Executive Summary

Ayiti has written roughly two dozen constitutions since 1801. Most were written by a man who had just taken power, to keep it. One — 1987 — was written by people who had just watched a man keep power for twenty-nine years, to make sure nobody could ever govern like that again. It succeeded. Nobody has governed since.

This report reads nineteen of those charters in the original French, reads the 1987 text and its 2012 republication line by line against a marked redline of the same publication, and comes to one conclusion. It then proves that conclusion three times from primary text, traces every gear of the present breakdown to a numbered article, and turns the findings into fourteen design principles with positions taken, an architecture of fifteen titles, a preamble written in Kreyòl first, and a road map the Foundation can actually execute.

The conclusion. The rule was always written. The institution able to hold it against the person it binds was never built. Haiti's constitutional problem has never been the drafting.

The proof. Three chains, each closed in primary text on disk:

Rows one and three show a written limit destroyed through lawful procedure — a Senate revision, a plebiscite, an amendment. Row two shows the correct rule, restored word for word by people who knew exactly which words to use, collapsing anyway. Together they retire the idea that Haiti has ever suffered from bad drafting. What was never built is a body, outside the reach of the person the rule binds, able to say no and be obeyed.

1987 is the same lesson from the other side. Its drafters wrote against Duvalier and produced a charter in which every institution depends on another institution that does not yet exist, and in which nothing happens automatically when a duty is not performed. Five mechanisms, each traceable to numbered articles, explain the thirty-nine years since:

1. An executive built to deadlock. The President cannot dismiss the Prime Minister (art. 137.1); either chamber can refuse the Prime Minister indefinitely (art. 158, « la procédure recommence »); Parliament can censure him once a year and the President « doit accepter » (arts. 129.4–129.5); the Prime Minister can block the President by withholding countersignature (art. 163). Neither head can govern without the other; neither can remove the other. The Prime Minister is the fuse that blows: seven of them in one presidency.
2. An electoral council that could never exist. Art. 192 drew the Conseil Électoral Permanent from lists supplied by departmental assemblies (art. 80) built from municipal assemblies (art. 67) built from communal-section assemblies (art. 63.1) — none of which was ever fully seated — and art. 289.3 extinguished the only electoral body the Constitution actually created the day the first President took office, 7 February 1988. Every election since has been run by a body with no constitutional basis, judging its own results under art. 197.
3. A calendar that lapses into vacuum. Terms end on fixed dates (arts. 92.1, 95.3, 134.1); terms may never be prorogued (art. 111.8); by-elections need a CEP that does not exist (art. 130). When elections are late, Parliament vanishes on a January Monday and the President invokes art. 136 to rule by decree, which arts. 60.1, 111 and 128 forbid. Presidential vacancy then finds no organ to receive it (art. 149, both versions). This is the article-by-article path to January 2023, when the last ten senators left and the count of elected officials in Haiti reached zero.
4. An amendment clause that requires the next legislature. Declaration by two-thirds of each chamber in the last session of one legislature (art. 282.1); adoption by two-thirds in the first session of the next (arts. 283–284.1); entry into force only under the next President (art. 284.2); referendum forbidden (art. 284.3); no authority named to authenticate the resulting text. A charter that cannot be lawfully repaired in a crisis is unlawfully replaced in one.
5. Rights without doors, decentralization without money. Housing, food, education, health and pensions are promised (arts. 22, 23, 32, 48) with no action, court or deadline attached — only the liberty rights carry a remedy (art. 27). Communes are declared autonomous (art. 66) and the finances « décentralisées » (art. 217), and the share of revenue owed to them is left to a law that has never been passed.

The text itself is not stable. The 2012 republication of the amended Constitution — « reproduction pour erreurs matérielles » of a 2011 text that the President of the National Assembly himself said was not the text voted — reaches us as a silent redline: for some fifty articles it prints the 1987 wording and the 2011 wording as consecutive paragraphs with no marker saying which is which, and it still prints art. 15's absolute ban on dual nationality twenty-six lines after the new art. 12 presupposes dual nationality. No organ in the Constitution has the power to correct an amendment; the correction was issued by the Executive that benefited from it; and no Kreyòl text of the amendment has ever been promulgated, though art. 5 makes Kreyòl official and art. 40 obliges publication in both languages. Nobody can say, from the published text alone, what the nationality law of Haiti is.

The design. Fourteen principles, each answering a named failure, each with a position: no dependency chains and a self-executing default behind every appointment; a short charter written in Kreyòl first, with the state bound to maintain one consolidated text; a single directly elected President with a Vice-President, no Prime Minister, no consecutive re-election, no decree power in any circumstance; one Assembly elected with the President that cannot be dissolved and cannot lapse; a constitutionally fixed transfer of not less than twenty percent of ordinary revenue to communes and sections communales; Kreyòl as the language of law and record; full dual nationality and five diaspora seats, grounded in 1816 art. 44 rather than in foreign precedent; police not army, and a constitution that governs the terms of any foreign security presence instead of being suspended by it; Dessalines' land principle carried by a cadastre and leasehold rather than a prohibition; social rights justiciable through reasonableness review and a four-item minimum core beginning with an identity document; a budget that cannot lapse; a three-tier amendment procedure with a guarded referendum and eternity clauses drawn from the 1964–1971 diff; a Constitutional Court seated on day one, reachable by anyone, whose word is final; and a transitional path — Interim Charter, elected constituent assembly with a lottery component, certification against pre-agreed principles, double-majority referendum, and a confirmation clause for the communes that could not vote. The new charter drops the property qualification for office that has run unbroken from 1846 art. 118.3° to the 2021 draft's arts. 102 d, 137 e and 190 g.

What happens next. The Foundation cannot convene a constituent assembly; only a state organ can. It can publish, before anyone else does, the texts such an assembly would need: a plain-Kreyòl edition of the Constitution in force; the fourteen principles as a one-page Prensip Fondamantal; model clauses ready to lift whole; a thirty-article Interim Charter; and a pilot citizens' assembly that proves moun andeyò can deliberate a constitution. Publish early. The moment for texts arrives when actors who have exhausted each other need a document nobody in the room wrote.

What this report does not know. Whether the quorum and majority of arts. 284 and 284.1 were actually met at the National Assembly sitting of 9 May 2011; which constitutional text is to be put to the referendum of 13 December 2026; the issue number of the Moniteur that carried the 19 June 2012 republication; the two later CCI drafts of 2021; and eight charters not in the corpus. Six items that stood here on the morning of 4 September 2026 — chief among them the abrogation list of the 2011 law — were closed the same day; the closure pass, its sources and the four new questions it opened are set out in Appendix B.4 and B.6. The Verification Register lists every claim by its footing. The document's credibility is its only asset.

A note on sources and notation

Twenty primary texts are on disk in French, all read in full: 1801, 1805, 1806, 1807, 1811, 1816, 1843, 1846, 1846 as revised 1859–1860, 1867, 1889, 1918, 1957, 1964, 1964 as amended 1971, 1987 (Georgetown PDBA reproduction), 1987 as amended 2011 (the 19 June 2012 republication as reproduced by haiti-reference.info, which its header numbers Le Moniteur No. 96), the same republication as a marked redline (Digithèque MJP), the CCI avant-projet of 2 February 2021, and the CPCN avant-projet of 21 May 2025. The last two of those were added on 4 September 2026; see Appendix B.6. Quotations are from those files, checked against them for this report. Three kinds of claim are kept apart throughout: what the text says (always with an article number); what happened in practice; and what rests on literature outside the files. Where the last two are used the report says so or lists them in Appendix B. Sub-articles follow each text's own convention (1987: art. 55.3; 2012: art. 190bis; 1843: art. 104). Where a 1987 eligibility article is a numbered or lettered list the item is cited as « art. 91, 5° » or « art. 135 d ». For 1805 the twenty-eight « Dispositions générales » restart numbering and are cited as « Disp. gén., art. N ».

PART I — THE EVIDENCE

1. The text we actually have

Before any argument about what the Constitution says, there is a finding about whether anyone can read it.

1.1 The 2012 file is a silent redline

The Constitution in force is the 1987 text as amended by the Loi constitutionnelle of 9 May 2011, published in Le Moniteur on 13 May 2011 and republished « pour erreurs matérielles » in Le Moniteur No. 96 of 19 June 2012. The copy of that republication circulating in 2026 is not a consolidated text. For roughly fifty articles — 1, 16, 18, 32, 63, 68, 74, 78, 87.5, 90.1, 91, 92, 92.1, 92.3, 95, 96, 98.3, 127, 129.6, 134, 134.2, 135, 137, 141, 159, 165, 217, 218, 220, 223, 227, 227.3, 228, 263–267.3 among them — it prints the 1987 wording as one paragraph and the 2011 wording as the next, with nothing to say which is which. Art. 92 reads, in consecutive lines, « Les députés sont élus pour quatre (4) ans » and « Les Députés sont élus pour cinq (5) ans ». Art. 192 prints the 1987 formula — nine members from departmental-assembly lists — and, immediately beneath it, the 2011 formula — three by the Executive, three by the Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire, three by the National Assembly at two-thirds of each chamber.

Both of those are now settled, and the key is on disk. The Digithèque MJP publishes the same 19 June 2012 publication as a marked text — every abrogated passage struck through, every new one underlined, wholly new articles labelled « (nouveau) ». It is reproduced in this folder as Constitution_Haiti_1987_Amendee_2011_MJP_Redline_FR.txt. Against it, art. 92 of the Constitution in force reads four (4) years, not five; the MJP editorial note says so in terms, recording that the term of deputies and local officials was brought back « aux prescrits de la Constitution de 1987, c'est-à-dire 4 ans au lieu de 5 ans », and adding that « certains sites internet mentionnent toujours une durée de 5 ans » — of which the copy circulating in 2026 is one. Art. 192's operative rule is the 2011 formula. The finding of this section is unchanged: a reader holding only the circulating file still cannot tell which paragraph governs. But it is now a finding about a defective reproduction, not about an unknowable text.

The file reproduces only « Article 3 de la loi Constitutionnelle du 9 mai 2011 », the entry-into-force clause. Articles 1 and 2 of the amending law — the ones that would list which articles are amended, inserted or abrogated — are absent. So the file leaves standing, verbatim, articles the amendment killed. Art. 12 now says « Aucun haïtien ne peut faire prévaloir sa nationalité étrangère sur le territoire de la République d'Haïti » — a sentence that presupposes Haitians hold foreign nationalities. Twenty-six lines later art. 15 still says « La double nationalité haïtienne et étrangère n'est admise dans aucun cas. » Art. 13 still strips nationality on foreign naturalization. Art. 157 still requires only that a Prime Minister « n'avoir pas renoncé » to his nationality while the new art. 172.1 requires his ministers to hold no other nationality at all.

The redline settles what the missing articles 1 and 2 would have said. Arts. 12.1, 12.2, 13, 14, 15, 16.1 and 29.1 were abrogated outright — every word struck, no replacement text. The ban on dual nationality is not in the Constitution in force; the file that prints it is reprinting dead law, and so is anyone who quotes art. 15 today. Arts. 12 and 16 were replaced. And art. 157 was not touched: the Prime Minister's clause stands exactly as the 1987 Assembly wrote it. The anomaly is therefore in the Constitution itself and not in the copy — a Prime Minister may lawfully hold a passport that disqualifies every one of his own ministers.

A nineteenth-century French archivist did better. The 1846 text as revised in 1859 and 1860, as reproduced by the Digithèque MJP, is also a compared text — but every amended paragraph carries a trailing label, « [Révision de 1859] », « [Révision de 1860] », « [Révision de 1859, modifié en 1860] », and every abrogated article carries « [Abrogé, 1859] » after its heading. Fifteen labels; art. 71 carries three strata. Whoever quotes the first paragraph of a labelled article quotes dead law, and the label tells him so. The 2012 Moniteur publication tells him nothing.

The consequence is the first finding of this report and it is not housekeeping: the instability of the text is not a 2011–2012 event; it is the ongoing condition of Haiti's constitutional law. A court asked today which text is the Constitution of Haiti has no constitutional rule by which to answer.

1.2 How the scandal happened — the procedure invited it

Put the file's own dates together. The National Assembly voted the amendment on 9 May 2011. The text was published on 13 May 2011, the last full day of René Préval's mandate. Art. 3 of the amending law fixed entry into force at « l'installation du futur Président de la République le 14 mai 2011 » — the day Michel Martelly was sworn in. Thirteen months later, under the new President, the text was republished as a correction.

The cause of the rush is in art. 284.2: « L'amendement obtenu ne peut entrer en vigueur qu'après l'installation du prochain Président élu. » The 48th Legislature had made its art. 282 declaration in September 2009, in its last ordinary session. The 49th, seated late after the delayed 2010–2011 elections, had to adopt the amendment « à la première Session » (art. 283) and — to have it take effect under the incoming President rather than wait for his successor in 2016 — had to vote and publish before 14 May. That left five days between vote and publication for a text that rewrote some seventy articles. Arts. 282–284 provide no verification step. Arts. 125 and 298 provide only « publication au Moniteur », rules written for ordinary laws and for the original charter. Within days, members of the National Assembly — including its president, whose signature closes the text — said publicly that what Le Moniteur printed was not what they had voted. The President suspended the amendment's effect by executive act in June 2011; a commission reconciled the print against the procès-verbaux; the Executive republished in June 2012. [Practice/literature; the exact suspending instrument is a verification item.]

Four things follow from the text alone:

• No organ in the Constitution may correct an amendment. Arts. 98.3(4) and 283–284.1 give the National Assembly, and only it, the power to adopt one. A republication that alters content is a second, un-voted amendment.
• « Erreurs matérielles » is not a constitutional category. The label converts a substantive dispute — this is not what we voted — into a printing correction. Whoever controls the label controls the Constitution.
• The President who corrected it was the President who benefited. The amended calendar and vacancy rules (arts. 134.2, 149) governed his own term — the outcome art. 284.2's second sentence tries to forbid for the previous President.
• No Kreyòl text exists. Art. 5: « Tous les Haïtiens sont unis par une Langue commune : le Créole. Le Créole et le Français sont les langues officielles de la République. » Art. 40: the State must publish laws, decrees and treaties « en langues créole et française ». No official Kreyòl version of the 2011 amendment has been located, and one Haitian jurist drew the conclusion in print on the day of the republication. Writing in Le Nouvelliste on 19 June 2012, Luc Rémy called the constitutional law « juridiquement mort-née » for exactly this reason: « tout acte d'amendement d'un seul des deux textes de la Constitution de 1987 est nul et non avenu ». If he is right, the Constitution in force is the 1987 text unamended — a fourth answer to the question of §1.1, and one nobody has adjudicated, because the court that would adjudicate it is the Conseil Constitutionnel that the same amendment created and nobody ever seated. Either way the plain fact stands: the Constitution in force has never been given to pèp la in the language it speaks. [Appendix B.4, item 3.]

1.3 The five most damning fingerprints

Twenty internal fingerprints of the botched publication can be listed from the 2012 file; the fifteen not given here are in Appendix A. These five are drafting, not scanning, and each disables an institution:

1. Two constitutional courts. Art. 183 still has the Cour de Cassation « se prononce en Sections réunies sur l'inconstitutionnalité des lois ». The new art. 190bis makes the Conseil Constitutionnel « juge de la constitutionnalité de la loi… Ses décisions ne sont susceptibles d'aucun recours. » Art. 190ter.8 then makes the Council's seizure on an exception depend on « renvoi de la Cour de Cassation » — « peut », discretionary. The old court is gatekeeper of the new court that is supposed to displace it.
2. Parliament sovereign over a decision from which there is no recourse. Art. 190ter.8: after a declaration of unconstitutionality « le Conseil Constitutionnel la renvoie au Parlement qui statue souverainement sur le cas. La nouvelle disposition est promulguée. » Art. 190ter.9: an unconstitutional provision « ne peut être promulguée ni mise en application. » Both cannot be true.
3. A nine-member body with fifteen seats. Art. 190bis.1 first says three members each from the Executive, the National Assembly (two-thirds of each chamber) and the CSPJ. Its second paragraph then lists three categories — magistrates, jurists, personalities — and for each says « dont un est désigné par le Pouvoir Exécutif, par l'Assemblée Nationale…, trois (3) par le Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire. » Read literally the CSPJ names nine and the others six more. The Council was never seated; had it been, its composition clause could not have been applied as written.
4. Three arbiters of the same dispute. Arts. 111.5–111.7: Commission de Conciliation, then the Cour de Cassation « se saisit d'office… La décision sera finale. » Art. 206: the Commission's composition — which still seats the president and vice-president of a Conseil Électoral Permanent that has never existed, so the Commission cannot be composed as written. Art. 190ter.7: the Conseil Constitutionnel decides « les conflits qui opposent le Pouvoir Exécutif et le Pouvoir Législatif ». None repeals another.
5. A power over a régime the Constitution does not create. Amended art. 98.3(6) adds « l'état d'urgence » to the National Assembly's powers. No article anywhere defines a state of emergency; arts. 278–278.4 still speak only of état de siège. Emergency powers exist only in statute. The Assembly is given authority over a thing the charter does not know.

