Dominican Republic To Close Borders With Haiti Over Dispute

The Dominican Republic’s President has announced he would close all borders with neighboring Haiti starting Friday in a dispute over a canal on the Haitian side that would use water from a river along their frontier.

President Luis Abinader said air, sea and land borders would close at 6 a.m. local time Friday and would remain shuttered “until necessary,” signaling that last-minute talks between the Countries had failed to head off the closure.

It is a rare move for the Dominican Republic, and could hit economies in both Countries, though it will be most acutely felt in Haiti.

The closure is a response to the excavation of a canal by a farming group on the Haitian side that targets waters from the Massacre River, which runs along the border shared by the two countries on the island of Hispaniola.

The International Crisis Group said work on the canal had been suspended since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, and that it resumed based on inaction by the Haitian Government, “which has failed to respond to the problems created by the drought in the agricultural area of the Maribaroux plain.”

The organization has seen no evidence “that suggests there are any major politicians or powerful businesspeople behind it, as the Dominican Government has claimed,” according to Latin American and Caribbean consultant Diego Da Rin.

President Abinader accused Haiti of trying to divert water from the Massacre River, and said it would affect Dominican farmers and the environment. The river is named after a bloody clash between French and Spanish colonizers in the 1700s, and it also was the site of a mass killing of Haitians by the Dominican Army in 1937.

AP