Roberto Álvarez meets with UN secretary and asks for help for Haiti

The Dominican Foreign Minister expresses the country's concern about the crisis in the neighboring nation.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Álvarez, met in New York, United States, with the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, to whom he raised the precarious situation that Haiti is going through, which worries the authorities Dominican.

Similarly, he told her that the Dominican Republic was concerned about "the scant action of the UN to contribute to stabilization in the neighboring country," says a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The foreign minister recalled the efforts of the Dominican Republic to convince the Security Council to expand the capacity of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) to prevent further decomposition in Haiti. In addition, he lamented the poor responsiveness in the Security Council regarding the growing crisis in that country, which includes the activism of criminal gangs terrorizing the population, ”says the document.

The Dominican diplomat reiterated the commitment of the government of President Luis Abinader to the United Nations and his decision to continue collaborating with the agenda of the international organization for the sake of international peace and security.

Álvarez was accompanied by a delegation made up of the Deputy Minister of Multilateral Foreign Policy, Rubén Silié; the director of International Organizations, María Fernanda Ortega; the permanent representative of the Dominican Republic to the UN, José Blanco; and the alternate ambassador, Joan Cedano.

Guterres reaction

For his part, Secretary Guterres expressed how fruitful the bilateral meeting held with President Abinader at the Summit of the Americas was for him, noting that this conversation contributed to giving him a better understanding for an immediate approach to the Haitian crisis, which could pay off in the short term.

The Secretary General thanked the excellent Dominican participation in the different UN bodies, including the Security Council, of which the country was a member in 2019 and 2020.