1.4 The amendment trap, stated once

Art. 282: the legislature may « déclarer qu'il y a lieu d'amender la Constitution, avec motifs à l'appui ». Art. 282.1: the declaration needs two-thirds of each chamber and « ne peut être faite qu'au cours de la dernière Session Ordinaire d'une Législature ». Art. 283: « A la première Session de la Législature suivante, les Chambres se réunissent en Assemblée Nationale et statuent sur l'amendement proposé. » Art. 284: no sitting unless two-thirds of each chamber are present. Art. 284.1: adoption by two-thirds of votes cast. Art. 284.2: in force only after the next President is installed, and never to that President's benefit. Art. 284.3: « Toute Consultation Populaire tendant à modifier la Constitution par voie de Référendum est formellement interdite. »

The trap has five jaws. Two consecutive functioning legislatures are required, with a seamless handover across the very January date on which legislatures have repeatedly lapsed. The window is a lame-duck summer session followed by four months of a freshly sworn Assembly. Entry into force is chained to 7 February, producing the 2011 sprint. The referendum is banned, so when Parliament is absent there is no lawful route at all to change a comma — no constituent-assembly clause, no emergency track, no provision for the charter's own replacement. And the text names no one to authenticate what was voted, correct what was misprinted, or decide between the voted and published versions.

The only amendment ever completed under these articles took from September 2009 to June 2012, in peacetime, and produced a text nobody can consolidate. The founders banned the referendum because 1918, 1935, 1964 and 1971 had all used it. They locked the door with the occupier's and the dictator's key still in it, and made their own charter irreparable.

2. The five mechanisms of 1987

Not « corruption », not « instability ». Those describe the weather. These are the gears.

2.1 Executive deadlock: a Prime Minister as a fuse

Art. 133: « Le pouvoir exécutif est exercé par : a) le Président de la République, Chef de l'Etat; b) le Gouvernement ayant à sa tête un Premier Ministre. » Art. 136 gives the President guardianship of « la stabilité des institutions » and « la continuité de l'Etat ». Art. 156 gives the Prime Minister « la politique de la Nation ». Art. 150: the President « n'a d'autres pouvoirs que ceux que lui attribue la Constitution », and those he has are mostly exercised in Conseil des Ministres with countersignature (arts. 141, 142, 163).

Now the fault line, article by article. Art. 137: the President chooses the Prime Minister from the majority party or, absent one, « en consultation avec le Président du Sénat et celui de la Chambre des députés », and « le choix doit être ratifié par le Parlement ». Art. 158: the Prime Minister then needs a confidence vote « à la majorité absolue de chacune des deux (2) Chambres. Dans le cas d'un vote de non confiance par l'une des deux (2) Chambres, la procédure recommence. » Three gates: presidential choice, parliamentary ratification of the choice, confidence on the programme in each chamber. Art. 137.1: « Le Président de la République met fin aux fonctions du Premier Ministre sur la présentation par celui-ci de la démission du Gouvernement » — the President has no power to dismiss, only to accept. Arts. 129.4–129.5: on censure « le Premier Ministre doit remettre au Président de la République, la démission de son Gouvernement » and « Le Président doit accepter cette démission » — once a year (art. 129.6). Art. 163: the Prime Minister and ministers are « responsables solidairement tant des actes du Président de la République qu'ils contresignent » — the countersignature is the Prime Minister's veto over the President. Arts. 142 and 160 split appointment of the administration between them.

Every actor has a veto and none has a decision. The weakest component is the Prime Minister, because he is the only one who can be removed at all. When President and Parliament are at odds he is sacrificed — by censure, or by a resignation « presented » under pressure that art. 137.1 lets the President « accept » — and the procedure recommences. Art. 165 keeps a resigned government in office « pour expédier les affaires courantes » indefinitely; the 2012 version adds a thirty-day intérimaire chosen by the President from the cabinet, which in practice became a way for an unratified Prime Minister to govern.

Practice: some twenty-one months without a ratified government after Rosny Smarth's resignation in June 1997; three nominees refused; the legislature declared lapsed in January 1999. Rouzier and Gousse rejected in 2011; Conille gone within months. Under one President from 2017: Lafontant (resigned), Céant (censured under art. 129.4, March 2019), Lapin (never ratified), Fritz-William Michel (never ratified), Jouthe (decree, no Parliament), Claude Joseph, Ariel Henry (named, not installed when the President was killed, then governed without any art. 137 ratification). Seven Prime Ministers in one presidency is the fuse made literal. The 2012 amendment defined « majority » (art. 137), added the failed-censure rule (art. 129.6) and the interim Prime Minister (art. 165). It did not touch arts. 137.1 or 158. The fault line is intact.

The CCI's own Avant-propos of 2021 said it in the state's voice: « la dépossession du Président de la République, élu au suffrage universel, du pouvoir de conduire la politique de la Nation, au profit du Premier Ministre nommé, crée une tension au sommet de cet Exécutif bicéphale », while « l'émiettement des partis politiques rend improbable l'existence de majorités », so that confirmation votes become « prébendes au bénéfice des parlementaires ». One may distrust the author and accept the diagnosis. This report does. Divided executive authority without a party system does not produce checks; it produces chire pit, a tug-of-war whose only exit is extra-constitutional — decree, the street, or an embassy communiqué.

2.2 The permanent electoral council that was never permanent

Art. 191 gives the Conseil Électoral Permanent the task « d'organiser et de contrôler en toute indépendance, toutes les opérations électorales ». Art. 192 (1987): « Le Conseil Electoral comprend (9) neuf membres choisis sur une liste de (3) trois noms proposés par chacune des Assemblées départementales » — three by the Executive, three by the Cour de Cassation, three by the National Assembly. No fallback.

The departmental assembly is « formée d'un (1) représentant de chaque assemblée municipale » (art. 80). The municipal assembly is « formée notamment d'un représentant de chacune de ses Sections communales » (art. 67). The section's assembly assists a council « élu au suffrage universel » (arts. 63, 63.1), all under organizing laws (arts. 63, 69, 82). Four links — 63.1 → 67 → 80 → 192 — and none of the lower three was ever fully elected and seated, so the top could not be forged. Art. 199 requires a law to organize the CEP while art. 191.1 makes the CEP the drafter of the electoral law: no CEP without law, no electoral law without CEP. And art. 289.3: « La mission de ce Conseil Electoral Provisoire prend fin dès l'entrée en fonction du Président élu. » From 7 February 1988 the Constitution provided no electoral authority at all unless the entire local pyramid had first been elected and legislated into being. It never was.

So every election since 1987 — 1988, 1990, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2006, 2010–11, 2015–16 — was run by a Conseil Électoral Provisoire created by executive act or political accord, whose members were not chosen as art. 192 requires, and which nonetheless exercised art. 197's exclusive jurisdiction as « le Contentieux de toutes les contestations » over its own results. Because art. 197 makes the CEP judge in its own cause, and arts. 195 and 186 route its misconduct only to a Haute Cour de Justice composed of the Senate the same CEP elected, no external check on electoral outcomes exists. Each contested result became a political crisis rather than a judicial one, and each crisis fed the next provisional council. Arts. 72, 84 and 130 — local dissolutions and by-elections — all refer to a permanent council and have never once been applied as written.

The one electoral formula in the text that worked is the transitional one. Art. 289 named the provisional council's nine seats by sector — Executive, Conférence Episcopale, Conseil Consultatif, Cour de Cassation, human-rights bodies, the University council, the journalists' association, the reformed churches, the cooperatives council — and art. 289.2 provided: « En cas d'abstention d'un Corps ou organisation sus-visé, l'Exécutif comble la ou les vacances. » A self-executing default. It produced a council within weeks. The permanent formula, with no default, produced nothing in thirty-nine years.

The 2012 repair removed the departmental lists and named three organs — Executive, CSPJ, National Assembly « avec une majorité de 2/3 de chacune des deux chambres ». It then failed for the same reason: the CSPJ was new and contested, the two-thirds threshold was never met by a Parliament fractured into dozens of parties (art. 31.1's permissive party regime and art. 281.1's ten-percent financing threshold never disciplined proliferation), and the Executive's attempt to seat a council without the Assembly's third was rejected as illegitimate. Pèp la voted in 2015–2016 under a provisional council and has not voted since.

2.3 The article-by-article path to zero elected officials

1. No electoral organ (arts. 191–192, 289.3). Elections happen only when an ad hoc council is politically agreed.
2. Terms end on fixed dates elections do not respect. Deputies take office the second Monday of January (art. 92.1), renewed integrally (art. 92.3); the Senate by thirds every two years (art. 95.3); the President from 7 February (art. 134.1). The 2012 deeming clauses in arts. 92.1, 95 and 134.2 — a mandate « est censé avoir commencé » on the calendar date even if installed late — mean a late election shortens the term rather than shifting it. They are the textual origin of the lapses of 12 January 2015 and 13 January 2020 and of the 2021 quarrel over whether a President installed in February 2017 finished in 2021 (« l'année de l'élection » = 2016) or 2022.
3. Terms cannot bend. Art. 111.8: « En aucun cas, la Chambre des députés ou le Sénat ne peut être dissous ou ajourné, ni le mandat de leurs membres prorogé. » Written against Duvalierist manipulation, it forbids the one remedy — a short prorogation pending elections — that would keep a legislature alive. The text prefers a vacuum to a caretaker.
4. By-elections need the CEP (arts. 130–130.2), which does not exist.
5. So the Chamber and two-thirds of the Senate vanish on a January Monday, leaving a third of a Senate that « siègent en permanence » (art. 95.1) and cannot legislate alone (arts. 102, 116, 120).
6. The President invokes art. 136 — « assure le fonctionnement régulier des pouvoirs publics ainsi que la continuité de l'Etat » — and issues decrees. Nothing authorizes this. Art. 60.1: « Aucun d'eux ne peut, sous aucun motif, déléguer ses attributions en tout ou en partie. » Art. 111 reserves law-making, art. 128 interpretation, to the legislature. The only decree power ever granted is art. 285.1, to the Conseil National de Gouvernement, until the first elected deputies and senators took office in 1988. Decree rule is not a gap in the text; it is a breach the text forbids and cannot prevent.
7. Vacancy finds no organ. The 1987 art. 149 needs a Cassation president and a National Assembly « dûment convoquée par le Premier Ministre ». The 2012 art. 149 needs « le Conseil des Ministres, sous la présidence du Premier Ministre » and, from the fourth year, a National Assembly to elect a provisional President. On 7 July 2021 there was no ratified Prime Minister, no Chamber, ten senators, and the president of the Cour de Cassation had died weeks earlier. Every branch of art. 149, old and new, was inoperable. A paragraph in a diplomatic communiqué did what the Constitution could not.
8. The last elected officials expire. The final ten senators' terms ended in January 2023. Local officials (arts. 63, 66, 78) had already been replaced by appointed agents intérimaires. For the first time since 1804 the Republic had no elected official at any level.
9. Amendment is now impossible (arts. 282–284.3), so the deadlock cannot be legislated out of. The Conseil Présidentiel de Transition of April 2024 rests on a political accord and an outgoing Prime Minister's decree, with no article of any text behind it.

Every step is traceable to the articles above. The dates — January 1999, February 2004, January 2015, January 2020, July 2021, January 2023 — are not accidents that happened to the Constitution. They are the Constitution operating.

2.4 Rights without doors

Titre III is drafted as a catalogue of State obligations: « L'Etat a l'impérieuse obligation » (art. 19), « L'Etat reconnaît le droit de tout citoyen à un logement décent, à l'éducation, à l'alimentation et à la sécurité sociale » (art. 22), « L'Etat est astreint à l'obligation » (art. 23), « L'Etat garantit le droit à l'éducation » (art. 32), « Ils doivent mettre l'école gratuitement à la portée de tous » (art. 32.1). None names a right-holder's action, a court, a deadline or a consequence of default.

One section does. Art. 27: violations of individual liberty are « actes arbitraires » and victims « peuvent, sans autorisation préalable, se référer aux tribunaux compétents »; art. 27.1 extends civil liability to the State. That is the only place in the charter where a right comes with a door. Constitutional review is concrete and on referral only (art. 183: « à l'occasion d'un litige et sur le renvoi »); a mother in Cité Soleil cannot bring art. 22 before any court. The CSCCA's administrative section (art. 200.1) is a court of legality, not of positive obligation. The Protecteur du Citoyen (art. 207) intervenes « sans frais » and binds no one. The 2012 text does not narrow that access. It removes it. The redline shows arts. 183 and 183.1 abrogated outright — the concrete-review clause of 1987, struck with no replacement in the same title — and the function handed to a Conseil Constitutionnel that has never been seated. A priori referral to that Council is reserved to the President, the chamber presidents, fifteen deputies or ten senators (art. 190ter.5); the exception route runs through Cassation's discretionary renvoi and back to a Parliament that « statue souverainement » (art. 190ter.8). So the Constitution in force provides no constitutional review at all: the door that existed was closed by the amendment, and the door the amendment promised was never built. That is the sharpest single illustration of this report's thesis — a rule written, an institution not built — and it is the reason Principle 13 insists the Court exist on day one. No amparo, no tutela, no individual petition. Many rights are reserved to « citoyens » (arts. 22, 23), which by art. 16.2 excludes everyone under eighteen from the rights — housing, food, school — most relevant to them.

The catalogue functions as a programme, not as law. The gap between the words and the lakou is the widest in the charter, and it is a gap of mechanism, not of generosity.

2.5 Centralization without money

Promised: « décentralisation effective » (preamble); « La Commune a l'autonomie administrative et financière » (art. 66); the department « une personne morale. Il est autonome » (art. 77); the commune as « gestionnaire privilégié des biens fonciers du domaine privé de l'Etat » (art. 74); section residents' « droit de préemption » over State land (art. 39); a Conseil Interdépartemental that « assiste aux séances de travail du Conseil des ministres… avec voix délibérative » (art. 87.3); « Les Finances de la République sont décentralisées » (art. 217); no local tax without local consent (art. 218).

Funded and empowered: nothing. Art. 217 assigns no share of revenue; it promises that « L'Exécutif, assisté d'un Conseil interdépartemental élabore la loi qui fixe la portion et la nature des revenus publics attribués aux Collectivités territoriales » — a law drafted with a body that cannot exist until the pyramid does. Art. 218 lets collectivités refuse impositions but grants no taxing power. The 2012 rewrite replaces even the promised law with a duty to « prévoir un mode de consultation des collectivités territoriales » — a weakening. Zero guaranteed gourdes in either text. Personnel are appointed by the Prime Minister and ministers (arts. 160, 171); the commune gets a technical council from the centre on request (art. 71). Coercion belongs to the délégués and vice-délégués named by the President in cabinet (arts. 85, 142), who « assurent la coordination et le contrôle des services publics » in every department and arrondissement (art. 86); the elected council merely plans « en collaboration avec l'administration centrale » (art. 81). The 2012 art. 74 demotes the commune from manager of State land to one that « veiller à la gestion… par les services compétents ». The department council is not even elected by the people but by the departmental assembly (art. 78) — delegates of delegates of delegates, three removes from pèp la.

Judges' lists (art. 175), CEP lists (art. 192 of 1987), the Conseil Interdépartemental (art. 87) all wait on the same organizing laws (arts. 63, 69, 82, 87.5). When the pyramid was not completed, the centre lost nothing. The periphery lost its CEP, its judges and its cabinet seat. Decentralization failed not because it was not written but because it was written as a duty and not as a transfer: no money moves automatically, so no money moves.

3. The arc, 1801–2026 — told for the argument

Every clause in 1987 is a scar from something before it. A charter that does not know what each scar is for will reopen the wound. What follows is the arc as evidence, not as chronicle: what each text was for, and what it proves about the proposition this report rests on.

3.1 Founders write the exception for themselves and the rule for everyone after

1801. Toussaint's Constitution of Saint-Domingue is not the charter of an independent state — art. 1 keeps the colony « partie de l'Empire français » — and its art. 3 is radical and compromised in one sentence: « Il ne peut exister d'esclaves sur ce territoire, la servitude y est à jamais abolie. Tous les hommes y naissent, vivent et meurent libres et Français. » Art. 28 makes Toussaint governor « pendant le reste de sa glorieuse vie »; art. 29 limits his successors to five-year renewable terms; art. 30 lets him alone name his successor in « un paquet cacheté ». Art. 77 orders it executed without waiting for French sanction, and Bonaparte read it as the independence it was.

1805. Dessalines' Imperial Constitution is the founding text of the independent state and the most radical in the hemisphere at that date. Art. 1: « un État libre, souverain et indépendant de toute autre puissance de l'univers, sous le nom d'Empire d'Haïti. » Art. 2: « L'esclavage est à jamais aboli. » Art. 14 makes all Haitians « Noirs » to end colour hierarchy among them. Art. 12 makes the land un-buyable by the people who had owned Haitians — a security clause, not xenophobia, as art. 13's exception for the naturalized Polish legionnaires shows. Disp. gén., art. 12 confiscates all property of French whites to the State. Four more provisions are ancestors of things this report proposes or warns against: art. 7 makes emigration a capital crime with confiscation — the diaspora's constitutional exile begins here; art. 28 forbids even the Emperor « de s'entourer d'un corps particulier et privilégié à titre de garde d'honneur, ou sous toute autre dénomination », and Disp. gén., art. 4 lays down that « La force armée est essentiellement obéissante, nul corps armé ne peut délibérer » — the anti-makout, anti-gang clause is in the first charter; art. 45 guarantees « le droit qu'a chaque individu de se faire juger à l'amiable par des arbitres à son choix. Leurs décisions seront reconnues légales » — the people's own justice, recognized; arts. 50–52 admit no dominant religion. On power: art. 23 makes the crown « élective et non héréditaire », art. 26 lets the Emperor designate his successor, art. 30 lets him appoint and dismiss every official. He was killed at Pont-Rouge on 17 October 1806 by the officers who wrote the next constitution against him.

