass.

In recent years, remittances have become an integral part of the funding for governments in emerging economies, exceeding official aid by a factor of three since the mid-1990s and last year overtaking foreign direct investment flows as the main source of foreign exchange for low- and middle-income countries.

An estimated one billion migrants - about 270 million who work outside their home countries and 760 million internal migrants - each help feed, clothe and shelter up to three people "back home", Dilip Ratha, lead author of the World Bank's new report on the impact of COVID-19 on remittances, told Reuters in an interview.

"You're looking at one-third of humanity."

Yet such workers tend to be more vulnerable during crises.

With a rocketing jobless rate in the United States and with the economies of Russia and the Gulf region reeling from lower oil prices, the flow of such money from the world's largest sources has been hit hard.

The remittance drop so far this year is the largest since the World Bank began recording the data in 1980, said Ratha.

Such flows have increased since a dip in 2016, mainly due to low oil prices, and remittances reached $714bn in 2019. But they look set to shrink to $572bn this year, the World Bank said.

For low- and middle-income nations, which account for the bulk of flows, remittances would fall 19.7 percent to $445bn in 2020 from a record $554bn in 2019.

"The economic crisis induced by the pandemic is going to sharply reduce the income of migrants and their ability to send money back home," Ratha said.

Emerging markets face biggest hit

As well as hurting households that rely on the money, waning flows from abroad also deal a blow to emerging markets where state budgets are already strained from having to spend more on healthcare and stimulus to mitigate reduced economic activity. Many have also seen record outflows of foreign capital since the crisis began.

Hardest hit will be countries such as Tajikistan and Nepal, where remittances account for around 30 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), said Ratha. Other countries that rely on payments include the Philippines, South Sudan, Tonga, and Haiti.

As a bloc, Europe and Central Asia will see the biggest fall in remittances at around 28 percent due to the combined effect of the pandemic and the oil price slump, the World Bank estimated.

Remittances to Central Asia, in particular, would take an added hit from a dip in the exchange rate of Russia's rouble against the dollar, Ratha said.

The World Bank, which along with the International Monetary Fund is providing funds to poorer nations during the crisis, has expressed concern about the temporary closure of some money transfer businesses due to shutdowns in some economies. It urged authorities to recognise them as essential service providers so they can stay open.

One positive is remittances are expected to recover in 2021, swelling more than five percent to $602m, with a slightly faster pickup in flows to developing countries.

"The underlying causes of migration are not going to disappear and may be exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis," said Michal Rutkowski, the World Bank's global director for social protection and jobs. "These are income differentials between different countries and demographic changes."

Jovenel Moise has granted executive clemency to 415 prisoners including hard core criminals

By Jacqueline Charles 

July 01, 2020

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse has granted executive clemency to 415 prisoners, including at least 15 hardened criminals whom human rights advocates say should not be walking free.

The list of beneficiaries include a convicted felon sentenced to five years for an armed attack in the northern town of Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, a prisoner serving 12 years for rape, and a father awaiting trial on accusations that he hacked his young son to death with a machete in 2018 in the Central Haiti town of Mirebalais and threw the boy’s remains in a latrine.

“If someone hasn’t yet been convicted, they cannot be pardoned,” said Renan Hédouville, the government’s chief ombudsman who runs the Office for the Protection of Citizens. “There is a flagrant irregularity going on in regard to the criminal code in Haiti.”

The presidential pardons were issued by executive order on June 19 and published in the country’s official gazette, Le Moniteur. They came to light this week and caught Hédouville, human rights organizations and the international community by surprise, especially since they were being tied to an ongoing push to release prisoners from Haiti’s overcrowded prisons in the wake of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic.

Not only were they not consulted on the list, but human rights groups and representatives of the international community said the troubling pardons have nothing to do with their push to release a select group of prisoners — those on prolonged pretrial detention who are elderly, have underlying health problems or accused of committing minor offenses — to slow the spread of the virus in Haiti’s jails.

Several months ago, the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, known by its French acronym BINUH, along with the U.S. began advising the government on establishing a committee on detention composed of government and justice officials, Hédouville’s office and human rights advocates.

Guidelines were eventually approved by the minister of justice and public security. Based on six eligibility criteria, certain detainees were tapped for release following a special hearing on their case.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council last month, the Haiti office said of those identified, only 750 detainees had been released from the Haitian prison system. The number, the report noted, fell far short of an estimated 5,000 releases that are necessary to allow prisons and detention centers in Haiti to better manage the impact of the coronavirus and avert a humanitarian disaster.

NEW PENAL CODE

A new penal code, issued via presidential decree by Moïse this week, allows convicted felons who have been pardoned to have their civil rights restored, which means they can run for office, said former Port-au-Prince chief prosecutor and senator Jean Renel Senatus.

The election of individuals with criminal backgrounds in Haiti’s last elections, thanks to a loophole in the 2015 electoral law, was a troubling development that was often cited as contributing to the country’s deteriorating human rights environment and increased criminality.

“There are prisoners who are sick and up until now waiting to benefit from early release on humanitarian grounds and they can’t,” Hédouville said. “What has happened here has nothing to down with COVID. It is something that is illegal, irregular.... These people when they walk out of prison can become a danger for the police who arrested them or the judges who sentenced them.”

This of course is not the first time a prisoner release has created scandal. Earlier this year a drug trafficker was released from prison under the guise of the COVID-19 humanitarian parole. When former President Michel Martelly was in office, one pardoned criminal shot someone inside a church days later.

“Someone didn’t play their role, didn’t do their job... because in principle it’s the ministry of justice that gives the list to the president to sign the decree,” Hédouville said. “What’s worse is that we... were not consulted at all; not even once.

“I’ve never met with the justice minister or had one meeting with him since he was sworn in on March 5,” he added. “The human rights organizations that are in the prisons every day, they weren’t consulted so... everything was done without any transparency and they took advantage of the occasion to add names to the list.”

In a press note, Justice Minister Lucmane Délile acknowledged there were “errors” and said it was possible the system was deceived. He also passed the blame on to the prison system and tied the release to the pandemic.

He said his ministry learned “through the press that criminals were released as part of the presidential pardon granted for the purpose of decongesting prisons in the face of the spread of COVID-19.”

Late Wednesday, Eddy Jackson Alexis, a government spokesman, took to Twitter to say that Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe asked the ministry of justice “to temporarily suspend the release of the people affected by the presidential pardon.” The announcement, Alexis said, was made during a cabinet meeting.