PARAMARIBO – “Since may 2023 a total of 10 flights were carried out and 879 Haïtians arrived in Suriname. 309 Haïtians seized this opportunity to come to Suriname this year,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Business and International Collaboration (Bibis) in a press release. Suriname’s Foreign Affairs Ministry made it clear that from the very first flight the Haïtian consulate in Suriname provided its assistance to ensure that all of the documents of the Haïtian immigrants are au­thentic.

“Many Haïtians preferred to file their requests via the Haïtian consulate,” said the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Sources told Suriname that this is were things went wrong. Employees at the Haïtian consulate started charging between one hun­dred to four hundred American dollars for falsified documents. The fake documents were used to get children from Haïti to Suriname. The fake documents claimed that the parents of these children resided in Suriname but as it turns out they had no­body in Suriname. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained in its press release that these flights were given green light because of humanitarian reasons. The objective of these flights was to reunite families. Next week Foreign Affairs Minister Albert Ramdin will discuss this issue with his Haïtian counterpart Dominique Dupay. …[+]