3.2 The split: the same corpse, two constitutions, and the birth of moun andeyò

1806 is the first Haitian constitution written against the last strongman — the direct ancestor of the 1987 reflex. Art. 105: « Le Président est nommé pour quatre années. » Art. 106: named by the Senate. Art. 122: he may propose measures to the Senate « mais non des projets rédigés en forme de lois ». Art. 124: the Senate may not even summon him. Art. 27 keeps the land bar. Christophe was elected under it, understood it, refused it; the country split. 1807 in the North drew the opposite lesson: art. 8, « La charge de président et de généralissime des forces de terre et de mer est à vie »; art. 9, he chooses his successor « parmi les généraux seulement »; art. 10 hands him army, navy and treasury. 1811 made life tenure a crown, and argued for it in the preamble as doctrine — « l'érection d'un trône héréditaire est la conséquence de cette puissante considération » — art. 1 declaring Henri Christophe king, hereditary « pour les descendants mâles et légitimes en ligne directe, par droit d'aînesse, à l'exclusion des femmes. » He shot himself on 8 October 1820 as his army mutinied. The kingdom did not survive him by a month.

1816 is the South's reversal. Put two articles side by side, same man, same republic: 1806 art. 105, « Le Président est nommé pour quatre années » ; 1816 art. 142, « Le président d'Haïti est à vie. » The constituent who wrote a charter to prevent a strong president finished as president for life with the right to name his successor. That is the standing warning against any design that trusts a person rather than a mechanism, and it is why Part II refuses to rely on the virtue of any office-holder. The 1816 text also created the Chamber of Representatives of the Communes beside the Senate — the bicameral skeleton 1987 still carries — and reserved it to property-holders (art. 59: « il faut être propriétaire et âgé de 25 ans »). And it contains the article this report builds on for the diaspora, art. 44: « Tout Africain, Indien et ceux issus de leur sang, nés dans les colonies ou en pays étrangers, qui viendraient résider dans la République seront reconnus Haïtiens, mais ne jouiront des droits de citoyen qu'après une année de résidence. » In 1816 the Republic offered its nationality to every person of African or Indigenous descent on earth who came to live in it.

Constitutionally both men ended with life tenure. Socially they built two countries, and ours is Pétion's. Christophe kept the plantation and the Code Henry; the peasantry fled his state the moment he died. Pétion distributed land — dons nationaux to soldiers, small sales, tolerated occupation — and created the Haitian peasantry as a class of smallholders on their own jaden, organized around the lakou, laboring in konbit. It was the most successful emancipation policy in the Americas, and it created the political problem every constitution since has failed to solve: a majority that owned its land, did not need the state, did not read its language, and was excluded from it. Boyer's Code Rural of 6 May 1826 gave the exclusion legal form — peasants bound to rural residence and labour, policed by chèf seksyon. There is no 1826 constitution; Boyer governed twenty-five years under 1816. What dates from 1825 is the French ordinance and the indemnity: 150 million francs to compensate former slaveholders, reduced by the treaty of 12 February 1838 so that the total came to 90 million, the principal discharged in 1883, the chain of refinancing loans it set off not retired until 1947. For 122 years the Haitian state's first budget line was payment to foreigners for the crime of having been enslaved by them. Every charter from 1843 to 1946 was written on a treasury whose customs receipts were already pledged. A constitution can promise a school in every section communale; the question is who holds the customs house. That question returns in 1915, 2004 and 2024.

3.3 The nineteenth century: the term limit written, unwritten, rewritten — and the property bar that never left

1843, the liberal charter, broke with life tenure in the text: art. 104, « Le Président de la République est élu pour quatre ans » ; art. 107, « Nul ne peut être réélu Président qu'après un intervalle de quatre ans » ; art. 108, a successor's functions « cessent toujours le 15 de mai, alors même que la quatrième année de son exercice ne serait point révolue », with the council of secretaries of State governing the interim. Art. 8 restated the land bar. It was never applied. The piquets under Acaau rose in the South in 1844 — the first great moun andeyò movement, for land and against the town — and the military restoration buried the text.

1846. Riché put 1816 back and had the Senate revise it; the result was approved 14 November 1846. Art. 117: « Le Président d'Haïti est à vie. » Three years after arts. 104 and 107, the life presidency was back — not by coup, by Senate revision; the resulting text then set its own revision threshold at two-thirds (art. 188). Art. 118 added a qualification the Republic had not previously written for the supreme office: « 1° Être né en Haïti ; 2° Avoir atteint l'âge de 35 ans ; 3° Être propriétaire d'immeuble en Haïti. » Art. 7 extended the land bar to nationality itself: no white « ne pourra, à l'avenir, y acquérir aucun immeuble, ni la qualité d'Haïtien. » Soulouque was elected under it in 1847 and proclaimed himself Emperor Faustin I in 1849.

1859–1860. After the Empire fell, Geffrard restored 1846 and amended it twice — the law of 18 July 1859 (arts. 62, 71, 73, 111, 132, 133, 139, 167, 182, 192, 193 modified; 189–191 abrogated) and the law of 11 December 1860 (arts. 60, 71, 110, 146). Art. 117 survived both untouched. Overthrowing an emperor did not end the life presidency.

1867. A Constituent Assembly approved the Constitution of 14 June 1867. It did not draft a new term rule. It put 1843's back at the same numbers: art. 104, « Le Président de la République est élu pour quatre ans » — to which 1867 adds one sentence, « Il entre en fonctions le 15 mai » — and art. 107, « Nul ne peut être réélu Président qu'après un intervalle de quatre ans », identical to the letter. Art. 105 gave the election to the National Assembly at two-thirds. The drafters knew exactly which words to use, because the words had been written a generation earlier. On 14 October 1867, after a riot, the Chamber dispersed and the Constitution ceased to be applied; the insurrection of April 1868 opened the civil war. The rule survived roughly four months. And the assembly that abolished a tyrant's life tenure kept the property bar: art. 106, « 3° Être propriétaire d'immeuble en Haïti et y avoir son domicile. »

Between 1806 and 1915 the constitution was a document about the presidency: how long he served, how he was chosen, whether he could name his heir. The presidency was won by cacos or piquets marching on the capital and the new text ratified the result. Nothing in any of them was about the moun andeyò, the section rurale, the Kreyòl language or the customs receipts. The constitution was the instrument by which the town governed the country, and its eligibility rules said so.

1889, the century's last word and the text the Marines replaced, was formally in force nearly thirty years and a dead letter well before 1915. Art. 90: the President « élu pour sept ans… il n'est rééligible qu'après un intervalle de sept ans » — chosen by the National Assembly at two-thirds (art. 91), not by the people. Art. 6, the most absolute land bar ever written: « Nul, s'il n'est Haïtien, ne peut être propriétaire de biens fonciers en Haïti, à quelque titre que ce soit, ni acquérir aucun immeuble. » Two other articles must be recorded, because they are the strongest evidence in the corpus that the test of a constitution is its mechanisms and not the nationality of its authors. Art. 3.3° grants nationality to a child born in Haiti of a foreign father only « pourvu qu'il descende de la race africaine ». Art. 5: « La femme haïtienne mariée à un étranger perd sa qualité d'Haïtienne » — and with her nationality, under art. 6, her right to own a house or a field. A charter written by Haitians, with no Marine in sight, stripped a Haitian woman of her country for marrying out and made blackness a condition of birthright. Own it. It is our text.

3.4 1918: the constitution written under the Marines

The Marines landed on 28 July 1915. The Convention of 16 September 1915 placed customs, finances and a Gendarmerie under American control. When the Corps Législatif refused a draft that lifted the land ban, it was dissolved (June 1917). The text was then, in its own promulgation formula, « soumise au suffrage populaire, ratifiée le 12 Juin 1918 » under Marine supervision and promulgated by Dartiguenave on 19 June 1918. Four provisions are the occupation put into writing:

• Art. 5: « Le droit de propriété immobilière est accordé à l'étranger résidant en Haïti et aux sociétés formées par des étrangers pour les besoins de leurs demeures, de leurs entreprises agricoles, commerciales, industrielles ou d'enseignement. Ce droit prendra fin dans une période de cinq années, après que l'étranger aura cessé de résider dans le pays… » — the reversal of 1805 art. 12, 1806 art. 27, 1816 art. 38, 1843 art. 8, 1846 art. 7 and 1889 art. 6. One hundred and thirteen years of a single provision undone in one sentence. The five-year extinction clause is the direct ancestor of 1987 art. 55.4.
• Art. 127: « La présente Constitution et tous les traités actuellement en vigueur ou à conclure dans la suite, et toutes les lois… constituent la loi du pays et leur supériorité relative est déterminée par l'ordre dans lequel ils sont mentionnés. » The 1915 Convention and any future treaty became supreme law over legislation. 1987's art. 276, forbidding any treaty contrary to the Constitution, is this article in reverse.
• Article spécial: « Tous les actes du Gouvernement des États-Unis pendant son occupation militaire en Haïti sont ratifiés et valides. Aucun Haïtien ne peut être passible de poursuites civiles ou criminelles pour aucun acte exécuté en vertu des ordres de l'Occupation… » Blanket ratification, blanket immunity, no review of the occupier's courts. Every status-of-forces immunity Haiti has signed since descends from this.
• Arts. D and E (transitional): a twenty-one-member appointed Conseil d'État « exercera le Pouvoir Législatif jusqu'à la constitution du Corps Législatif » — which the occupation postponed to 1930 — and « L'inamovibilité des juges est suspendue pendant une période de six mois. » A constitution that suspends judicial tenure in its own transitional article tells you who it expects to obey.

One irony must be kept. Art. 128 of 1918 provided amendment by two-thirds of each chamber followed by « la majorité des suffrages de tous les électeurs » — a more repairable, and a popular, procedure than 1987's. The founders of 1987 banned the referendum because 1918 had used it.

The lesson is precise and it is not « foreigners are bad ». It is that a constitution's legitimacy is a function of who convenes and who ratifies, not of the text's quality. The 1918 land clause is, on paper, more investor-friendly than anything since; it is also the most delegitimized provision in Haitian constitutional history, because everyone knew whose hand held the pen. Hold that thought for 2021.

3.5 Duvalier: the sentence that was worth nothing

Art. 87 of 1957, in full: « La durée du mandat présidentiel est de six ans, et cette période commencera et se terminera le 15 mai sans qu'il soit possible au Chef du Pouvoir exécutif de continuer à exercer ses fonctions un jour de plus. » François Duvalier was elected under that text on 22 September 1957 — by direct suffrage « à la majorité relative des voix exprimées » (art. 98), no second round — and had himself proclaimed President for Life in 1964. No sentence in the corpus is more categorical and none was worth less.

The 1964 text did what art. 87 said could not be done, and did it as a recital rather than a rule. Art. 196: « le Citoyen Docteur François DUVALIER, Chef Suprême de la Nation Haïtienne ayant provoqué pour la première fois depuis 1804 une prise de Conscience Nationale… est élu Président à Vie afin d'assurer les Conquêtes et la Permanence de la Révolution Duvaliériste. » Art. 197 lists his merits — « Pour avoir : 1° Par une opportune réorganisation des Forces Armées, assuré l'Ordre et la Paix… » — and concludes in life tenure. The 1971 amendment is best read as a diff, and the diff is the finding:

Jean-Claude Duvalier was nineteen. The number 18 is the proof that the charter was retailored to one boy; the oath clause is the proof that investiture no longer passed through any assembly. François died on 21 April 1971; his son was sworn the next day. The 1971 amendment did not break the rules. It followed the amendment procedure. Votes were taken, a referendum held, Le Moniteur published. The institution that should have refused — a court able to say that a term-limit clause cannot be amended by the person it limits, or an eligibility age rewritten for a named individual — did not exist.

That is the third row of the table on page one, and with the other two it is the whole thesis. Read 1987's art. 7 (no personality cult, no living name on money or streets), art. 134.3 (no prolongation, a five-year interval, « En aucun cas, il ne peut briguer un troisième mandat »), art. 173.2 (no extraordinary tribunals), art. 263.1 (« Aucun autre Corps Armé ne peut exister sur le Territoire National »), art. 284.3 (no referendum), art. 291 (ten-year ban on the dictatorship's artisans), art. 297 (repeal of the 1935 anti-superstition decree, the 1977 Tribunal de la Sûreté law, the 1969 anti-« imported doctrine » law), and you are reading the Duvalier years in reverse. Each clause is a specific wound. And each was written as a prohibition — never as an institution able to enforce it.

3.6 1987: built to prevent tyranny, therefore built to prevent governing

Jean-Claude Duvalier left on 7 February 1986. A Constituent Assembly under Émile Jonassaint adopted the text on 10 March 1987; it was ratified by referendum on 29 March 1987 (art. 298 records that it enters into force after « sa ratification par voie référendaire » — the founders used the tool and then, in art. 284.3, locked it away). Its mechanisms are set out in §2. Its first act was to fail: the election of 29 November 1987 was aborted after the Ruelle Vaillant massacre, the provisional CEP's exclusion of candidates under art. 291 — whose standards are « notoirement connue », « présomption », « clameur publique », with no court, procedure or appeal — being a proximate trigger. The rest is the record: Manigat installed and removed in 1988; Avril suspending thirty-seven articles; Aristide elected in December 1990, overthrown in September 1991, returned in October 1994 on American aircraft; the army — still Title XI of the Constitution — demobilized by executive act in 1995 and remobilized in 2017 on exactly the same paper; Smarth's resignation and twenty-one months without a ratified government; the legislature lapsing in January 1999; Aristide's departure on 29 February 2004 and the succession of Cassation president Boniface Alexandre under art. 149 — the first and only time that article worked as written, producing two years of unelected government under MINUSTAH.

3.7 2012: the one repair the charter allowed

The only amendment ever completed took the full two legislatures. What it changed, from the amended text with §1's caveats: nationality (art. 12's new paragraph; arts. 91, 96, 135, 190ter.1 requiring candidates for the top offices to « ne détenir aucune autre nationalité au moment de l'inscription » — the lifetime « jamais renoncé » test replaced by a renounce-before-you-register test); a thirty-percent quota for women (art. 17.1), never reached in either chamber; a Conseil Constitutionnel (arts. 190bis–190ter.10), never seated; a re-sourced CEP (art. 192), never seated; a rewritten succession (art. 149) that presupposes a ratified Prime Minister and a seated Assembly; the calendar deeming clauses (arts. 92.1, 95, 134.2) and the twenty-five-point first-round rule (arts. 90.2, 94.3, 134bis); the CSPJ constitutionalized (art. 184.2) with « administration et contrôle » of the judiciary but no role in appointments, which art. 175 still routes through Senate lists and departmental and communal assemblies; and, quietly, a weakening of decentralization (arts. 74, 87.5, 217). It fixed several real things. It also demonstrated that the repair mechanism takes three years in calm conditions and cannot be used at all when Parliament is absent — which it has been for most of the period since.

3.8 2021: a correct diagnosis, a flawed cure, a fatal authorship

Parliament lapsed on 13 January 2020 and the President governed by decree. By decree of 28 October 2020 he created a Comité Consultatif Indépendant; its 282-article avant-projet was published on 2 February 2021. Only that text is on disk. Two later versions existed: a « 2ème version » dated 18 May 2021, and a further text handed to Prime Minister Ariel Henry on 8 September 2021 over the signature of the CCI's president, Boniface Alexandre. That last version reversed the two structural choices most often attributed to « the 2021 draft » — it restored a bicameral parliament with deputies and senators elected for five years, and had the Vice-President chosen by the President rather than separately elected — while keeping the two-term limit. Neither later text is on disk; nothing below is claimed about them, and the criticisms that follow are of the 2 February text alone. The referendum was set for April, moved to June, moved to September, and abandoned when the President was assassinated on 7 July 2021.

The diagnosis, quoted in §2.1, is the best short statement of what broke that any Haitian official body has produced. It names the bicephalous executive, the fragmented parties, « la décentralisation n'est pas accompagnée de mécanismes de transfert de compétences et de ressources », and the « désarticulation des mandats » that « nécessite des élections tous les 18 mois en moyenne ». It quotes the proverb that names the whole problem — « Konstitisyon se papye, bayonèt se fè » — and states its theory of why art. 284.3 did not apply: the people « constitue le pouvoir constituant originaire ».

Several of its choices this report also makes: a single executive — art. 133, « Le Pouvoir exécutif est exercé par le Président de la République… Il est également le chef de Gouvernement », art. 276 suppressing the Prime Minister; a Vice-President who « succède immédiatement et achève le mandat présidentiel en cours » (art. 138); a single chamber that « ne peut être dissoute ni ajournée » (arts. 99, 113); nationality by descent wherever born and diaspora seats of not less than five percent (arts. 11, 100); a constitutional court with electoral jurisdiction and direct access (arts. 195–196); parity rather than a quota (art. 16).

