Let’s talk Peacebuilding: An interview with Louino Robillard
by Jessica Hsu
Published June 12, 2025
Louino Robillard is the Program Director for Rasin Devlopman as well as a one of the founders of the Gwoup Konbit movement started as Konbit Solèy Leve out of Cite Soleil in 2011. Both Rasin Devlopman and Gwoup Konbit are partners of Roots of Development.
Can you tell us a little about you and where you grew up?
I am Louino Robillard. I was born in San Raphael, Haiti, which is a commune in the North Department.
When I was still young, maybe around three and a half or four years old, my mother passed away. She left behind three kids, and I was the oldest. My father was not able to take all three kids with him to go to Port-au-Prince, so he took me, leaving my siblings in the hands of family members. The decision to go to Port-au-Prince was really to go cheche lavi [in search of livelihoods], and he decided to live in Cite Soleil.
So growing up, it was Cite Soleil that I knew as home which is why I call myself a “Soleyan.” Saying you are from Cite Soleil already carries with it a lot.
It is a community that began under Duvalier (Papa Doc). Many cited the population to be around 300,000 by 2016/7, but living there, I would say more like half a million. There were really a lot of people and people were living on top of people.
Cite Soleil has marked my entire life. It is an area that does not have basic services or provide for social needs for the number of people living in it. There are problems with housing, problems with sanitation, environmental issues–every kind of problem you could imagine existed in this community. Also, if you looked at the number of people that lived there, there was strength in the numbers because when people protested from Cite Soleil, there would be a lot of people on the streets. At the same time, it had all of the vulnerabilities which created a situation where people in power always wanted control of Cite Soleil. Control meant a type of manipulation where the population felt like they had some power.
Its history is marked by insecurity because a group of men in all neighborhoods took control. There were 34 neighborhoods. So then that meant 34 chefs in 34 neighborhoods, which meant a lot of fighting. Neighborhoods fighting against each other. We grew up in this. We grew up in a situation where 300 meters away, I could not go because it was another territory with another chef and they were not on good terms. I can say that everyone would suffer from that tension and it would block people’s ability to move around.
It was under these conditions of conflict, we saw the role that notabs (elders/respected community members) played in building peace. Because we knew we could not use the State or its institutions, something pretty basic happened in the community – relationship building. The relationships between people that notabs reinforced and facilitated to help establish peace. This is what we witnessed growing up.
Then we came to 2004, with Jean Bertrand Aristide as president and the coup d’etat. For two years after the coup, Cite Soleil was enclosed. There was no police, there was no justice. There were containers barricading Cite Soleil. They put containers from Station Gonaive to Aviation in the South and in the North they put containers at the Drouillard intersection. For those living in Cite Soleil, it was like we were living in a type of fort.
In 2006, the police and MINUSTAH [the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti] conducted some effective operations in Cite Soleil that allowed for people to move around again. Between 2006-2009, a lot of the bandis [bandits] were arrested and put in prison. Then, in 2010, when the earthquake hit and the prison was destroyed, they escaped. Since that time, the bandis have become more intelligent in the ways that they operate. Bandi are no longer just chimères, they have become gangs. Gangs that were able to exit, kidnap, and do other things, so this became more complicated.
Soon after this time, I received a scholarship to Community Management. It was a study with the State on how to manage the municipality with the Minister of Interior. Then after the 2010 earthquake, I received another scholarship that allowed me to study Community Change and Building Peace. For me, this is one of the best thematics I could find because I knew that this is something that my community needed.
Then in 2011, a group of youth leaders came together. They were not used to being well organized because the power of bandis didn’t really allow us to organize. The earthquake really opened a door for us to really come together and organize. We formed a social movement, which I am a part of, that was called at the time Konbit Solèy Leve.
What does peacebuilding mean to you?
I think Peacebuilding is a term true to itself. I think the word implies that it is a process to build peace. But, I believe that many people talk about this concept, but do not understand it as a process.
Currently, the Haitian government is using drones to attack the bandis. Although understandable because they are causing a lot of problems, the reality is that the bandis are not living in isolation like on mountain tops, but rather in communities with civilians. There is no calculation for the human lives that are living in these territories that are not bandis. This is from my personal experience of growing up close to bandis, but never having been involved with them.
At this very moment, I still know people who are living in Cite Soleil who are good citizens, such as pastors, hougans, and social leaders, that are in proximity to the chef.
Peacebuilding is an ecosystem of elements that come together to build peace. The concept of peace is not about the absence of guns shooting or the absence of violence. Peace is an environment where people are living with physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Peacebuilding addresses and brings together all of these aspects to build a community of peace. Unfortunately, there is a lot of noise around the concept.
Peacebuilding is also prevention that does not allow for communities to fall into war or other conflicts. Peacebuilding also puts in place processes like building hospitals and schools, investing in education, training youth, investing in oases, investing in building community and social networks–there are all aspects of the process–to look at the economic conditions of people. If any or all of these elements are missing, it may result in the community falling into problems. Peacebuilding touches on all of these elements. Sometimes it is environmental, sometimes education, economics, sometimes health–these are the elements that build peace.
In the current context, how would you suggest people start building peace?
The current context of Haiti is a situation that we allowed to become difficult. I say difficult because in opposition to peacebuilding there is conflict and problem building – there has been the construction of mismanagement. Haiti is an example of many of these things where we have participated in the construction of bad behavior, bad governance, etc – all of which have brought us to this point. For us to be able to get out of this, everything that we constructed must be deconstructed, and then to be reconstructed into a new system.
