AHRC grant success: The Port-au-Prince-Rio Connection: 'Collateral Damage' by UN Troops in Haiti and Brazilian Troops in Rio.
Congratulations to Prof Siobhán Wills who has been awarded a grant of £80,942.30 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for this research project on The Port-au-Prince-Rio Connection: 'Collateral Damage' by UN Troops in Haiti and Brazilian Troops in Rio.
This project examines the connection between UN military operations in Port-au-Prince and Brazilian military operations in Rio. Senior ex-UN peacekeepers who served in Haiti have recently been appointed to President Jair Bolsonaro’s newly formed government in Brazil, tasked with replicating the intensely militarised law enforcement operations used by the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti. Bolsonaro has stated that in Haiti ‘the rule was, you found an element with a firearm, you shoot, and then you see what happened. You solve the problem’, and said he plans to adopt a similar approach in Brazil’s favelas. Scores of civilians were killed between 2005-2007 when UN peacekeepers fired from helicopters and used heavy weapons in a densely populated neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.