Who Controls the Skies
The governments of the Dominican Republic and Haiti have agreed to reopen their airspace starting in May, allowing flights between their countries for the first time in more than two years. The decision was announced Friday in a joint statement and clears the way for connections between three Dominican airports and one serving Haiti’s northern port city of Cap-Haïtien. After the apparatus shut the route down in the second year of closure, ordinary people are left to move only when the states decide the gates can open again.
The Dominican Republic closed its airspace with Haiti in March 2024, citing the high levels of insecurity in the neighboring nation following the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. It only permitted humanitarian flights. The closure shows how quickly border regimes can turn mobility into a privilege, with the people on both sides paying the price for decisions made at the top.
What the Joint Statement Says
According to the joint statement issued after a meeting between foreign ministers Roberto Álvarez of Dominican Republic and Raina Forbin of Haiti, “This measure seeks to facilitate mobility, boost economic ties and strengthen relations between both countries.” That is the official language of reopening: mobility, trade, and relations, all managed from above, after the same authorities spent the second year of closure controlling who could fly and under what conditions.
Friday’s decision followed bilateral talks focused primarily on border control and surveillance, migration and trade. Those are the levers of state power in plain view: borders watched, movement tracked, labor and goods sorted, and people treated as problems to be managed. The report does not describe any grassroots process behind the move, only negotiations between officials and the machinery they represent.
The countries share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. In the months before the airspace closure, bilateral relations had been severely strained due to the conflict sparked by the construction of an irrigation canal by Haitian businessmen, fed by the Massacre River, which is shared by both countries. The Dominican Republic opposed the project, arguing that the construction would have negative environmental impacts and harm agricultural producers in both nations. The dispute shows how access to shared resources can be pulled into the orbit of national power, with business interests and state objections colliding over land, water, and control.
The Helpers and the Handlers
The statement also thanked the international community, particularly the United Nations, for supporting Haitian authorities in their efforts to pacify the country. That gratitude points to the wider network of institutions that step in when local power structures are in crisis, offering support to authorities while the people living under those authorities remain the ones expected to absorb the consequences.
The reopening will connect three Dominican airports with Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s northern port city. It marks the first restoration of cross-border flights in more than two years, after the Dominican Republic kept the airspace closed except for humanitarian flights. The move may restore a route, but it does so through the same hierarchy that closed it in the first place: governments deciding access, foreign ministers announcing terms, and international institutions applauded for helping “pacify” a country already battered by insecurity and political collapse.
The announcement on Friday is framed by officials as a step toward easier movement and stronger ties. What it also reveals is how thoroughly movement across Hispaniola remains subject to state permission, border surveillance, and the shifting needs of rulers who present control as stability.