Introduction

1. The information included in the present report covers the period between January 1994 through January 1995. During the months between January and september 1994, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recorded a large number of systematic human rights violations in Haiti. Most of these violations were committed by the illegal de facto regime, which, in its attempt to stay in power, resorted to all kinds of oppressive acts against the Haitian people, particularly those sectors supporting the return of the democratic regime.

2. The oppression took on new characteristics, with increasingly cruel crimes committed by the military and paramilitary forces, resulting in massacres and rape. The rights of children were also violated as a result of reprisals taken against the families of political militants, who had to go into hiding.

3. The violent situation found by the Commission in its on-site visits disminish with the arrival of the Multinational Force authorized by the United Nations. The reinstallation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti on October 15, 1994, opened the way for dialogue and national reconciliation. However, there are serious problems inherited by the constitutional government which now has the responsability to rebuild the economy of a country regarded as the poorest in the hemisphere and at the same time to lay the basis for a government of law, a condition sine qua non for representative democracy.

4. The international community's commitment to help rebuild Haiti will be reflected in the establishment of institutions for the protection of civil and political rights, as well as the socio-economic and cultural rights of the Haitian people.