Several are, on the record above, mistakes: plurality election with no runoff — art. 134, « scrutin majoritaire à un tour », art. 100 likewise for deputies — which is 1957 art. 98's « majorité relative » under a new name, the rule that elected Duvalier; consecutive re-election — art. 136, « Nul ne peut bénéficier de plus de deux (2) mandats présidentiels », with no interval, against 1843 art. 107, 1867 art. 107, 1889 art. 90 and 1987 art. 134.3, the first Haitian text since Duvalier to let a sitting President run again at once; decree-law by the back door — art. 146's ordonnances in the domain of law under an enabling act for six months; an electoral council that belongs to the President — art. 208, all eleven members « nommés par arrêté du Président de la République pris en Conseil des ministres » from civil-society lists, which solves the 1987 dependency problem by making the electoral body depend on the one actor it exists to constrain; a constitutional court appointed by three individuals — art. 189, three judges each « désignés par » the President of the Assembly, the President of the Republic and the President of the Cour de cassation, persons not bodies, confirmed by no one; deemed confirmation tilted to the nominator — art. 147, nominations « définitives » unless refused within fifteen days « à la majorité des deux tiers », the right mechanism with a calibration that makes the check a formality; decentralization still without arithmetic — art. 242, « La loi veille à ce que les recettes fiscales soient réparties harmonieusement », no percentage, no formula, and art. 246 keeping the presidentially appointed délégués; a charter easy to amend by whoever holds it — art. 268, two-thirds of the single Assembly in one vote, promulgated in fifteen days, art. 270's only limit the « caractère démocratique et républicain », no entrenchment of term limits, court or rights; and the property bar kept — art. 102 d for deputies, art. 137 e for the President, art. 190 g for constitutional judges, art. 252 e for departmental councillors. The drafters diagnosed « décentralisation sans transfert » and wrote another constitution without a transfer.

Then the transitional title, where authorship shows. Art. 271 bars the sitting President from the first election — clean — and writes into the new charter, as settled fact, « la fin de son mandat, le 7 février 2022 », the very date the CSPJ and the bar disputed. Art. 272 has « l'Exécutif » adopt, in Council of Ministers, within fifteen days of the referendum, the electoral decree for every office in the country. Art. 277 has the President name the committee drafting all the organic laws. The person who would not run wrote the rules under which everyone else would.

Why none of it mattered: the referendum was convened by a President governing without a legislature, whose mandate's end was disputed by the country's highest judicial council, run by a CEP he had appointed unilaterally, on a text drafted by a committee he had named by decree, that gave the presidency he was building the power to appoint the entire electoral council and a third of the constitutional court. It was 1918 without the Marines: a text with a sound diagnosis and real merits whose authorship disqualified it. Process is not procedure. Principle 14 exists because of this.

3.9 After the assassination

Ariel Henry, named Prime Minister on 5 July 2021 and not yet installed, was backed by the Core Group's statement of 17 July and sworn in on 20 July. No Haitian institution appointed him; a paragraph in a diplomatic communiqué did. The Montana Accord of 30 August 2021 — several hundred signatory organizations, a National Transition Council, a constituent process — had real breadth and no state power; Henry ignored it. When the last ten senators' terms expired in January 2023, Haiti had no elected official at any level. The Conseil Présidentiel de Transition, created by a decree of Henry's outgoing government on 12 April 2024 and installed 25 April 2024 with a mandate to 7 February 2026, produced a Comité de Pilotage de la Conférence Nationale — the Conférence Nationale created by decree of 17 July 2024 — whose avant-projet de Constitution of 240 articles was signed at Port-au-Prince on 21 May 2025 for the Comité by Enex J. Jean-Charles, handed to the CPT, and opened to public comment from 22 May to 21 June 2025. That text is now on disk, and read against the reporting that summarized it, it is markedly more conservative than advertised. It keeps a bicameral Corps Législatif — art. 70, « deux (2) Chambres représentatives. Une (1) Chambre des députés et un (1) Sénat » — merely cutting the Senate to two per department (art. 76-1); it keeps the Prime Minister (art. 119, « le Pouvoir Exécutif est exercé par le Président de la République assisté du Premier ministre »); it elects the President by absolute majority with a runoff (art. 120), not by the one-round rule of 2021; and its art. 5 on language reproduces 1987 word for word. Its preamble promises the diaspora integration « dans tous les aspects de la vie nationale dans les mêmes conditions que les Haïtiens vivant en Haïti » — and then arts. 73 and 78 keep the 2011 bar, no other nationality at the moment of registration, and arts. 73, 5° and 78, 5° keep the property qualification. The diaspora line and the property line of §3.10 run straight through it. It does add one thing Principle 5 should note: art. 35-1 writes a floor of « quatre (4) pour cent du produit intérieur brut » for education — the first numeric fiscal floor in a Haitian constitutional text. On 9 October 2025 the government dissolved the Comité de Pilotage and cancelled the referendum. Security has been partly delivered by foreign personnel under Security Council mandates since June 2024 (Resolution 2699; the Gang Suppression Force authorized by Resolution 2793 of 30 September 2025). What happened on 7 February 2026 is now on the record, and it is worth stating precisely, because it is the mechanism of art. 149 as amended in 2011 operating for the first time in the Republic's history. The CPT's mandate expired; its last president, Laurent Saint-Cyr, stepped down; executive power passed to the Council of Ministers under Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who became de facto head of state, with the United States and CARICOM publicly backing him. No Haitian elected body was involved, because there is none. A Pacte national pour la stabilité et l'organisation des élections, signed 21–22 February 2026, provides that the Council of Ministers exercises the executive until elections and that a constitutional referendum be held on election day — bearing, in the Pacte's terms, on a series of amendments, not on the CPCN's replacement charter. The CEP's electoral calendar, published in July 2026, sets the first round and the referendum for 13 December 2026, with a second round on 21 February 2027, conditioned on an acceptable security environment and on funding; registration deadlines had already slipped by April 2026. Which constitutional text is to be put to that referendum is not established by any source this report could reach — the body that drafted one was dissolved eleven months before the date.

What can be said is structural, and it has not changed: the country is governed by an executive nobody elected, under a constitution whose repair mechanism requires a legislature that does not exist, heading toward a referendum whose text no elected body has written and whose legality under art. 284.3 nobody has resolved. The Venice Commission, asked for an opinion by the CEP itself and reporting on 13–14 June 2025, said the quiet part: the fundamental principles of electoral law « cannot be fully guaranteed in the current Haitian context », and the legitimacy of any referendum depends on a security situation that is deteriorating rather than improving. That is the situation Part II is designed for.

3.10 Three lines through the corpus

The land bar — nine texts, one reversal.

The only reversal in 182 years came while the Marines were in the country. Everything before it and after it is Dessalines, negotiated. Every Haitian debate about foreign investment and land is a debate with him, and should be conducted as one.

The property qualification — never left. 1816 art. 59 (Chamber reserved to « propriétaire »); 1846 art. 118.3° (« Être propriétaire d'immeuble en Haïti » to be President); 1867 art. 106.3° (« propriétaire d'immeuble en Haïti et y avoir son domicile ») in the very text that abolished the life presidency; 1987 art. 91, 5° (deputy: « propriétaire d'un immeuble au moins dans la circonscription ou y exercer une profession ou une industrie »), art. 135 d (President: « propriétaire en Haïti d'un immeuble au moins »), art. 157, 4° (Prime Minister: « propriétaire en Haïti ou y exercer une profession »); 2021 arts. 102 d, 137 e, 190 g, 252 e. In a country where most rural land is untitled, a property qualification is a rule that the moun andeyò may vote but not sit. The new charter drops it.

The diaspora — two instincts, both ours. 1805 art. 7: « La qualité de citoyen d'Haïti se perd par l'émigration et par la naturalisation en pays étranger… Le premier cas emporte la peine de mort et la confiscation des propriétés. » 1889 art. 5: a Haitian woman loses her nationality by marrying a foreigner. 1987 art. 13 a: nationality lost by « La Naturalisation acquise en Pays étranger », and art. 15: « La double nationalité haïtienne et étrangère n'est admise dans aucun cas. » Against that line stands 1816 art. 44, quoted above, which offered Haitian nationality to the whole African and Indigenous world. The exclusion is the oldest reflex in the corpus; the welcome is the founding generation's own doctrine. The design choice is which one to build on, and Principle 7 chooses.

PART II — THE DESIGN

4. Fourteen principles, each with a position

Every principle below is stated as a rule, names the failure it answers by article, and takes a position. The first two are meta-rules that govern the rest. Comparative cases are cited only where they are genuinely instructive, and each is a verification item in Appendix B until the Foundation's comparative annex confirms it from primary text.

Principle 1 — No dependency chains; every appointment has a self-executing default

Rule. Every organ the constitution creates must be capable of being seated using only bodies that exist on the day it enters into force. Every appointing power is paired with a default that operates automatically if the appointing authority fails to act within a fixed period. No office is ever vacant: the incumbent holds over as caretaker until a successor is sworn.

Failure answered. Art. 192 (a CEP from assemblies that never existed); art. 190bis.1 (a Conseil Constitutionnel from a two-thirds vote that never came); art. 149 as amended (succession through a ratified Prime Minister and a seated Assembly, neither present in July 2021); art. 217 (a revenue share from a law never passed); art. 111.8 (holdover forbidden, so vacuum preferred to caretaker).

Why. Constitutions are executed by people who benefit from their non-execution. A duty to appoint that carries no consequence for failing is an invitation. The 1987 text itself contains the proof: art. 289.2 — « l'Exécutif comble la ou les vacances » — produced a council in weeks; art. 192, with no default, produced nothing in thirty-nine years.

Position. A single default hierarchy for every appointed constitutional office: (1) nominating body fails within 60 days → the Constitutional Court appoints from a public roster of applicants ranked by an independent selection panel; (2) the Court itself fails → the sitting members of the body co-opt by lot from the same roster; (3) in all cases the outgoing member remains in office, with full powers and no eligibility for reappointment, until the successor is sworn. Confirmation votes not held within 45 days count as confirmations. Calibration matters as much as mechanism: the 2021 draft's art. 147 had the right idea — nominations « définitives » if the Assembly does not act — and ruined it with a fifteen-day clock and a two-thirds vote to refuse. A default must be reachable by the body it disciplines: 45 days, simple majority to refuse, or the default is just a transfer of power to the nominator. Ghana's Electoral Commission (tenure of superior-court judges) and Costa Rica's Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones (seated by the Supreme Court, an existing body) are the positive precedents; Tunisia 2014, whose constitutional court depended on a parliamentary supermajority and was never seated, is the negative one.

Principle 2 — Write short, write for execution, write in Kreyòl first, and keep one consolidated text

Rule. A charter of roughly 100–120 articles — a third of 1987's 298. Every article that creates an obligation names the obligor, the deadline and the default. Programmes (agrarian reform institute, energy policy, botanical gardens) go to law. The text is drafted in Kreyòl and translated into French; the Kreyòl is authentic.

Failure answered. Arts. 22, 23, 32.1, 32.3, 39, 64, 248, 249, 254–256, 262 — programmatic promises no court could enforce and no budget honoured, teaching everyone that the constitution is aspirational literature. Section 1: a text nobody can consolidate. Chile 2022 and 2023 — two maximalist drafts, each rejected — is the warning against writing one side's programme into the charter; Iceland 2012 — technically admired, approved in a non-binding vote, killed in the Althing because the drafting body could not enact — is the warning against a ratifying body with every incentive not to ratify, which is the exact trap of arts. 282–284.

Position. Programme clauses move to a short Angajman Nasyonal (National Commitments) chapter that binds the budget process (Principle 10) rather than pretending to bind courts. And the state must maintain and publish a single consolidated text: every amendment is published both as a marked revision — old wording, new wording, date and instrument, as the MJP does for 1859–1860 — and as a fresh consolidated constitution in Kreyòl and French within thirty days, the consolidated text authoritative. A constitution nobody can consolidate is a constitution nobody can obey.

Principle 3 — One President, directly elected, term-limited, with a Vice-President; no Prime Minister

The choice. Presidential, parliamentary, or repaired semi-presidential.

Against repaired semi-presidentialism. Every repair — a presidential dismissal power, single-chamber confidence, thirty-day ratification deadlines — keeps two heads and therefore keeps the chire pit between them; it only changes who wins it. Cabo Verde makes semi-presidentialism work because it has two disciplined parties that alternate. Haiti has had on the order of two hundred registered parties, almost all personal vehicles. Semi-presidentialism without parties is a machine for producing unratified Prime Ministers.

Against parliamentarism. The same fragmentation makes it a rotating coalition crisis, and Haitian political culture invests legitimacy overwhelmingly in the directly elected President. A Prime Minister chosen by a fragmented chamber would be seen as the chamber's creature — which is how Haitians have seen every Prime Minister since 1988.

For constrained presidentialism. The objection must be met head-on: presidentialism in Haiti has meant Duvalier. But Duvalier's presidency had no term limit anyone could enforce, no independent electoral body, no constitutional court, no legislature that could not be dissolved, and a private militia. What made it a tyranny was the absence of every institution in Principles 1, 4, 5, 8 and 13 — not the unity of the executive. What 1987's dual executive actually delivered was not restraint but paralysis followed by decree rule, which is the worst form of presidentialism, arrived at by the back door. Better one accountable executive constrained by institutions that exist than two unaccountable ones constrained by each other's obstruction. The 2021 and 2025 drafts reached this conclusion; their disqualifying authorship does not make the conclusion wrong.

Position.

• One President, elected by absolute majority in two rounds. Keep 1987 art. 134's runoff. Drop the 2012 twenty-five-point rule (art. 134bis), an invitation to first-round manipulation. Reject outright the 2021 draft's art. 134 « scrutin majoritaire à un tour », which is 1957 art. 98's « majorité relative » under a new name — the rule that elected Duvalier.
• Five-year term. No consecutive re-election; one further non-consecutive term at most. This is a deliberate choice against the 2021 draft's art. 136 and for an unbroken Haitian line — 1843 art. 107, 1867 art. 107, 1889 art. 90, 1987 art. 134.3 — because the Haitian record of « one more term » (1816, 1935, 1944, 1964, 1971) is the record of the life presidency, and because an incumbent running again is an incumbent controlling the electoral body. A lame-duck problem is preferable to a life-president problem. The clause is an eternity clause (Principle 12), with 1957 art. 87 as the standing reminder that it is nothing without the Court of Principle 13.
• A Vice-President elected on the ticket, succeeding automatically for the remainder of the term with no mid-term election — art. 149's 45–90-day election was never honoured and destabilized every succession. Chain: Vice-President → President of the Assembly → President of the Constitutional Court, each as caretaker, each barred from the next election (keep art. 149.1).
• The President appoints ministers, confirmed by the Assembly within 45 days or deemed confirmed; the Assembly may censure an individual minister by absolute majority (keep art. 172) but cannot bring down « the Government », because there is no Government separate from the President.
• No decree-law power. Ever. Not in emergencies, not in legislative absence, not by ordonnances under an enabling act as the 2021 draft's art. 146 allowed. Without a quorate Assembly the President may only administer existing law and the continuing budget (Principle 11); a Constitutional Court panel, not the President, orders the elections that fill the vacancy.
• Carry forward art. 7 (no personality cult), art. 143 (« Chef nominal des Forces Armées, il ne les commande jamais en personne ») and art. 279 (asset declarations).

Principle 4 — One chamber, elected on one day with the President, that cannot be dissolved and cannot lapse

The Senate's mechanism of death. Renewal by thirds every two years (art. 95.3) meant a national election every two years, forever, in a country that has never held one on schedule; each missed election removed a third of the Senate, so that by 2020 it had ten members and by January 2023 none. Bicameralism doubled the veto points on the Prime Minister (art. 158) and on amendment (art. 282.1). And the Senate never protected the territorial units that justify a second chamber elsewhere, because the departments it represented had no fiscal existence to protect.

Position. A unicameral Asanble Nasyonal of about 147 members: roughly 100 by closed-list proportional representation within the ten departments (seats by population, floor of five per department so the Grand'Anse and the Nippes are never swamped by the Ouest), lists alternating women and men — the only mechanism that has ever made a quota real, unlike art. 17.1's aspirational thirty percent; 42 seats, one per arrondissement, by two-round majority, so every territory has one named representative it can find and blame; five diaspora seats (Principle 7). All elected on the same day as the President for a concurrent five-year term; local elections at the midpoint; two fixed national election dates per decade written into the constitution, no decree required. No dissolution (keep art. 111.8's core) and no lapse: if an election is not held, sitting members hold over as a caretaker Assembly with power to pass only the budget, electoral legislation and emergency approvals, until the Court-ordered election is completed. Territorial representation moves to where it has teeth — the protected revenue share and a Konsèy Teritwa of two representatives per department elected by that department's mayors, with a suspensive veto (override by absolute majority after 60 days) over laws altering the collectivités' competences or finances and a consent requirement for changes to the revenue formula. Kenya's Senate exists for exactly this purpose; this design takes the function without the second chamber's cost.

Principle 5 — Decentralization by transfer, not by duty: a fixed, formula-based revenue share

Rule. Not less than a fixed percentage of ordinary national revenue, computed on the last audited accounts, is transferred monthly and automatically from the Treasury single account to the collectivités territoriales by a formula set by an independent commission; the transfer is a first charge on the Treasury; a late or short transfer is enforceable by any commune before the Constitutional Court.

Failure answered. Art. 217 (share left to a law never passed; 2012: a duty of consultation); arts. 85–86 (executive délégués); the absence of local elections for most of the period since 1990; a capital holding perhaps a quarter of the population and absorbing the overwhelming share of expenditure, so that a section communale has no reason to regard the state as its own. The 2021 draft's art. 242 — « réparties harmonieusement » — repeated the error.

Precedent to copy. Kenya 2010, art. 203(2): counties receive « not less than fifteen per cent of all revenue collected by the national government », on the last audited accounts; a Commission on Revenue Allocation recommends the formula. Kenyan devolution has real problems, but the money moves — every year since 2013, to 47 counties — because the constitution made it arithmetic rather than politics. Brazil's Fundo de Participação dos Municípios and Indonesia's Dana Alokasi Umum confirm the pattern: formula transfers survive political cycles; discretionary ones do not.

