Haiti’s ruling presidential council welcomed a new prime minister, entrepreneur Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, on Monday after ousting the current executive, longtime United Nations civil servant Garry Conille, after less than six months in office.

The shakeup in the country’s months-old political transition came after weeks of tensions between Conille — who did not attend the swearing-in ceremony for his replacement and was stripped of most of his security detail — and the nine-member Transitional Presidential Council.

After hailing the creation of the nine-member ruling council and Conille’s installation in May with a new cabinet, the Biden administration and others in the international community remained silent as council members moved to oust Conille.

Despite protests from some of the sectors represented on the council that firing Conille would be illegal and the equivalent of a coup, council members moved ahead with the dismisal. On Sunday an executive order naming Fils-Aimé as Conille’s replacement leaked to the media.

On Monday, as the sound of automatic gunfire blanketed some Port-au-Prince neighborhoods and major U.S. carriers suspended flights after a Spirit Airlines flight was shot at, Fils-Aimé, 52, took over the reins of leadership. In an emotional speech, he called for unity among Haitians to confront the country’s myriad challenges and pledged his energy, competence and patriotism to the transition.

A former candidate for the Haitian Senate and chamber of commerce president, Fils-Aimé listed restoring security throughout the country as a top priority, along with elections. He is aware, he said, of the huge responsibility bestowed on him and the exceptional context in which he’s being asked to lead.

“I have a special thought for all of the victims of the criminal acts of bandits who continue to sow sadness and mourning amid the population,” Fils-Aimé said. “Women, young girls have been raped and have no choice but to leave their homes.... We cannot close our eyes to the mothers and children who flee, leaving all they have built … and can’t even send their children to school today.”

What is happening in Haiti, he said, naming neighborhoods where gangs in recent weeks have massacred residents, “is not acceptable.”

The United Nations Human Rights Office, which previously said that some 4,900 Haitians had been killed by gang violence between January and September of this year, said Monday the actual death toll is 3,893 killed and 1,802 injured.

Virginia Gamba, a special U.N. representative, said in a statement Monday that children are at the heart of the crisis in Haiti and particularly vulnerable to armed gangs. Her office estimates that between a third and a half of armed gang members are children under the age of 18.

She added that the increase in sexual violence against children is deeply alarming, with verified U.N. figures showing an increase from 41 cases last year to over 400 in 2024.

“Ms. Gamba urges all parties in Haiti to do everything they can to prevent grave violations against children,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, said. “She also calls on gangs to immediately release children from their ranks and hand them over to civilian child-protection groups.”

Organizing elections

Fils-Aimé said his government’s other top priority will be “to organize elections that are not contested.”

“We are all Haitians and we all have to come together,” he said. “Everybody will take their responsibility in the country.”

The son of a well-known activist, Alix “Boulon” Fils-Aimé, who was involved in efforts to disarm gangs as a member of late President René Prévals private cabinet, the younger Fils-Aimé and the presidential council face significant challenges.

Though Washington did not weigh in on the council’s push to remove Conille, they remain steadfast in their push that the council must respect the timetable for a new president to take office by Feb. 7, 2026.

The Biden administation also seeks a resolution to ongoing corruption allegations involving three members of the council who are under criminal investigation over a bank bribery scandal and so far have refused to step down.

Monday’s ceremony took place in the presence of several members of the foreign diplomatic corps, as well as most members of Conille’s outgoing cabinet.

“This is a temporary victory. Nothing has been solved in terms of the massive problems facing the country,” Robert Fatton, a Haiti-born political scientist, said about the transfer of power. “The security situation is precarious at best, the economy is collapsing, the humanitarian crisis is alarming, and organizing elections as well as a referendum on a new constitution within a year is unlikely. Given all these problems the question is whether the (presidential council) will remain united for long. It looks like an unending crisis, but let us hope for a miracle.”

Council head Leslie Voltaire, who led the charge to oust Conille, defended the transfer of power, saying it was necessary to save the political transition. The country, he said , is threatened with collapse and its institutions almost completely paralyzed.

“It is now (time) to correct what must be corrected so that we do not lose this transition,” he said. “We opted for changes at the government level based on the experience of the last months. There were only difficulties and obstacles.”

He saluted Conille’s “courage and determination,” adding that Haiti had “laid interesting foundations that will allow the new prime minister to move forward with the projects of the transition.”

Up until Sunday, Conille was still fighting his ouster, which he described as illegal. In a public letter, he said neither the Haitian Constitution nor the April 3 political agreement that established the transition allows the council “to unilaterally terminate the functions of the prime minister.”

Conille’s position is shared by several political parties, which took to the radio and labeled his ouster “a coup d’etat.”

Liné Balthazar, the head of the Haitian Tèt Kale Party, told the Miami Herald that “the way they fired Mr. Conille and replaced him doesn’t respect anything in the April 3 political accord or the constitution.... They don’t respect any rules and they do not respect the law.”

The party’s representative on the council, former Sen. Edgard Leblanc Fils, was the only one among the nine members who did not agree to firing Conille.

Balthazar said that although the council members were recommended by political parties and civic groups, they have broken with their respective sectors and today “are deciding for themselves.”

“The decisions they are taking are not necessarily to the benefit of the public,” he said. “The people don’t feel like what’s happening here is in their interest. They do not have security, there is no public security, no food security. We are practically at a point at which something could explode at any moment.”

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