A call to the community in Haiti

Four papers still to be found

The constitutional report did everything that can be done with documents available online. Four questions remain. None can be answered from abroad — each needs someone standing in front of a shelf in Port-au-Prince.

Verification Register · opened 9 September 2026

Why this work

What the internet cannot tell us

The Foundation read twenty Haitian constitutional texts in the original French and proved, three times from primary text, one thing: the rule was always written; the institution able to hold it against the person it binds was never built. That work is done.

What is not done is the register at the back of the report — the list of every claim that rests on a reproduction rather than on the Journal Officiel itself.

One of those items — a single consultation of the printed Moniteur of 19 June 2012 — closes four questions at once. It is the highest-value hour of research left in the file, and nobody at this Foundation can do it from Ohio.

What is at stake is not academic. The text everyone circulates as “the Constitution” prints the 1987 wording and the 2011 wording one after the other with nothing to say which is law. Read it carelessly and you will quote a dual-nationality ban that was in fact repealed, or a five-year deputy's term that is four. A country cannot hold a referendum on a text nobody can read correctly — and the first round and the referendum are set for 13 December 2026.

The work

Four tasks

Take one or take all four. Each says what to ask for, where to ask, what to photograph, and what it settles.

The Moniteur of 19 June 2012

The republication of the constitutional law of 9 May 2011 — the document the whole argument rests on, and the one thing nobody working on this file has held in their hands.

What to ask for

« Le Moniteur, Journal Officiel de la République d'Haïti, numéro extraordinaire du 19 juin 2012, portant republication pour erreurs matérielles de la Loi constitutionnelle du 9 mai 2011. »

Where to look

Les Presses Nationales d'Haïti, Port-au-Prince — the publisher of the Journal Officiel.
Bibliothèque Nationale d'Haïti (legal deposit).
Bibliothèque Haïtienne des Frères de l'Instruction Chrétienne (FIC), Port-au-Prince.
Bibliothèque Haïtienne des Spiritains, Université Notre-Dame d'Haïti.
The library of the Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Économiques (UEH).
Archives Nationales d'Haïti.

The Foundation has not confirmed which of these institutions actually holds the document. Telling us which one does — or which one does not — is itself part of the task.

What to photograph

The masthead first: the title, the date, and whether it carries an issue number at all. One reproduction calls it “No. 96”; another calls it a numéro extraordinaire with no number. A single photograph settles that.
Articles 1 and 2 of the amending law. The copy in circulation omits them, which is exactly why it cannot say what was abrogated.
Every page of the issue, in order — including any page that looks blank or unrelated.
The list of abrogated articles, in whatever form it takes.

What it settles

Four register items at once: whether the marked reproduction the report relies on matches the Journal Officiel; whether the defects in the circulating copy are the Moniteur's or the copyists'; the issue number; and the sentence at art. 190ter.7 that names three jurisdictions, two of which no article creates.

In the register — Appendix B.4 · items 1, 2, 8, 11

The procès-verbal of 9 May 2011

Whether the National Assembly had the quorum and the majority the Constitution requires in order to amend itself. The one item still fully open.

What to ask for

« Le procès-verbal de la séance de l'Assemblée Nationale du 9 mai 2011 ayant adopté la Loi constitutionnelle portant amendement de la Constitution de 1987, avec la feuille de présence et le relevé des votes. »

Where to look

The greffe of the Chambre des Députés and of the Sénat, Palais Législatif.
Archives Nationales d'Haïti.
Journalists who covered the sitting kept notes. A newspaper account is not a procès-verbal — but it may say who holds one.

The Foundation has not confirmed which of these institutions actually holds the document. Telling us which one does — or which one does not — is itself part of the task.

What to photograph

The attendance sheet, with a separate count for each chamber — art. 284 requires two-thirds of each.
The vote tally: for, against, abstained, out of how many cast — art. 284.1 requires two-thirds of votes cast.
The signatures closing the session.

What it settles

The last item from the original register that nothing has closed. Within days of the sitting, members of the Assembly — including its president, whose signature closes the printed text — said publicly that what Le Moniteur printed was not what they had voted. Nobody has produced the record of what they did vote.

In the register — Appendix B.4 · item 7

Any Kreyòl text of the amendment

Article 40 requires the State to publish laws in Kreyòl and in French. No Kreyòl version of the 2011 amendment has ever been located. Proving that properly changes what the Constitution is.