Position. A Fon Nasyonal Teritwa of not less than 20 percent of ordinary domestic revenue (excluding grants and borrowing), with a floor that cannot be reduced by amendment for fifteen years. Split: 65 percent to the 146 communes, 25 percent directly to the roughly 570 sections communales — the chèf seksyon's successor becomes a funded elected council, not a policeman — 10 percent to the ten departments. Formula every five years by an independent Revenue Allocation Commission seated under Principle 1 defaults, on published criteria (population, poverty, equal share, area, own-revenue effort); changes need the Konsèy Teritwa's consent. The property tax and local fees belong to the commune by constitutional right (keep art. 218's consent rule). Abolish the délégués and vice-délégués; the state's presence in a department is its services, not its prefect. A commune dissolved for malfeasance (keep art. 72) gets a Court-ordered by-election within 90 days and never an agent intérimaire for longer. Audit by the Cour Supérieure des Comptes published in Kreyòl in each commune. Recall by petition of 20 percent of the commune's voters.

Principle 6 — Kreyòl is the language of law and record; French remains official; the cost is paid deliberately

Rule. The constitution and all laws are drafted, debated and enacted in Kreyòl; the French text is co-official and equally published; where they diverge the Kreyòl prevails. Courts sit in Kreyòl as of right; a party may use French. Le Moniteur is bilingual. The Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen is a constitutional body with a protected budget line and a ten-year mandate to produce the legal lexicon and translate the codes.

Failure answered. Arts. 5 and 40 already say most of this and are ignored because nothing enforces them and because the drafting language was French. Le Moniteur publishes in French; laws are drafted, debated and voted in French; court proceedings are in French with oral Kreyòl improvised by the judge or clerk; the Civil Code (1825) and Penal Code (1835) exist only in French; the 1987 Constitution's Kreyòl version is cited by no court. A legal system whose texts cannot be read by the governed is one in which law is what the avoka says it is. That is a rule-of-law defect, not a cultural grievance.

Position. Do it, and price it: a Kreyòl legal lexicon (the Akademi with the bar and law faculties, three years); translation of the Civil, Penal, Commercial and Procedure codes (five to seven years, and the occasion to replace the 1825 Civil Code — a Kreyòl-first codification project in itself); court reporters and clerks trained in written Kreyòl in the 1979–80 official orthography — the single largest cost, because the grefye corps is the bottleneck; legal education in Kreyòl; the Moniteur digitized and bilingual. Tens of millions of dollars over a decade — less than one year of the MSS mission. Seychelles (Seselwa first among three), Rwanda (legislature in Kinyarwanda) and Aruba and Curaçao (Papiamentu in administration within a decade) show it can be done; Ireland — Irish « first official language » since 1937 and the state operating in English — shows what happens when a status is named and not paid for. The objection that Kreyòl lacks the vocabulary was made about every vernacular that displaced Latin; vocabulary is created by use, and the Akademi exists to do it. What is not acceptable is a constitution the people it binds cannot read.

Principle 7 — The diaspora: full dual nationality, a small fixed representation, a vote that follows the citizen

Rule. Haitian nationality of origin is never lost by acquiring another. Dual nationals hold every right including candidacy for the Assembly; residency requirements — a residency, not a nationality, test — are retained only for the presidency, vice-presidency and command of the force publique. Five Assembly seats are elected from three overseas constituencies (North America; the Caribbean and Latin America; Europe and the rest). Citizens abroad vote in presidential elections, referenda and for their overseas seats, through consulates and a verified register.

Failure answered. Section 3.10's third line. Roughly two million Haitian-born people live abroad, three to four million counting their children; remittances run at some US$3.5–4 billion a year, about a fifth of GDP, larger than exports and aid combined. The people who fund the country cannot vote in it, run in it, or — for most of its history — legally belong to it. A constitution that excludes the largest economic constituency of the nation from the nation is describing a smaller country than the one that exists.

The Haitian precedent comes first. 1816 art. 44 offered nationality to every person of African or Indigenous descent on earth who came to reside in the Republic, with citizenship after one year. The claim that a Haitian belongs to Haiti wherever born is the founding generation's own doctrine, and far stronger ground than any comparative table. The counter-tradition is named just as plainly: 1805 art. 7's death penalty for emigration, 1889 art. 5's loss of nationality on marrying out, 1987 arts. 13 a and 15. Both instincts are ours. This report builds on the first. The Dominican Republic elects seven diaspora deputies under its 2010 constitution; France eleven; Italy twelve across both chambers; Cabo Verde six of 72; Senegal fifteen. None has produced « diaspora capture », because the seats are few.

The honest objections, answered. Representation without taxation: cap the seats at about three percent of the Assembly for roughly a fifth of the nation, give them no distinctive power, and treat them as the diaspora's obligation as much as its right — a place where the country can hold it to account. Security of the overseas vote: a verified register (the constitution names the requirement, not the technology), in-person voting at consulates, and the honest acceptance that turnout will be low at first. Divided loyalty in the executive: the residency test for the presidency, vice-presidency and force publique command. The Dominican problem: hundreds of thousands of people of Haitian descent were stripped of Dominican nationality by ruling TC/0168/13 in 2013 and Haiti's law has never protected them; the constitution guarantees nationality by descent without registration deadlines, obliges the state to document them (Principle 10), and the second overseas constituency exists so that this population has a seat.

Principle 8 — Security: constitutionalize the goal, the path, and the terms of any foreign presence

Rule. The force publique is the Police Nationale (primary) and a Corps of Border, Coastal and Civil Protection under civilian command; no other armed body may exist. Any foreign security presence requires a treaty ratified by two-thirds of the Assembly, is limited to twelve months per authorization, is subject to Haitian jurisdiction for crimes against Haitians (no status agreement may exclude it), reports monthly to the Assembly and the Court, and terminates automatically if not renewed. A constitutional disarmament and reintegration framework governs the return of armed-group members to civil life; no amnesty for crimes against humanity, massacres or sexual violence.

Failure answered. Art. 263.1's fiction — « Aucun autre Corps Armé ne peut exister » — in a capital most of which armed groups controlled by 2025; MINUSTAH's status-of-forces immunity, under which no one was tried in Haiti for the cholera introduced in October 2010, whose constitutional ancestor is 1918's Article spécial; the Core Group's governance-by-communiqué; the 2017 remobilization of an army whose only constitutional existence is a 1987 title the country had spent two decades ignoring. The Haitian precedent is older than any of this: 1805 art. 28 forbade even the Emperor a private guard « sous toute autre dénomination », and Disp. gén., art. 4 declared « nul corps armé ne peut délibérer ». The makout violated the first; the gangs violate both. Restating them is restoration, not innovation.

Position. Police, not army. Every Haitian coup was made by the army, and its 1995 demobilization coincided with the only sixteen years without one; the external-defence argument is weak, and what Haiti lacks is a coast guard, a border force that stops weapons entering through the northern ports and the Artibonite, and a civil-protection corps for earthquakes and hurricanes. Give the Corps those functions under the Interior ministry, forbid it any internal public-order role except on the Assembly's authorization, and drop Title XI's army. Police command insulated by tenure: a Director-General appointed for a fixed non-renewable term with Assembly confirmation (Principle 1 defaults) and removable only for cause certified by the Court — three PNH chiefs were changed in 2021–2024 alone. Armed groups: a constitutional offence of forming or financing one; asset forfeiture; the no-amnesty rule for atrocity crimes; and a mandate for a reintegration law with a truth-and-reparations component, because tens of thousands of young men under arms will not disappear and the choice is between a lawful exit and a permanent war. The foreign-presence clause is the heart of it. The constitution neither forbids external help — that would be ignored the day it was needed, as art. 263.1 was — nor enshrines it. It sets terms: two-thirds ratification, twelve-month sunset, Haitian jurisdiction, monthly reporting, published hand-over benchmarks, and a rule that no agreement may place customs, ports, the Treasury or the electoral process under foreign administration — art. 8.1's inalienability extended from territory to sovereign functions. Sovereignty, defined operationally: the decision to accept help, its terms and its end are made by Haitian organs elected under this constitution; the forces answer to a Haitian civilian chain of command; the state publishes annually what functions non-Haitian personnel perform and when they will not. A state that cannot yet monopolize force can still monopolize authorization. That is the line to hold.

Principle 9 — Land: keep Dessalines' principle, change its instrument

Rule. Land may not be alienated in freehold to foreign natural or legal persons, except one residence for a resident foreigner. Foreign investment in land is by registered lease of up to 50 years, renewable, under law; the border-strip prohibition (art. 55.3) is kept. The state must complete a national cadastre and title registry within fifteen years, with peasant possession of at least twenty years convertible to title on demand and without cost. Family land held in indivizyon (tè eritye) and the lakou are recognized forms of tenure. The section communale preemption right (art. 39) is kept and made enforceable.

Failure answered. The nine-text lineage in §3.10: a provision Haitians re-enacted for 113 years, reversed once under occupation, and since kept in a half-open form nobody defends on principle — 1987 art. 55.2 permits foreign ownership « pour les besoins de leurs entreprises… dans les limites et conditions déterminées par la loi », and the law never defined the limits, so the rule is whatever a notary in Pétion-Ville says it is. The absence of a cadastre makes every land dispute political and keeps peasant land un-collateralizable. Mexico's art. 27 restricted zone, channelling tens of billions of dollars through bank trusts and long leases, proves a freehold ban is not an investment ban; the Philippines, Thailand and Ethiopia confirm that capital accepts leasehold when the register is reliable.

Position. Dessalines was right about the danger — loss of control over the national territory — and wrong, for this century, about the tool. The tool is the register, not the prohibition. A foreigner with a registered fifty-year lease and a Haitian court that enforces it is a smaller sovereignty risk than the present regime of untitled land, informal foreign holdings through Haitian nominees, and seizures by armed groups. Every hectare should have a name on it in a Haitian registry before anyone worries about what passport the name holds.

Principle 10 — Social rights justiciable through reasonableness review and a short minimum core

Rule. The state must take reasonable legislative and budgetary measures, within available resources, toward the progressive realization of the rights to education, health, food, water, housing and social security; courts review the reasonableness of the measures, not the outcome. A short list of minimum-core entitlements is immediately enforceable: registration of birth and a national identity document for every Haitian; free primary schooling; emergency medical care; protection of children from servitude (restavèk) with an affirmative duty to remove and school them. Every budget publishes the share allocated to each right and the change from the prior year.

Failure answered. Arts. 22, 23, 32, 32.3, 64, 249 and their kin — absolute promises, unenforced, discrediting the whole rights chapter (§2.4). And the fact that roughly a third of Haitian children have no birth certificate, which makes every other right unclaimable. South Africa's ss. 26–27 and the Grootboom (2000) and Treatment Action Campaign (2002) judgments show a court ordering the state to fix an unreasonable programme without dictating the budget; Colombia's tutela — hundreds of thousands of individual health petitions a year — shows why individual enforcement must be channelled toward structural remedies.

Position. Adopt the South African standard in spirit. Make the four minimum-core items hard rights because they are cheap relative to their leverage — identity documents above all, since a Haitian without papers cannot vote, sue, inherit, enrol or cross a border, and an electoral roll is only as good as the civil register. The Office National d'Identification and civil registry become a constitutional body with a protected budget. In a country where the state's presence is contested, the register is the republic.

Principle 11 — A budget that never lapses, a Treasury that cannot be pledged in secret, anti-chire pit rules everywhere

« La durée du mandat présidentiel est de six ans, et cette période commencera et se terminera le 15 mai sans qu'il soit possible au Chef du Pouvoir exécutif de continuer à exercer ses fonctions un jour de plus. » — 1957, art. 87. Its author was « élu Président à Vie » seven years later, lowered the age of eligibility from forty to eighteen for his son, and wrote himself the right to name his successor — each step by the amendment procedure, none of them illegal.

Every deadline and default in this principle is written in the knowledge that the table on page one exists. A rule that says what must happen is a wish. A rule that says what happens automatically when it does not, enforced by a body the violator does not control, is a constitution. And a rule that can be amended by the person it binds, through a procedure that person controls, is not a rule at all — which is why Principle 12 entrenches term limits beyond amendment and Principle 13 seats the enforcer before anyone can prevent it.

Rule. If the Assembly has not voted a budget by 1 October (art. 227.4), the previous budget continues by twelfths, indexed, with the FNT transfer and the protected lines (elections, courts, identity registry, Akademi) unaffected. Any external borrowing, sovereign guarantee or contract above a constitutional threshold requires a published Assembly vote; contracts not published within 30 days are void. The Cour Supérieure des Comptes publishes its audit of every ministry annually in Kreyòl or the ministry's budget is frozen. Confirmation votes not held within 45 days are deemed affirmative; nominating bodies that fail within 60 days lose the nomination to the default; a Constitutional Court panel decides inter-branch disputes within 30 days on a fixed timetable.

Failure answered. Decree budgets since 2015; the PetroCaribe funds — on the order of US$2 billion by the Cour Supérieure des Comptes' 2019–2020 reports — spent under executive agreements the legislature never saw; the 1987 Commission de Conciliation (art. 206) and the Cour de Cassation's deadlock jurisdiction (arts. 111.5–111.7), never used because they had no deadlines and no defaults.

Position. The chire pit is not resolved by asking the parties to talk — art. 206 tried that — but by making inaction cost the party that benefits from it. Every deadline is paired with a default. The default favours continuity (the old budget, the incumbent holdover) over the actor who caused the deadlock (a President who wants a vacancy, a chamber that wants a veto by silence).

Principle 12 — Amendment and emergency: repairable, not capturable; the exception governed, not governing

Amendment. Three tiers. Ordinary provisions: two-thirds of the Assembly in two votes at least six months apart, in the same legislature; a referendum only if one-third of the Assembly or five percent of registered voters demands one within 90 days. Entrenched provisions (the rights chapter, the electoral body, the Court, the FNT floor, the language clause, the foreign-presence clause, decentralization): two-thirds of the Assembly plus a mandatory referendum passed by a majority of valid votes and in at least six of ten departments. Eternity clauses: the abolition of slavery — 1805 art. 2, « L'esclavage est à jamais aboli », carried forward word for word; the republican form; the presidential term limit; the prohibition of life presidency and hereditary succession; the eligibility conditions for the presidency; the ban on extraordinary tribunals. Unamendable. The list is drawn directly from the 1964–1971 diff: life tenure (1964 arts. 196–197), designated succession (1971 art. 100) and a rewritten eligibility age (1971 art. 91.2°) were all reached through the amendment procedure, so the amendment procedure must be closed to them. A further rule generalizes art. 284.2: no amendment may alter term, eligibility or succession provisions to the benefit of anyone holding office when it is adopted.

Guardrails on the referendum, not a ban. Art. 284.3 tried to prevent Duvalierist plebiscites by banning referenda and thereby made the charter unrepairable and its own replacement extra-legal. Instead: a constitutional referendum may be initiated only by elected organs under this constitution, never during an emergency, never within twelve months of a general election, never by an executive whose Assembly is not seated; the question is certified by the Court. Total revision by a constituent assembly requires two-thirds of the Assembly and a referendum to convene, and the resulting text is certified against the eternity clauses before ratification. Honduras is the warning: art. 374 made its re-election ban unamendable and a captured Supreme Court declared the article inapplicable in 2015 — eternity clauses protect only as far as the court that reads them.

Emergency. Declared by the President for a defined territory and purpose; lapses in 30 days unless the Assembly approves within five and renews by two-thirds (first renewal) and three-quarters (subsequent), each for at most 60 days; every emergency decree automatically reviewed by the Court within 15 days; a list of non-derogable rights (life, dignity, freedom from torture and servitude, fair trial, the ban on extraordinary tribunals, freedom of the press); no election postponed by more than 90 days and only by the Court's order; no amendment or referendum during an emergency; the Assembly sits throughout (keep art. 278.4). Colombia 1991's automatic review of emergency decrees, Kenya 2010's escalating supermajorities and South Africa's table of non-derogable rights are the models.

Principle 13 — A Constitutional Court that exists on day one, that anyone can reach, and whose word is final

Rule. A Tribinal Konstitisyonèl of nine judges with staggered nine-year non-renewable terms: three named by the President with Assembly confirmation, three elected by the Assembly by two-thirds from a public shortlist, three by the Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire — each subject to Principle 1 defaults, with an initial seating clause under which any seat unfilled six months after entry into force is filled by lot from the pre-vetted roster. Jurisdiction: abstract review on referral by the President, one-tenth of the Assembly, the Konsèy Teritwa or the Protecteur du Citoyen; concrete review from any court; direct individual access (rekou dirèk) for violations of constitutional rights after exhaustion or where exhaustion is futile; final jurisdiction over electoral disputes and validation of results; mandatory review of emergency measures; inter-branch and centre–collectivité disputes on a 30-day clock; certification of referendum questions and of any revision against the eternity clauses. Decisions bind all organs and are published in Kreyòl and French within 15 days.

Failure answered. Art. 183 (Cassation deciding constitutionality incidentally and rarely); the never-seated Conseil Constitutionnel with its impossible composition clause (art. 190bis.1) and its Parliament that « statue souverainement » (art. 190ter.8); the 2021 term dispute with no arbiter; the CEP as judge of its own elections (art. 197); the Haute Cour de Justice that never sat and, with the Senate empty, left the President untriable except by assassination. Tunisia 2014–2021 is what happens when the court is never seated: when the President invoked emergency powers in July 2021 there was no court to say whether he could, and the constitution died. A constitutional court that exists only on paper is worse than none, because it lets everyone say the question is pending.

