The undersigned, engaged citizens and organizations form the Northwest department, encourage communities that are under threat of metal mining, especially farmers, to remain vigilant of the State and mining companies, and ensure that they do not take advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent economic crisis to push their projects forward and take our land.

It is with great indignation and with a sentiment of revolt that Kolektif Jistis Min (Mining Justice Collective or KJM1) saw, in a press statement dated February 15, 2019 published by the mining company Resources Générale Corporation (formerly VCS Mining),2 the announcement that the draft mining law would be voted during the Senate’s next session.

It is with revolt and indignation that the Kolektif Jistis Min (Justice Mining Collective or KJM) hears Jean Henry Céant say before Parliament that the draft mining law is supported by broad consensus of all sectors of the country. KJM, with all its force, denounces the statement of the Prime Minister, made before the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, that “everyone agrees with” the draft mining law. The law is “horse’s medicine,” drafted by the World Bank and the Haitian government.

The Collective of Haitian Organizations that are fighting against mineral exploitation in the nation of Haiti honor World Water Day on March 22nd to denounce the great threat that mining exploitation presents to the State of Haiti.

We the undersigned—farmer organizations, workers, and citizens of the North Department, especially from Morne Pele—raise our voices to denounce gold and other metal mining in the North, particularly in Morne Pele, Quartier Morin.

The Justice in Mining Collective (Kolektif Jistis Min or KJM), a group of organizations working to prevent metal mining in the nation of Haiti, honors the global day of action against open pit mining with this note of courage and resistance.

The Kolektif Jistis Min (Justice in Mining Collective or KJM) and several other organizations recently received invitations from the Haitian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce to discuss the draft mining law that the World Bank and the Haitian Government are pushing to pass.

There is a dearth of information in the public domain about what gold mining entails, what challenges it poses, what opportunities it presents, and what it may mean for communities and the country as a whole. The purpose of this Report is to help fill that gap.