The InterDependent

Mariano Fernández, a former minister of foreign affairs for Chile, was named special envoy for Haiti by the UN this month. Fernández will run the peacekeeping mission, known as Minustah, at its base in the capital of Port-au-Prince. He replaces Edmond Mulet of Guatemala, who headed the mission after Hédi Annabi of Tunisia was killed in the January 2010 earthquake.

Mulet is returning to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York as assistant secretary-general.

Fernández, 66, was minister of foreign affairs in the center-left government of Michelle Bachelet from 2009 to 2010. (Bachelet is now chief of UN Women.)

Mariano Fernández, 66, the new UN envoy to Haiti.

His start in June comes as Haiti’s new president, Michel Martelly, begins his term and the country continues its long rebuilding efforts after the earthquake, which includes developing infrastructure, addressing health epidemics like cholera and creating housing for the thousands still living in refugee tent camps. As of March, international public donors had disbursed only 37 percent of the $4.6 billion that had been pledged for earthquake recovery efforts.

Previously, Fernández was ambassador to the U.S. from 2006 to 2009; before that, he was ambassador to Britain, Lybia, Spain, Andorra, Italy, Malta and the European Union. Fernández entered Chile’s foreign service in 1969; in 1971, he was sent to work at the Chilean embassy in East Germany until 1973, but remained there from 1974 to 1982 in exile during Chile’s military junta rule. During that time, he worked as a journalist for various magazines and news agencies.

Fernández studied social science research methods at Bonn University in Germany and law at Catholic University in Santiago, Chile, where he was born. He is married to María Angélica Morales and they have three children.

Chile, a country of 17 million, is the sixth-largest contributor of military personnel to Minustah, which is heavily Latin American. The country also helps supply helicopters to the mission's aviation unit, considered a valuable component of a stabilization force. It 500-person base is located in Cap Haïtien, on the north coast.

Brazil, the largest contributor, commands the military side of the UN mission. In addition, Minustah’s police commissioner, Geraldo Chaumont, is from Argentina. The other top personnel are Kevin Kennedy, a deputy special representative with citizenship from the U.S. and Ireland; and Nigel Fisher, a Canadian, also a deputy special representative as well as UN resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator.

Minustah began operating in 2004 to oversee a presidential election and normalize the country during a particularly chaotic time. The mission's 2010-2011 budget is $853 million. (By comparison, the largest UN peacekeeping mission, in Darfur, Sudan, operates with a budget of nearly $1.8 billion.) The number of uniformed Minustah personnel is about 12,000.

Haiti, with 9.7 million people, was slowly making economic and social progress until the earthquake struck on Jan. 12, 2010. At least 230,000 people were killed and two million left homeless. The headquarters of Minustah, having stabilized the country through some of its toughest years, collapsed, too, and 101 civilian and peacekeeping staff were lost.

The UN Security Council last month called on the UN mission to continue to work on building up the Haitian police force – increasing, among other things, antinarcotics efforts and human rights training and tackling the sexual violence prevalent in the tent communities and elsewhere. About seven percent of a recent group of graduated Haitian police recruits, trained by the UN, were women. At the council debate, in April, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reiterated the importance of Haiti's new president establishing rule of law.