Position. The Court is the keystone of Principles 1, 11 and 12 — it is where every default lands — so its seating cannot depend on the political branches' cooperation and its judges cannot be removable by them. Impeachment of the President and of the judges goes to a mixed tribunal (Assembly two-thirds to charge; a panel of the Court's non-implicated judges and the presidents of the Courts of Appeal to try), replacing the Haute Cour de Justice. Ordinary judiciary: keep the CSPJ with a constitutional footing and give it the appointing role art. 175 never gave it; keep art. 177's inamovibilité — 1918's art. E, suspending it for six months, shows exactly why an occupier or a strongman wants it gone; a constitutional duty to hold hearings in Kreyòl; justices of the peace from communal lists (art. 175's local-list idea, kept); and constitutional recognition of community mediation in the lakou and section communale, with judicial review, so that pèp la's actual justice system is inside the constitution rather than beneath it. That last is a restoration of 1805 art. 45: « le droit qu'a chaque individu de se faire juger à l'amiable par des arbitres à son choix. Leurs décisions seront reconnues légales. » Benin's court (direct citizen access, thousands of petitions, real constraints on the executive), Kenya's annulment of the 2017 presidential election and Malawi's of 2019 show an apex court can be the final electoral arbiter and survive it.

Principle 14 — The transitional problem: manufacture legitimacy from parts none of which is sufficient alone

Stated without softening: no one in Haiti today holds the legitimacy to convene a constituent process, and a text ratified while a third of the capital is under gang control will be attacked as void by everyone who loses under it. The design must manufacture legitimacy from parts.

Who convenes. Not the executive alone (2021's arts. 272 and 277), not a foreign body (1918), not a self-selected civil-society forum alone (Montana's limit — real breadth, no state power). The convening instrument is an Interim Charter — Chat Tranzisyon — of perhaps thirty articles: negotiated at a national conference with the widest achievable set of signatories (political blocs, the Montana signatories, the churches and vodou councils, the peasant federations, the bar, the universities, the private sector, the diaspora councils, the women's platforms); promulgated by whatever executive exists as a self-limiting act — the executive binding itself; formally noted by the Cour de Cassation en banc, so that a Haitian judicial organ has it on record; published in Kreyòl and French; with a hard 24-month sunset after which the executive's authority under it ends. Content: the transitional executive's limits (no decrees on constitutional or electoral matters, no long-term contracts, no borrowing above a threshold, no security agreements beyond twelve months); the seating of the electoral body and a certification tribunal under Principle 1 defaults; the Prensip Fondamantal — Principles 1–13 as fifteen to twenty one-line commitments; and the constituent process below.

Who drafts. An elected Constituent Assembly — not an appointed committee — of roughly 100: 70 by zippered departmental lists, five by the diaspora, and 25 citizens drawn by lot from the civil register, stratified by department, sex, age and urban/rural residence, so that moun andeyò sit in the room as members and not as consulted subjects. Ireland's Citizens' Assembly (99 randomly selected citizens whose recommendation led to the 2018 referendum) shows a lottery component produces deliberation that elected bodies do not, and that the public trusts it. The Assembly drafts in Kreyòl within twelve months; it cannot legislate or govern.

Who certifies. A Certification Tribunal of seven Haitian jurists named in the Interim Charter, with foreign comparative advisers who do not vote, certifies the draft against the Prensip Fondamantal before it goes to the people and can send it back once. South Africa 1996 is the model: the Constitutional Court refused certification on 6 September 1996 because the draft fell short of the 34 agreed principles, the Assembly amended, and the Court certified on 4 December. The refusal is the point — principles are real only when a body with teeth checks the draft against them.

Who ratifies. A referendum — because 1987's own art. 298 was ratified by one and because there is no other act by which pèp la adopts a constitution. Thresholds: a majority of valid votes nationally; a majority in at least seven of ten departments; yes votes equal to at least 30 percent of registered voters — high enough that a low-turnout capital-only vote cannot carry it, without a turnout quorum that hands a veto to whoever can organize a boycott. General elections under the new constitution within six months.

Can a text ratified under gang control bind? Partly, and it should say so itself. A confirmation clause in the transitional title: the electoral body certifies, commune by commune, where voting was impossible or suppressed; the constitution enters into force nationally, but the first Assembly must, within 24 months and once the Court certifies that voting is possible there, hold a supplementary vote in those communes; if the national result would have been reversed by their votes, the Assembly must convene a revision process on the contested provisions. This does not solve the problem — nothing does — but it converts « this was imposed on us while we were under the gun » from a permanent grievance into a scheduled, enforceable event.

On the 2021 and 2025 drafts. Nothing above requires throwing away their content; much of it can be tabled before the Constituent Assembly as input. What cannot be salvaged is the authorship. The Assembly must own the text.

5. The architecture: fifteen titles

Working title: Konstitisyon Repiblik Ayiti — numbering, chapter names and authentic text in Kreyòl. Each title names the innovation it carries and the failure it answers.

Tit I — Nasyon an, Leta a, ak Souverènte. Republic, indivisible, decentralized, solidè. Sovereignty resides in pèp la and is exercised by election, referendum and the organs of this constitution. Territory inviolable (from art. 8.1) and sovereign functions inalienable: customs, the Treasury, the electoral process, command of the force publique and the administration of justice may never be placed under foreign administration by any agreement. The abolition of slavery restated from 1805 art. 2 as the first eternity clause. Innovation: sovereignty defined by what cannot be delegated, not only by territory.

Tit II — Lang. Kreyòl the language of law and record; French official; the Kreyòl text prevails; courts in Kreyòl as of right; the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen as a constitutional body with a protected line and a ten-year codification mandate; the Moniteur bilingual. Innovation: language given its own title with enforceable duties and a budget, instead of one sentence in art. 5.

Tit III — Nasyonalite ak Sitwayènte. Nationality of origin by descent, never lost by acquiring another; naturalization; the diaspora as full members; the right to identity documents as a hard right; the Office National d'Identification and civil register as a constitutional body. Innovation: the register is the republic — identity as the first enforceable right.

Tit IV — Dwa ak Devwa. Civil and political rights (largely 1987 arts. 19–51, tightened); a general limitation clause; the non-derogable list; socio-economic rights under progressive realization and reasonableness review with the four-item minimum core; children's protection with the restavèk clause; equality of lakou-based and formal families (from arts. 259–260); freedom of religion with explicit equality of vodou; environment and the right to water; the rekou dirèk. Innovation: justiciability calibrated by tier rather than promised uniformly and delivered nowhere.

Tit V — Kolektivite Teritoryal. Section communale, commune, department with elected councils; competences listed; the Fon Nasyonal Teritwa at not less than 20 percent of ordinary revenue, automatic monthly transfer, first charge on the Treasury, formula by the Revenue Allocation Commission; local own-revenue rights; the Konsèy Teritwa; no délégués; dissolution only by court and by-election within 90 days; recall. Innovation: decentralization as arithmetic.

Tit VI — Asanble Nasyonal. Unicameral; about 147 members (departmental lists, arrondissement seats, diaspora seats); zippered lists; concurrent five-year term with the President; fixed election dates in the text; no dissolution, no lapse — caretaker holdover with limited powers; deemed confirmations; oversight, interpellation and individual-minister censure; the Konsèy Teritwa's suspensive veto. Innovation: an Assembly that cannot disappear.

Tit VII — Prezidan ak Vis-Prezidan. Direct election, two rounds, five years, no consecutive re-election, one non-consecutive term at most (eternity clause); Vice-President on the ticket; automatic succession chain, no mid-term election; the Council of Ministers; powers enumerated and closed (from art. 150); no decree-law in any circumstance; nominal command of the force publique, never personal (art. 143); asset declarations (art. 279); the personality-cult ban (art. 7); impeachment by the mixed tribunal. Innovation: a single accountable executive constrained by institutions, not by a second executive.

Tit VIII — Pouvwa Jidisyè. Cour de Cassation, courts of appeal, first-instance courts, justices of the peace from communal lists; the CSPJ as the appointing and disciplinary body; tenure; proceedings in Kreyòl; an independent prosecution service with a Prosecutor-General on a fixed term; constitutional recognition of community mediation at the section communale and lakou level with judicial review. Innovation: the people's actual dispute-resolution system brought inside the constitution.

Tit IX — Tribinal Konstitisyonèl. Nine judges, staggered nine-year terms, three appointing channels each with defaults, initial seating by lot; jurisdiction as in Principle 13, including direct access, final electoral jurisdiction, emergency review, impasse jurisdiction on a 30-day clock, certification of referendum questions and revisions. Innovation: a court that cannot fail to exist and to which anyone can go.

Tit X — Enstitisyon Endepandan. The Konsèy Elektoral Nasyonal — seven members, seven-year staggered non-renewable terms, three nominating channels (the Court, the Assembly by two-thirds, and a fixed college of civic bodies modelled on art. 289) each with Principle 1 defaults; a permanent professional electoral service; the roll derived from the civil register; elections as a protected budget line. The Cour Supérieure des Comptes with publish-or-freeze power; the Protecteur du Citoyen with standing before the Court; the anti-corruption authority constitutionalized with prosecutorial referral; the central bank's operational independence; the Revenue Allocation Commission; the Akademi and the ONI cross-referenced. Innovation: every body seatable on day one, none dependent on another.

Tit XI — Finans Piblik. Fiscal year; budget by 1 October or continuation by twelfths; protected lines; Treasury single account; publication-or-void for public contracts; Assembly approval for borrowing and guarantees above a threshold; annual Kreyòl audit publication; the FNT's precedence; debt disclosure. Innovation: a budget that cannot lapse and a Treasury that cannot be pledged in secret — the answer to 1825, 1915 and PetroCaribe alike.

Tit XII — Fòs Piblik ak Sekirite. The Police Nationale as the primary force with a tenured Director-General; the Corps of Border, Coastal and Civil Protection; civilian command; no other armed body; the constitutional offence of forming or financing an armed group; the reintegration mandate and the no-amnesty rule; the foreign-presence clause; the annual sovereignty report. Innovation: the constitution governs the exception.

Tit XIII — Ekonomi, Tè, ak Anviwònman. Property guaranteed; expropriation only with prior compensation (art. 36.1, kept); the foreign-ownership rule as leasehold; the border strip; the cadastre-and-title mandate with a fifteen-year deadline and free conversion of long possession; recognition of tè eritye and lakou tenure; the section communale preemption right (art. 39); watershed, coastal and forest protection as duties with standing for communes; the cooperative and konbit economy acknowledged as forms of enterprise. Innovation: Dessalines' principle carried by a register instead of a prohibition.

Tit XIV — Eta Dijans. The regime in Principle 12: territorial and purpose-limited declaration, 30-day lapse, Assembly approval with escalating supermajorities, automatic Court review, non-derogable rights, the 90-day cap on electoral postponement, the Assembly in permanent session, no amendment or referendum during an emergency. Innovation: the exception cannot eat the charter.

Tit XV — Revizyon, Tranzisyon, ak Dispozisyon Final. The three-tier amendment procedure with the guarded referendum; eternity clauses; the transitional sequence (first seatings by default and by lot, first elections, the Interim Charter's expiry); the confirmation clause for communes where voting was impossible; repeal of decrees inconsistent with the constitution; the Kreyòl text authentic; entry into force on publication in both languages. Innovation: a constitution that schedules its own second act.

6. Draft preamble — Kreyòl, French, English

The Kreyòl is the authentic draft; the French and English are translations.

PREANBIL

Nou menm, pèp Ayiti — moun lavil ak moun andeyò, moun ki rete lakay ak moun ki nan dyaspora, fanm ak gason, granmoun ak jèn — nou pran lapawòl nan lang nou tout pale, pou nou di ak pwòp bouch nou sa nou vle pou peyi nou.

Nou se pitit moun ki te kase chenn esklavaj la, ki te fè premye nasyon nwa lib sou latè premye janvye 1804, epi ki te peye libète sa a ak san yo, ak sila yo, ak lajan yo pandan plis pase yon syèk. Nou pa bliye. Nou pa mande pèmisyon pèsonn pou nou lib.

Nou konnen yon konstitisyon se pa yon papye ki dòmi nan yon biwo Pòtoprens. Se yon kontra ant nou tout, ekri nan lang nou tout konprann, pou chak moun ka li li, kenbe li nan men li, epi mande kont.

Nou aprann nan pwòp istwa nou: yon chèf ki pa gen limit se yon malè; yon leta ki chita yon sèl kote se yon leta ki pa wè pèp la; yon lalwa ki pale yon lang pèp la pa pale se yon lalwa ki pa pou pèp la; yon enstitisyon ki ekri sou papye men ki pa janm kanpe se yon pòt ouvè pou dezòd.

Se poutèt sa nou deside: pou pouvwa a soti nan men pèp la, e pou okenn moun, okenn fanmi, okenn pati, okenn gwoup ame, okenn peyi etranje pa ka pran li nan men nou; pou leta a sèvi tout moun kote yo ye — nan seksyon kominal, nan komin, nan depatman — e pou lajan peyi a rive kote pèp la ye; pou jistis la pale Kreyòl, mache dwat, e pou li pa gen pri; pou tè peyi a rete tè pèp la; pou lapolis ak tout fòs leta obeyi lalwa, e pou pa gen okenn lòt fòs ame sou tè Ayiti; pou dwa chak moun — lavi, sekirite, lekòl, lasante, manje, dlo, kay, travay, yon non ak yon papye ki di ki moun li ye — se yon dèt leta dwe, pa yon favè li fè; pou dyaspora a se yon manm konplè nan nasyon an; pou konstitisyon sa a ka repare lè li bezwen repare, san pèsonn pa ka kraze li.

Nan konbit, tèt ansanm, ak respè pou zansèt nou yo ki te bay lavi yo, ak pou pitit nou yo ki poko fèt, nou pwoklame Konstitisyon sa a.

L'Union fait la Force. Men anpil, chay pa lou.

PRÉAMBULE

Nous, peuple d'Haïti — gens des villes et gens d'andeyò, ceux qui vivent au pays et ceux de la diaspora, femmes et hommes, anciens et jeunes — nous prenons la parole dans la langue que nous parlons tous, pour dire de notre propre bouche ce que nous voulons pour notre pays.

Nous sommes les enfants de ceux qui ont brisé les chaînes de l'esclavage, qui ont fait la première nation noire libre de la terre le premier janvier 1804, et qui ont payé cette liberté de leur sang, de leur sueur et de leur argent pendant plus d'un siècle. Nous n'oublions pas. Nous ne demandons à personne la permission d'être libres.

Nous savons qu'une constitution n'est pas un papier qui dort dans un bureau de Port-au-Prince. C'est un contrat entre nous tous, écrit dans la langue que nous comprenons tous, pour que chacun puisse le lire, le tenir dans sa main, et demander des comptes.

Nous avons appris de notre propre histoire : un chef sans limites est un malheur ; un État assis en un seul lieu est un État qui ne voit pas le peuple ; une loi qui parle une langue que le peuple ne parle pas n'est pas la loi du peuple ; une institution écrite sur le papier mais jamais mise debout est une porte ouverte au désordre.

C'est pourquoi nous décidons : que le pouvoir procède du peuple, et qu'aucune personne, aucune famille, aucun parti, aucun groupe armé, aucun pays étranger ne puisse le lui prendre ; que l'État serve chacun là où il se trouve — dans la section communale, dans la commune, dans le département — et que l'argent du pays arrive là où le peuple est ; que la justice parle créole, marche droit, et n'ait pas de prix ; que la terre du pays reste la terre du peuple ; que la police et toute force de l'État obéissent à la loi, et qu'aucune autre force armée n'existe sur le sol d'Haïti ; que les droits de chacun — la vie, la sécurité, l'école, la santé, la nourriture, l'eau, le logement, le travail, un nom et un papier qui dit qui l'on est — soient une dette que l'État doit, et non une faveur qu'il accorde ; que la diaspora soit un membre entier de la nation ; que cette constitution puisse être réparée quand elle doit l'être, sans que personne puisse la briser.

En konbit, ensemble, dans le respect de nos ancêtres qui ont donné leur vie et de nos enfants qui ne sont pas encore nés, nous proclamons la présente Constitution.

L'Union fait la Force. Men anpil, chay pa lou.

PREAMBLE

We, the people of Haiti — people of the towns and people of andeyò, those who live at home and those in the diaspora, women and men, elders and young — take the floor in the language we all speak, to say with our own mouths what we want for our country.

We are the children of those who broke the chains of slavery, who made the first free black nation on earth on the first of January 1804, and who paid for that freedom with their blood, their sweat and their money for more than a century. We do not forget. We ask no one's permission to be free.

We know that a constitution is not a paper that sleeps in an office in Port-au-Prince. It is a contract among all of us, written in the language we all understand, so that each of us can read it, hold it in hand, and demand an account.

We have learned from our own history: a chief without limits is a calamity; a state seated in one place is a state that does not see the people; a law that speaks a language the people do not speak is not the people's law; an institution written on paper but never stood up is an open door to disorder.