What to ask for

« Recherche dans Le Moniteur, du 13 mai 2011 au 31 décembre 2012, de toute publication en créole de la Loi constitutionnelle du 9 mai 2011. »

Where to look

The same Moniteur holdings as task one — but this is a search through a run, not a request for a single issue.
Any library with an unbroken run can host this work.

The Foundation has not confirmed which of these institutions actually holds the document. Telling us which one does — or which one does not — is itself part of the task.

What to photograph

If a Kreyòl text exists: all of it. It is the largest single find available in this file.
If it does not: a written note, signed and dated by the librarian or archivist, stating exactly which issues were examined and over what dates. A negative result is a result — but only when it records its own boundaries.

What it settles

On 19 June 2012, the day of the republication, the jurist Luc Rémy argued in Le Nouvelliste that the constitutional law was « juridiquement mort-née » because only the French text had been amended, art. 40 requiring both. If he is right, the Constitution in force is the 1987 text unamended. No court has ruled, because the court that would — the Conseil Constitutionnel — is the one the same amendment created and nobody ever seated.

In the register — Appendix B.4 · item 3

The June 2011 suspension, and Moniteur no. 58

Two smaller gaps at either end of the story: how the amendment came to be suspended, and what the first publication actually said.

What to ask for

« L'acte du Pouvoir exécutif de juin 2011 suspendant les effets de la Loi constitutionnelle du 9 mai 2011 — nature exacte de l'instrument, numéro et date — ainsi que Le Moniteur no 58 du 13 mai 2011, première publication de la même loi. »

Where to look

Les Presses Nationales d'Haïti — the Moniteur run for May and June 2011.
The Secrétairerie générale de la Présidence, for the instrument itself.
Archives Nationales d'Haïti.

The Foundation has not confirmed which of these institutions actually holds the document. Telling us which one does — or which one does not — is itself part of the task.

What to photograph

The masthead and full text of Moniteur no. 58 of 13 May 2011.
The suspending instrument in full, with its number, its date and its signature.

What it settles

The report currently says “executive act” because it cannot say arrêté, décret or arrêt without seeing the thing. It also needs no. 58 in order to state what the 19 June 2012 issue was republishing « pour erreurs matérielles » — the errors are the whole point.

In the register — Appendix B.3 · item 7 — B.5 · item 13

If you are not in Haiti

There is diaspora work here too

Three of these four tasks are searches through a run of the Journal Officiel, and a few collections outside Haiti hold one.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), the Library of Congress and the Bibliothèque nationale de France are the places to start. The Foundation has not verified which of them holds 2011–2012.

Establishing that from a catalogue, without leaving home, is a real contribution — and it takes an afternoon.

How to work

Six rules

These are not formalities. This report exists because one unmarked copy had people quoting dead law for fourteen years.

Photograph. Do not transcribe.

A transcription is a new copy with new errors in it. Untangling one such copy is what produced this report in the first place.

Always capture the masthead.

Date, issue number, and the words numéro extraordinaire if they are there. A page of text with no masthead proves nothing about which issue it came from.

Photograph the pages that look irrelevant.

What is missing between two pages is evidence too.

Write down what you asked for, where, on what date, to whom, and what you were told.

Including when the answer was no. A refusal, a gap in a run, a missing volume — all of it goes into the register.

Say what you did not see.

The register's only value is that it keeps the verified and the assumed apart. Two of this report's own claims were wrong, and that is how they were corrected.

Take no risks, pay nothing, remove nothing.

No task here is worth an unsafe trip or a fee. If a holding cannot be reached, that is a finding: report it and stop.

Credit

Your name goes in the register

Every contribution is recorded in the report's Verification Register by name, with the date and the institution — or anonymously, if you prefer.

Whoever closes task one will have done more for the accuracy of this file than its author did.

How to send what you find

Say which task, say what you found or did not find, and attach the photographs. If the files are large, say so and we will send you somewhere to put them.

Write to the Foundation

info@haitiansovereignty.com

Everything on this page is drawn from Appendix B of « Konstitisyon se papye — The Rule Was Always Written », the Foundation's constitutional report. The report sits in the Knowledge Vault and requires an access code. These tasks do not.

The Kreyòl edition of this page is the Foundation's own draft and has not been read by a committee of native speakers. It is published anyway, because the people who can do this work read Kreyòl and a notice saying “not yet” would help nobody. Corrections to the Kreyòl are themselves a contribution.