As they say in Seed Scale [a method developed by Future Generations with a goal of improving life and sustaining it]: as long as there are people, everything is possible. How do you utilize people? How do we put people in service to the well-being of all? You will need to build a strong civil society, that is well-formed, well-informed, well-engaged. You need a State–the concept of the State people like to cite–but state does not exist. The State is the laws, the State is its institutions, but it is also the people from civil society, from political parties, from churches that help shape the State.
At the moment, we should look at how we can include everyone, integrate everyone in a process to build peace in the country. One place we can start is in decentralizing, the deconcentration of power, and the deconcentration of resources–these are some things that can help us get out of this situation–and to really invest in people. This has been written about by many leaders. All of these important things are written, but have we ever applied them? What have we done to invest in people? This is what we need to do–engage communities.
Now, I did not say peacekeeping. Soldiers, guns–those things are called peacekeeping–it is a mentality to maintain peace amongst us. For example, if we go through the Haitian State, this is peacekeeping. We are just trying to keep peace. Of course you will have the police and justice system to do their jobs, but they can not build peace by themselves. They are there for when things degenerate, when two people cannot put their heads together–then there are authorities and the laws to make us sit together.
First participation should be from the community. It is for the community to participate in peace, to make it grow.
Do you consider yourself a peacebuilder? Why?
Yes, I am a peacebuilder and I am a community builder. Because everything that I do, everything that I participate in is towards the well-being of Haitians–to see Haitians happy, to see that Haitians can live together, Haitians can live in peace, in security with justice. Everything that I do, my work, is the contribution that I bring so that this can be done. If there is a word that would put both community builder and peacebuilder together–You could say I am a Konbiter. Konbiter puts this all together. [Konbit is a form of traditional Haitian mutual aid and solidarity rooted in rural agriculture that forms the basis for Gwoup Konbit and the Konbit Movement.]
What type of advice would you give to people who talk about military intervention and now mercenaries? Do these have a role? How do we move from short to longer-term?
There is a role, but that is not the solution.
There are terrorists and terrorism. Terrorism is the condition that makes people become terrorists. There is somethings called banditism. Banditism are all the conditions that come together that make them bandits. If we cannot find the root problems of why people become bandits or gang members–you can go and bring all of the mercenaries in the world and bring them to Haiti–they may stop the problem for a little time, but it will start again.
In 2004, almost 20 years ago, we tried to do this with MINUSTAHx. There were a lot of bandits and chimere. They came and did their work and a lot of chimeres went to prison. Twenty years later, we have more bandits. Why? Because we did not really touch the real problem at its roots.
Yes, we need to clean the country, people must be able to move around, but if the tough physical interventions are done without looking at the conditions of people or question inequality in society – What do people do to live? Is there work? Are there oases? Is there soccer? What are the youth doing?–If you don’t look at these issues at their roots, what you do today may give you short-term results, but in the next 10, 15 years–we are going to need mercenaries again with their drones. We will have to do the same things because we did not try to stop the machine that was produced – the way we do politics, the way people are manipulated, the way we do not invest in education. We must remember the population is very young.
Specifically in popular neighborhoods like Cite Soleil–one of the most historic ones–how should peace begin today?
We are at a point where people are thirsty for peace. They have become thirsty because they are very tired. We need to take this as an opportunity to touch on things that are really sustainable.
Peace begins by starting relationships. We need to reconstruct the relationship between people again and have trust return. Trust within the population. The population’s trust of the State. Trust in the country’s systems. So this is where we should start.
People need peace, but for people to believe in peace they need something tangible to be done. For example, if there is a school that has been closed, work closely with the local community to see how it can be restarted–not with force like with armored vehicles and things like this–it will just break things down further. Work with community leaders, community groups (community-based organizations/grassroot groups), work with the pastors, with the hougans [vodou leaders], with the school directors, and with the young men and young women to understand what it is they need the most.
A lot of this does not even need money. People always think that there is a direct relationship between the amount of money and how much peace you need, but it is not like that. It is more about using the intelligence of the community, and the system–the State, the international community, NGOs–must be in touch with us in the community to think about what they do as projects.
Does dialogue have a role in this?
All the time. You just have to define what you mean by dialogue. So dialogue is everything I just said–it is all of these activities. It is not supposed to be only putting people in the room to talk about peace. This is not something that you just talk, this is something that you live–something that you do. This is how you create peace–you do stuff, you live stuff, and this is how we build peace. People need to see dialogue in the entire sense of it. If the term of dialogue itself has become a problem, then do not use it–use another term for it.
Is it possible now, for example in Cite Soleil, to navigate in order to start something concrete–for example a soccer game for peace?
There are always opportunities. It is just how you map them and how you promote them. There are still groups in the communities–they are not the gangs, but civil society members that everyone respects and appreciates, including the gang members. If you can use these people–the institutions and associations–start with them. You just need to start somewhere and then follow the momentum and it will lead you to bigger things. Building trust takes time–and to build trust, you need trust. Trust is not something you can find outside and just bring into the community–it has to come from the community.
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Some additional suggested reading:
Peace Insight, “How communities shape their own peace: Everyday peace indicators in practice”, 17 Dec 2024.
Peace Direct, “Transforming partnerships in International Cooperation”, 20 Sept 2023.