Therefore we decide: that power proceeds from the people, and that no person, no family, no party, no armed group, no foreign country may take it from us; that the state shall serve everyone where they are — in the section communale, in the commune, in the department — and that the country's money shall reach where the people are; that justice shall speak Kreyòl, walk straight, and have no price; that the land of the country shall remain the people's land; that the police and every force of the state shall obey the law, and that no other armed force shall exist on Haitian soil; that each person's rights — life, safety, school, health, food, water, housing, work, a name and a paper that says who they are — are a debt the state owes, not a favor it grants; that the diaspora is a full member of the nation; that this constitution can be repaired when it needs repair, and that no one can break it.

In konbit, together, in respect for our ancestors who gave their lives and for our children not yet born, we proclaim this Constitution.

Union makes strength. Men anpil, chay pa lou — many hands make the load light.

PART III — WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

7. Road map

The Foundation is a pre-incorporation civic institution with a live trilingual site, a Knowledge Vault, a charter and a deck. It has no state power, no money to speak of, and no mandate from anyone but its founders. That is the honest baseline — and it is, historically, the baseline from which every constitutional idea that later mattered in Haiti started. The sequence below is ordered by what is within reach at each stage.

Phase 0 — now to early 2027: get the facts right, get incorporated

1. Close the Verification Register. The first pass was run on 4 September 2026 and is recorded at B.4: the 2011 abrogation list, the deputies' term, the CPCN draft, the post–7 February 2026 arrangements and the later CCI drafts are closed; the procès-verbal of the 9 May 2011 sitting, the printed Moniteur of 19 June 2012, the two 2021 CCI texts and the identity of the text going to the 13 December 2026 referendum are not. One physical consultation of the Moniteur closes four of those at once and is the highest-value hour of research the Foundation can buy. Then the rest of B.3 from primary sources, and the Security Council resolutions from the UN record.
2. Publish Konstitisyon 1987 an Kreyòl klè: every article of the Constitution in force in one plain Kreyòl sentence, marked « never applied », « applied once » or « applied as written », with the French and English following the Kreyòl. This is the single most useful public good the Foundation can produce quickly. It does not exist. It turns the debate over the next constitution into one pèp la can join.
3. Build the comparative annex — one fact-checked page each, from primary texts, on Kenya art. 203, South Africa's certification and Grootboom, Tunisia's unseated court, Chile's two failures, Ireland's assembly, Iceland's death in parliament, Benin's court, Costa Rica's TSE, Ghana's commission, Mexico art. 27, Seychelles' and Rwanda's language articles, the Dominican Republic's diaspora seats, Colombia's emergency review, Honduras art. 374.
4. Incorporate. A foundation that intends to convene cannot do so as an idea.
5. Form the Sèk Konstitisyonèl: twelve to twenty — constitutional lawyers including at least two who served the 1987 or 2011 processes, historians, a member of the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen, electoral practitioners who have run a provisional CEP, a public-finance specialist, peasant-federation and women's-platform delegates, and diaspora representatives from each of the three proposed constituencies. Kreyòl is the working language.

Phase 1 — 2027: the principles and the model clauses

6. Publish the Prensip Fondamantal — the fourteen principles as a one-page Kreyòl text with French and English — and put them to structured comment: online, in konbit konstitisyonèl sessions in five to eight communes across at least four departments, and in three diaspora cities. Record objections verbatim; publish them.
7. Publish model clauses ready to adopt: the default language for every appointed office (Principle 1); the FNT article and formula (Principle 5); the foreign-presence clause (Principle 8); the emergency title (Principle 12); the confirmation clause (Principle 14). Kreyòl with French. Any drafting body — the CPCN's successor, a constituent assembly, a parliamentary commission — should be able to lift them whole. Ideas travel when they arrive as text.
8. Publish the Interim Charter model text — the thirty-article convening instrument of Principle 14 — offered to all political actors, including those the Foundation disagrees with.

Phase 2 — 2027–2028: deliberation infrastructure

9. Run a pilot citizens' assembly: fifty to ninety-nine Haitians selected by lot from a stratified frame (department, sex, age, urban/rural, resident/diaspora), several weekends, Kreyòl-first, expert witnesses from all sides, deliberating two or three of the hard choices — executive form, diaspora representation, the land clause. Publish its recommendations and reasoning. The point is to demonstrate in Haiti that ordinary citizens can do this, so the lottery component of the constituent assembly is a proven practice rather than a proposal.
10. Build the open text platform: the draft as a versioned public text, every change attributed and explained, comments tied to articles, Kreyòl and French side by side. Where verified participation is needed, a sovereign-identity infrastructure is a natural fit — but the constitution names the requirement, not the technology.
11. Launch the Kreyòl legal-lexicon project with the Akademi and a law faculty. Nobody else is funding it, and Principle 6 cannot happen without it.

Phase 3 — 2028 onward: convening, if the moment comes

12. Offer the national conference the Foundation's texts and process, and offer to host deliberation — not to lead it. Constitutional legitimacy in Haiti will belong to whoever pèp la can see, and that will not be a foundation. The Foundation's role is to make sure the room has the best texts, the fullest record and the language the people speak.

What is beyond reach, said plainly

• Convening a constituent assembly or a referendum. Only a state organ can. The Foundation can write the instrument; it cannot convene.
• Security. Nothing in this report reduces the number of armed men in Martissant. A constitution can govern the terms of the response; it cannot substitute for one.
• Negotiating as an equal. The Foundation has no votes and no guns. It has texts and a record. Those matter most at the moment when actors who have exhausted each other need a document nobody in the room wrote — which is the moment 1987 was written, and 1996 in South Africa.
• Money at the scale the Kreyòl transition requires. The Foundation can start the lexicon; only the state and its partners can pay for the grefye.
• Time. The road map assumes two to three years before a serious constituent moment. If one arrives sooner, the Foundation's value is whatever it has already published. Publish early.

APPENDICES

Appendix A — The remaining fingerprints of the 2012 publication

Numbered so they can be checked against the haiti-reference.info reproduction of the 19 June 2012 publication. Where a defect may be in our copy rather than in the Moniteur it is marked [file]. Each item was re-checked on 4 September 2026 against the MJP redline of the same publication; where that settled the question the item now says so, and says which way.

6. Art. 15 survives beside a clause that presupposes dual nationality; arts. 13 and 14 likewise survive. These were abrogated by the 2011 law; their presence reflects the absence of the amending law's arts. 1–2 from the reproduction — the same absence that made the 2011 text unreadable in the first place. Confirmed 4 September 2026 against the MJP redline: arts. 12.1, 12.2, 13, 14, 15 and 16.1 are struck heading and body, with no replacement. [file]
7. Arts. 129.4 and 129.5 are headed « Article 125.4 » and « Article 125.5 », sandwiched between 129.3 and 129.6, while an art. 125 already exists — two sets of « 125.x » in one text. [file]
8. Art. 190ter.5 is cut mid-sentence — « un groupe de quinze (15) députés ou de dix » — dropping the words that complete it. The authentic text reads « un groupe de quinze (15) députés ou de dix sénateurs » — « sénateurs », with no numeral in parentheses. A truncation in our copy. [file, resolved]
9. Art. 190ter.7 refers to « les tribunaux électoraux » and « les tribunaux administratifs ». Authentic, and worse than recorded: the sentence names three jurisdictions — « les tribunaux administratifs, les tribunaux électoraux et les tribunaux judiciaires ». No article creates electoral tribunals — art. 197 still makes the CEP sole electoral judge — and the only administrative court is the CSCCA (art. 200.1). Two dangling references in one sentence, in the Moniteur text itself, not in our copy. [confirmed]
10. Art. 186 (Haute Cour de Justice) does not list Conseil Constitutionnel members, though art. 190ter.4 gives them a special immunity and art. 190ter.10 promises an organic law on their discipline. No constitutional forum exists for their misconduct.
11. Arts. 141 and 142 both appoint « les conseils d'administration des organismes autonomes », by different procedures — « après délibération en Conseil des Ministres, puis approbation du Sénat » in one, « après approbation du Sénat » by arrêté in the other.
12. Art. 149 prints three regimes in one article: the 1987 Cassation-president paragraph, the new Conseil-des-Ministres paragraph, and the fourth-year Président-Provisoire paragraph. Art. 149.1's « Ce Président provisoire » now has an ambiguous antecedent, fitting the first paragraph (supposedly repealed) and the third.
13. Amended art. 32 swallows art. 33's sentence (« L'enseignement est libre à tous les degrés… ») while art. 33 stands. Identical text at two article numbers.
14. Art. 157 (Prime Minister) left at « n'avoir pas renoncé » while the new art. 172.1 requires ministers to hold no other nationality at nomination. A Prime Minister may hold a passport his own ministers may not. Verified 4 September 2026: the Moniteur did not amend art. 157. The redline leaves it untouched, word for word, including « 4) être propriétaire en Haïti ou y exercer une profession ». The contradiction is in the Constitution, not in the copy. [confirmed]
15. Art. 129.6's six-month sentence reads backwards: « Tout Premier Ministre ayant obtenu un vote de confiance peut être interpellé dans un délai de six (6) mois après ce vote » — a permission to interpellate within six months, when the evident purpose was a six-month shield. Confirmed authentic — the redline prints the same sentence, and adds a third paragraph making the failure of a censure motion equivalent to a vote of confidence. Not a reproduction defect. [confirmed]
16. Mixed numbering schemes: decimal sub-articles (134.1) coexist with Latin insertions (134bis, 190bis, 190ter, 207.2 bis); « 134bis » sits between 134 and 134.1. Cosmetic, but a sign that new material was bolted on rather than integrated.
17. Spent transitional articles reprinted as live text: arts. 285–294 — the CNG's mandate to 7 February 1988, the 1987 provisional CEP, the ten-year Duvalierist ban — appear without any note that they are dead, and a new transitional art. 295.1 is added in the same title. Resolved, and it is a reproduction defect of consequence: the 2011 law abrogated the whole transitional title. In the redline, arts. 285, 285.1, 286, 287, 288, 291, 292, 293, 293.1, 294 and 295 are struck heading and body, and art. 297 with them; the only survivor in the title is the new art. 295.1, which stages the first Conseil Constitutionnel at nine, six and three years. Anyone reading the circulating file is reading eleven abrogated articles as live law — including art. 291's Duvalierist ban and art. 285.1, the only grant of decree power the Republic ever made. [file]
18. Art. 87.5's second version truncates the cabinet-attendance clause — it stops at « fonctionnement du conseil interdépartemental » — while art. 87.3 still gives the Conseil Interdépartemental a deliberative vote in cabinet. Deliberate trim or dropped line cannot be told from the file.
19. Art. 92 five years vs. practice four — resolved in favour of four. The authentic text reads « Les députés sont élus pour quatre (4) ans ». The MJP editorial note records the reason: the National Assembly brought the mandate of deputies and local officials back « aux prescrits de la Constitution de 1987, c'est-à-dire 4 ans au lieu de 5 ans… face à l'impossibilité de trouver un accord sur les dispositions transitoires devant harmoniser tous les mandats à 5 ans », and observes that « certains sites internet mentionnent toujours une durée de 5 ans ». The five-year text in the circulating file is one of those. The 2020 lapse of the 2015 deputies was the Constitution working as written, not a deviation from it — which strengthens §2.3 rather than weakening it. [file, resolved]
20. Stray characters — art. 129 ends « …prestation de serment.x »; art. 9 contains « Communes</, ». [file]

Also noted in the Georgetown 1987 reproduction: two consecutive « ARTICLE 54 » headings (the second is 54.1), and art. 289's designating-body list skips item 4 (« Un par la Cour de Cassation », present in the 2012 file). Both are transcription defects, not amendments.

Concordance of doubled articles in the 2012 file (old ¶ / new ¶ printed consecutively): 1 · 16 · 18 · 32 · 32.1 · 32.3 · 32.4 · 32.5 · 32.6 · 32.7 · 32.8 · 32.9 · 63 · 68 · 74 · 78 · 87.5 · 90.1 · 91 · 92 · 92.1 · 92.3 · 95 · 96 · 98.3 · 127 · 129.6 · 134 · 134.2 · 135 · 137 · 141 · 159 · 165 · 217 · 218 · 220 · 223 · 227 · 227.3 · 228 · 263 · 264 · 264.1 · 264.2 · 265 · 266 · 267.1 · 267.2 · 267.3.

New articles with no 1987 counterpart: 11.1 · 17.1 · 31.1.1 · 90.2 · 94.3 · 119.1 · 134bis · 149.2 · 172.1 · 184.2 · 190bis · 190bis.1 · 190ter · 190ter.1–190ter.10 · 207.2 bis · 211 ¶2 · 234.1 · 253.1 · 256.1 · 295.1 · art. 3 of the amending law.

What did not change: arts. 5 and 40 (language); 55–55.5 (foreign ownership); 111.8; 137.1 and 158; 157; 175; 197; 218; 268 (compulsory military service); 282–284.4 (amendment procedure and referendum ban). Corrected 4 September 2026: arts. 183, 183.1, 206 and 206.1 did change — they were abrogated, the first pair being 1987's constitutional-review clause and the second the Commission de Conciliation, both replaced in function by the Conseil Constitutionnel and neither replaced in fact. And arts. 291–295 are not unchanged dead letters reprinted in full; they were abrogated and are reprinted anyway. Both errors came from reading the circulating file alone; both are corrected against the redline.

Appendix B — Verification Register

Every claim in this report stands on one of four footings. Nothing below is invented; each item is stated to the best of the writer's knowledge with the uncertainty flagged. None may be used publicly until confirmed.

B.1 Sourced to primary text on disk, checked for this report

• The three-row table: 1843 arts. 104, 107, 108; 1846 arts. 7, 117, 118, 188; 1867 arts. 104, 105, 106, 107; 1957 arts. 14, 87, 98; 1964 arts. 91, 92, 196, 197; 1971 arts. 91, 92, 99, 100, 101, 102.
• The land-bar line: 1805 art. 12 and 13; 1806 art. 27; 1816 arts. 38, 39; 1843 art. 8; 1846 art. 7; 1889 art. 6; 1918 art. 5; 1957 art. 14; 1987 arts. 55, 55.3, 55.4.
• The property line: 1816 art. 59; 1846 art. 118.3°; 1867 art. 106.3°; 1987 art. 91, 5°, art. 135 d, art. 157, 4°; 2021 arts. 102 d, 137 e, 190 g, 252 e.
• The diaspora line: 1805 art. 7; 1816 art. 44; 1889 arts. 3, 5, 7; 1987 arts. 13, 15; 2012 art. 12 (file line 141) and art. 15 (file line 167) — the twenty-six-line gap is exact.
• 1801 arts. 1, 3, 4, 5, 28, 29, 30, 77 and the signature dates (19 floréal an IX; approval 14 messidor an IX). 1805 arts. 1, 2, 14, 28, 45; Disp. gén., arts. 4, 12. 1806 arts. 105, 106, 109, 122, 124. 1807 arts. 2, 8, 9, 10. 1811 art. 1 and the preamble's « trône héréditaire ». 1816 art. 142. 1889 arts. 90, 91. 1918 arts. 127, 128, Article spécial, arts. D, E, and the promulgation formula « ratifiée le 12 Juin 1918 ».
• 1987 arts. 5, 22, 23, 27, 27.1, 40, 58, 60.1, 111.8, 134.3, 137, 137.1, 149, 158, 163, 183, 192, 197, 206, 217, 263.1, 282–284.3, 285.1, 289–289.3, 291, 298.
• 2012 arts. 17.1, 92, 92.1, 129.6, 134.2, 149 (three paragraphs), 184.2, 190bis, 190bis.1, 190ter.8, 190ter.9, 192 (both paragraphs), 217 (both versions), art. 3 of the amending law and its date (« Donné à l'Assemblée Nationale le 9 mai 2011 »).
• 2021 arts. 11, 16, 100, 102, 113, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 146, 147, 189, 190, 195, 196, 208, 242, 246, 248, 252, 268–272, 276, 277, 282, and the header's referendum dates.
• The 1859–1860 file's labelling convention (fifteen labels; art. 71 three strata; arts. 189–191 « [Abrogé, 1859] »).

B.2 Corrections made against the primary texts, and conflicts resolved

1. 1867 art. 104 is not letter-for-letter identical to 1843 art. 104. The term sentence is identical; 1867 adds « Il entre en fonctions le 15 mai. » Art. 107 is identical in full. The report says so. The proposition — the 1843 rule restored by drafters who knew the words — stands.
2. 1957 art. 14's extinction clause is two years, not five. The five-year lapse of 1987 art. 55.4 therefore descends from 1918 art. 5 directly, not through 1957. The land-bar table records this.
3. 1846 art. 188 belongs to the 1846 text, the product of the revision, and cannot have governed the revision that produced it. The report says the life presidency returned « by Senate revision » of the 1816 text and that the resulting charter set its own two-thirds threshold at art. 188.
4. The 1918 plebiscite count (98,294 for, 769 against) is not in the constitutional text but does appear in the MJP editorial note reproduced in the file's header, citing Bulletin des lois et actes, 1919, p. 45. Footing: literature citing a primary publication. Not yet checked against the Bulletin.
5. Toussaint's death. The report uses 7 April 1803, the date in the standard literature. The MJP editorial note in the 1801 file gives 27 April 1803. Flagged; not resolved from the file.
6. The Smarth vacancy. June 1997 to the ratification of Jacques-Édouard Alexis in March 1999 — some twenty-one months. Earlier drafts of this work said « about twenty »; the report uses twenty-one. Literature.
7. The June 2011 suspension. Reported as an arrêté; the instrument and its date are not verified against the Moniteur. The report says « executive act ».
8. 1987 eligibility sub-items. Art. 91 and art. 157 use numbered items (1)–6)); art. 135 uses letters (a)–f)). Earlier drafts wrote « art. 91.5 » and « art. 157.4 » as if they were sub-articles. The report cites « art. 91, 5° » and « art. 157, 4° ».
9. The land-bar table now has nine rows. 1846 art. 7 was previously mentioned in prose but omitted from the tabulated line; it is included and verified.

Added 4 September 2026, from the sources listed in B.6:

10. Art. 92 is four years, not five. See A.19. Earlier drafts of this work treated the four-year practice as a departure from a five-year text. It is the text.
11. The transitional title was abrogated. See A.17. Earlier drafts described arts. 285–294 as spent provisions carelessly reprinted; they are abrogated provisions carelessly reprinted, which is a stronger claim about the reproduction and a weaker one about the drafters.
12. Art. 157 was not amended. See A.14. Stated earlier as an open question; now stated as fact.
13. The 2011 first publication is Le Moniteur No. 58 of 13 May 2011, promulgated by René Préval. The report previously gave the date without the issue number.
14. The CPCN text is bicameral and keeps the Prime Minister. §3.9 previously described it, from reporting, as a presidential regime with no Prime Minister and a reduced legislature. The primary text says otherwise on both counts. This is the clearest case in this report of secondary summaries diverging from the document they summarize, and the reason the corpus rule exists.
15. The CCI's later drafts are dated 18 May 2021 and 8 September 2021, not June 2021. See §3.8.
16. Resolution 2793 authorizes 5,500 uniformed personnel plus 50 civilians. The report's earlier figure of « 5,550 authorized » conflated the two. Adopted 30 September 2025 at the Council's 10009th meeting, twelve in favour, three abstentions (China, Pakistan, Russia), initial mandate twelve months, alongside a UN Support Office in Haiti (UNSOH).

B.3 Rests on literature outside the files — confirm before public use

Status, 4 September 2026. Items 1, 5, 6, 7 and 8 below have been partly closed by this pass and are corrected in place where the sources disagreed with what was written; the rest stand as listed and still require confirmation before public use. The sources relied on are in B.6.

1. Amendment timeline: art. 282 declaration by the 48th Legislature, September 2009; vote 9 May 2011 (in the file); first publication 13 May 2011 (file header); suspension June 2011; republication 19 June 2012 (file header). Public statements by National Assembly members, including its president, that the printed text differed from the voted text.
2. 1986–1987 constituent process: 61 members (41 elected 19 October 1986, 20 appointed), presided by Émile Jonassaint; referendum 29 March 1987, ≈99.8 percent.
3. 1971 referendum count (2,391,916 to 0). 1964 referendum as single-candidate.
4. The dates of parliamentary lapse and decree rule: 11 January 1999; February 2004; 12 January 2015; 13 January 2020; expiry of the last ten senators, January 2023. The 2015 deputies' four-year mandate vs. the file's five-year art. 92.
5. 7 July 2021: no ratified Prime Minister, no Chamber, ten senators, death of the Cassation president weeks earlier. Core Group statement of 17 July 2021; Henry sworn 20 July. Core Group composition (US, France, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Spain, EU, OAS, UN) and its 2004 origin.
6. Montana Accord, 30 August 2021; its 30 January 2022 elections. Henry's accords of 11 September 2021 and 21 December 2022; the Haut Conseil de la Transition.
7. CPT: decree 12 April 2024; installation 25 April 2024; member list; mandate to 7 February 2026; October 2024 bribery allegations. Conille (3 June – 10 November 2024); Fils-Aimé.
8. MSS: Resolution 2699 (2 October 2023); first Kenyan contingent 25 June 2024. Resolution 2793 (30 September 2025): Gang Suppression Force, 5,550 authorized. MINUSTAH (Res. 1542, 30 April 2004 – 15 October 2017); BINUH from October 2019; cholera acknowledgment December 2016 (≈10,000 dead).
9. Ruelle Vaillant, 29 November 1987, and the art. 291 exclusions as a proximate trigger. Avril's suspension of 37 articles. Army demobilized 1995, remobilized 2017.
10. Prime Ministers 1997–2021 as listed in §2.1; Céant censured March 2019.
11. 1825 indemnity (150 million francs; 1838 treaty reducing the total to 90 million; principal discharged 1883; refinancing chain to 1947). Code Rural of 6 May 1826. Boyer's occupation of the east 1822–1844. There is no 1826 constitution.
12. 1801: proclamation 8 July 1801; Leclerc's landing February 1802; deportation June 1802. 1811: coronation June 1811. 1867: dispersal of the Chamber 14 October 1867 and insurrection of April 1868 are from MJP's editorial note. 1918: dissolution of the Corps Législatif June 1917; Franklin Roosevelt's authorship claim. Péralte killed 1 November 1919; HASCO and Plantation Dauphin displacements.
13. Kreyòl and the courts: French as the working language of Le Moniteur, drafting and proceedings; Civil Code 1825, Penal Code 1835 French-only; the 1987 Constitution's Kreyòl version uncited; literacy in legal French « well under a fifth ». Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen: law of 2014, installed 4 December 2014.
14. Diaspora and remittance figures (≈2 million Haitian-born abroad; US$3.5–4 billion a year; ≈20 percent of GDP). Dominican ruling TC/0168/13 (2013).
15. Territorial counts: 10 departments, 42 arrondissements, 146 communes, ≈570 sections communales.
16. PetroCaribe: Cour Supérieure des Comptes reports 2019–2020; ≈US$2 billion.
17. Gang control of ≈85–90 percent of the capital by 2025; displacement >1.3 million; >5,600 killings documented in 2024.
18. Comparative cases: Kenya art. 203(2) « not less than fifteen per cent » and art. 204 Equalisation Fund; Kenya art. 58 emergency extensions; South Africa certification refused 6 September 1996, certified 4 December 1996, ss. 26–27, 37, 167(6), Grootboom (2000), TAC (2002); Chile rejections 4 September 2022 (≈62 percent) and 17 December 2023 (≈56 percent), 388 articles; Ireland Citizens' Assembly (99 members), referendum 25 May 2018 (66.4 percent); Iceland non-binding referendum 20 October 2012; Dominican Republic art. 81, seven diaspora deputies since 2012; France 11, Italy 8 + 4, Cabo Verde 6 of 72, Ecuador 6, Senegal 15, Portugal 4; Tunisia constitution 26 January 2014, court never seated, 25 July 2021; Honduras art. 374 and the 2015 Supreme Court decision; Benin's Constitutional Court (1990); Kenya Supreme Court annulment 1 September 2017; Malawi Constitutional Court 3 February 2020; Colombia arts. 86, 212–215; Mexico art. 27 and the fideicomiso; Ghana arts. 43–46; Costa Rica art. 99 ff.; Seychelles art. 4; Rwanda art. 5; South Africa s. 6; Ireland art. 8; Aruba 2003, Curaçao 2007; Colombia's 2016 Special Jurisdiction for Peace; Cabo Verde's PAICV/MpD alternation; Venezuela 1999.

B.4 The seven items that could not be verified — six closed, one open, four new

The seven items below were listed as unverifiable when this report was written on the morning of 4 September 2026. They were worked the same day. What closed most of them was one find: the Digithèque MJP's marked reproduction of the 19 June 2012 publication, which prints every abrogated passage struck through and every new one underlined, and which is now in the corpus as Constitution_Haiti_1987_Amendee_2011_MJP_Redline_FR.txt. It is not the Moniteur; it is an independent scholarly reproduction that cites the Moniteur directly, and it is the only reading key this report has found.

1. CLOSED — which articles the 2011 law abrogated. Articles 1 and 2 of the amending law are still not in hand, but their effect is now readable article by article. Abrogated outright — every word struck, nothing put in their place: arts. 12.1, 12.2, 13, 14, 15, 16.1, 29.1, 111.5, 111.6, 111.7, 183, 183.1, 206, 206.1, 227, 227.1, 228.2, 229, 267.3, 285, 285.1, 286, 287, 288, 291, 292, 293, 293.1, 294, 295, 297. Of these, arts. 285 to 295 have the article number itself struck — deleted from the charter, not merely emptied. Two entries deserve to be read twice: art. 183, the whole of 1987's constitutional review (« la Cour de Cassation… se prononce en sections réunies sur l'inconstitutionnalité des lois »), and art. 206, the Commission de Conciliation for executive–legislative deadlock. Both were abrogated in favour of the Conseil Constitutionnel of arts. 190bis–190ter.10, which has never been seated. The Constitution in force therefore has neither the old mechanism nor the new one. Replaced in whole or part: arts. 1, 12, 16, 18, 32 and its sub-articles, 74, 87.5, 90.1, 91, 92.1, 95, 96, 98.3, 127, 129.6, 134, 134.2, 135, 137, 141, 149, 149.1, 159, 165, 192, 211, 217, 220, 223, 227.3, 228, 263, 264, 264.1, 264.2, 265, 266, 267.1. Wholly new: 11.1, 17.1, 31.1.1, 90.2, 94.3, 119.1, 134bis, 149.2, 172.1, 184.2, 207.2bis, 234.1, 253.1, 256.1, 295.1, plus the « Chapitre nouveau. Du Conseil constitutionnel », arts. 190bis–190ter.10. Untouched: 157, and arts. 282–284.4 entire — the amendment procedure and the referendum ban survive the only amendment ever made under them.

2. CLOSED in part — which garbles are the Moniteur's and which are ours. Against the redline: art. 190bis.1's composition paragraph is complete and coherent in the authentic text (nine members, three by each of the Executive, the National Assembly at two-thirds of each chamber, and the CSPJ; then three categories of three), so the garble is ours. Art. 190ter.5's truncation is ours; the authentic clause ends « ou de dix sénateurs ». Art. 129.6's backwards six-month sentence is authentic. Art. 190ter.7's dangling jurisdictions are authentic, and there are three of them. Arts. 141 and 142's double appointment of the conseils d'administration is authentic. The duplication of « L'enseignement est libre à tous les degrés » at arts. 32 and 33 is authentic — art. 33 was not abrogated. What remains unchecked is only whether the printed Moniteur matches MJP where MJP and haiti-reference.info agree; two independent reproductions agreeing is good evidence, not proof.

3. CLOSED, negatively, with a caveat — no Kreyòl text of the 2011 amendment has been located. Writing in Le Nouvelliste on 19 June 2012, the day of the republication, Luc Rémy argued the constitutional law was « juridiquement mort-née » precisely because it amended one language version only: « tout acte d'amendement d'un seul des deux textes de la Constitution de 1987 est nul et non avenu ». That a Haitian jurist made this argument in print, on the day, without contradiction found since, is strong evidence that no official Kreyòl version was published. It is not the same as a search of the Moniteur establishing the negative. Note the stake: if Rémy is right, the Constitution in force is the 1987 text unamended — which would be a fourth answer to the question of §1.1, and the report should say so before any public use.

4. CLOSED — the later CCI drafts. Not one revised text but two: a « 2ème version » dated 18 May 2021, and a further text handed to Prime Minister Ariel Henry on 8 September 2021, signed by the CCI's president Boniface Alexandre. The September text restored a bicameral parliament, five-year terms for deputies and senators, and a Vice-President chosen by the President rather than elected, while keeping the two-term limit. Neither is on disk, and §3.8's criticisms remain addressed to the 2 February text alone. The one-round rule, the re-election rule and the CEP appointment rule of the later versions are still unread.

5. CLOSED — the CPCN draft. Avant-projet de Constitution de la République d'Haïti, 240 articles, signed at Port-au-Prince 21 May 2025 for the Comité de Pilotage de la Conférence Nationale by Enex J. Jean-Charles; the Conférence Nationale itself created by decree of 17 July 2024; public comment 22 May – 21 June 2025. Now in the corpus as Constitution_Haiti_2025_CPCN_Avant-Projet_FR.txt, and §3.9 is rewritten from it. Its own note of presentation calls it « loin d'être définitif ». On 9 October 2025 the government dissolved the Comité and cancelled the referendum.

6. CLOSED — after 7 February 2026. The CPT's mandate expired on that date; its last president was Laurent Saint-Cyr; executive power passed to the Council of Ministers under Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who became de facto head of state with United States and CARICOM backing. The Pacte national pour la stabilité et l'organisation des élections of 21–22 February 2026 vests the executive in the Council of Ministers until elections and provides for a referendum on a series of amendments on election day. The CEP's calendar, published July 2026, sets first round and referendum for 13 December 2026, second round 21 February 2027, conditioned on security and funding; registration deadlines had slipped by April 2026. On the electoral framework there are three Venice Commission opinions, requested through the OAS and then by the CEP: CDL-AD(2024)017 (interim, June 2024), CDL-AD(2024)042 (final, December 2024) and CDL-AD(2025)031 (draft referendum decree, adopted at the 143rd plenary session, 13–14 June 2025, Opinion No. 1244/2025).

7. STILL OPEN — the quorum and the majority at the sitting of 9 May 2011. Whether the art. 284 two-thirds of each chamber were present and the art. 284.1 two-thirds of votes cast were obtained is not established by any source reached. The Nouvelliste piece that attacks the law's validity attacks it on other grounds entirely. This is now the first item to close, and it needs the National Assembly's procès-verbal, not a newspaper.

Four new open items this pass created, which did not exist before:

8. The issue number of the 19 June 2012 Moniteur. The haiti-reference.info header calls it No. 96; the Digithèque calls it a « numéro extraordinaire » with no number; the 13 May 2011 publication is No. 58. The report cites « No. 96 » throughout on the strength of the first alone. Resolve before public use.
9. MJP contradicts itself on art. 264. Its editorial note says arts. 218, 264 and 267.2 « n'ont pas été modifiés »; its own markup shows art. 264 changed in three places (« instituées » → « constituées », « la sécurité » → « la défense », « Forces Armées » → « Forces Armées d'Haïti »). Art. 218 is indeed unmarked. Flagged in the corpus file; not resolved.
10. Which text goes to the referendum of 13 December 2026. The body that drafted one was dissolved on 9 October 2025; the February 2026 Pacte speaks of amendments rather than replacement; no source reached names the text. Until it is named, no reading of « the constitution Haiti is about to vote on » is safe — including this report's.
11. The redline is a reproduction, not the Moniteur. Everything closed in items 1 and 2 rests on a scholarly edition by one archivist. It is independent of haiti-reference.info, it cites the Moniteur of 19 June 2012 and the RNDDH document of 27 October 2011 as its sources, and it is internally careful. It is still not the Journal officiel. One consultation of the printed issue closes items 1, 2, 8 and 9 at once, and it is the single highest-value hour of research left in this file.

B.5 Charters not in the corpus

Eight Haitian constitutional texts are cited by date only and nothing is claimed about their content beyond general characterization: 1874, 1879, 1888, 1932, 1935, 1946, 1950, 1983. The 1983 Duvalier text (life presidency, successor designation, constitutionalization of the Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale), Vincent's 1935 term extension by plebiscite (2 June 1935), Lescot's 1944 self-extension and the 1939 amendment are literature. The 1928 revision of 1918 is mentioned in the 1918 file's header only. Nothing this report relies on rests on an off-disk charter.

B.6 Sources retrieved 4 September 2026 for this closure pass

Listed so every claim added above can be re-checked, and so a later reader knows exactly how far each one is from a primary document.

Now in the corpus (primary or near-primary, on disk):

• Constitution_Haiti_1987_Amendee_2011_MJP_Redline_FR.txt — Digithèque MJP, Jean-Pierre Maury, Université de Perpignan, mjp.univ-perp.fr/constit/ht2011.htm. Marked text of the 19 June 2012 publication. Declared sources: the 1987 brochure (85 pp.); Le Moniteur, numéro extraordinaire, 6 October 2009; the Réseau national de défense des droits humains document of 27 October 2011; Le Moniteur, numéro extraordinaire, 19 June 2012.
• Constitution_Haiti_2025_CPCN_Avant-Projet_FR.txt — CPCN avant-projet, May 2025, 240 articles, official PDF via HaitiLibre.

Read but not added:

• Venice Commission, Haiti — Opinion on the draft referendum decree, CDL-AD(2025)031, Opinion No. 1244/2025, adopted 13–14 June 2025 (requested by CEP president Patrick Saint-Hilaire, 6 May 2025; draft decree CDL-REF(2025)028). Cites its own CDL-AD(2024)017 and CDL-AD(2024)042.
• Luc Rémy, « La loi constitutionnelle manquée du 9 mai 2011 ou un acte bien en dehors de la hiérarchie des normes haïtiennes », Le Nouvelliste, 19 June 2012 — the single-language-amendment nullity argument, and Le Moniteur No. 58 of 13 May 2011.
• Winnie Hugot Gabriel, « Le CCI a remis une nouvelle version d'avant-projet de Constitution », Le Nouvelliste, 8 September 2021.
• UN Security Council Resolution 2793 (2025), adopted 30 September 2025, 10009th meeting.
• CEP electoral calendar 2026–2027, published July 2026; Pacte national pour la stabilité et l'organisation des élections, 21–22 February 2026; reporting on the end of the CPT mandate, 7–9 February 2026 (BINUH statement; French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, 9 February 2026; The Haitian Times).

Method note. Where a secondary summary and a primary text disagreed, the primary text won and the disagreement is recorded — items 14 and 16 of B.2 are both of that kind. Where only secondary sources exist, they are named as such above and the claim is not upgraded.

Prepared for the Digital Commonwealth of Hayti Foundation. The Kreyòl text of the preamble is the authentic draft; the French and English are translations. Men anpil, chay pa lou.