Haitian Nationality After 2011: the Constitution Stopped Saying How, and Dual Nationality Is No Longer Forbidden
This is the most widely misreported rule in Haitian law and the amendment that changed it is easy to check. The 1987 Constitution said at article 12-1 that any foreigner could obtain Haitian nationality by naturalisation after five years of continuous residence, and at article 15 that dual Haitian and foreign nationality was not admitted in any case. The constitutional law of 9 May 2011, published 19 June 2012, abrogated articles 12-1, 12-2, 13, 14 and 15. In their place it inserted article 11-1, saying only that the law establishes the conditions in which an individual may acquire Haitian nationality, and rewrote article 12 to say that every Haitian, apart from the privileges reserved to Haitians of origin, is subject to all the rights, duties and obligations attached to his Haitian nationality, and that no Haitian may make his foreign nationality prevail on the territory of the Republic. So the blanket prohibition is gone and what replaced it is a rule of precedence, not of exclusivity. The five-year naturalisation rule is also gone from the Constitution - and the law it was handed to, the decree of 6 November 1984 on Haitian nationality, is one we could not read, so this record does not state the conditions of naturalisation.
At a glance
- Dual nationality
- No longer prohibitedas of 2012-06-19
Article 15, which forbade it in any case, was abrogated by the constitutional law of 9 May 2011 published on 19 June 2012. What remains is article 12: no Haitian may make his foreign nationality prevail on Haitian territory.
- Five years to naturalisation
- Removed from the Constitutionas of 2012-06-19
Article 12-1 carried it and was abrogated. The figure is still quoted everywhere as if it were constitutional; it is not, and whether it survives in the nationality decree is something we could not check.
- Nationality of origin
- By descent from a Haitian-born parent who had not renounced
Article 11, unamended. Haiti has no birthright rule in its Constitution.
- Loss of nationality on naturalising abroad
- Removed from the Constitutionas of 2012-06-19
Article 13, which made Haitian nationality lost by naturalisation acquired abroad, was abrogated at the same time.
- Where the conditions now live
- In legislation, unread
Article 11-1 points at the law. The law meant is the decree of 6 November 1984 on Haitian nationality, which we could not obtain in a readable form.
Requirements
- Nationality of origin: birth to a Haitian father or a Haitian mother who were themselves born Haitian and had never renounced their nationality at the time of the birth
- Naturalisation: conditions established by law, which this record does not state because the law could not be read
In detail
What the 2011 amendment actually did
Title II of the Constitution is short and the amendment went through most of it. Article 10, leaving the rules of nationality to legislation, stands. Article 11, nationality of origin by descent from a Haitian-born parent, stands. A new article 11-1 was inserted saying the law establishes the conditions of acquisition. Article 12 was rewritten. Articles 12-1, 12-2, 13, 14 and 15 were abrogated outright. Those five carried, in order: the five-year naturalisation rule, the five-year wait before a naturalised Haitian could hold public office, the three ways Haitian nationality was lost, the way to recover it, and the prohibition on dual nationality. All five are gone.
The prohibition is gone; a precedence rule took its place
Article 15 said that dual Haitian and foreign nationality was not admitted in any case. The amendment removed it. What article 12 now says is different in kind: every Haitian, except for the privileges reserved to Haitians of origin, carries all the rights, duties and obligations attached to his Haitian nationality, and no Haitian may make his foreign nationality prevail on the territory of the Republic. A Haitian abroad holding a second passport is not, on this text, committing anything; a Haitian in Haiti cannot use the second passport to claim foreign treatment. The reserved privileges referred to are real and are spread through the rest of the Constitution, which requires Haitian origin and no other nationality for the presidency, for seats in Parliament and for several other offices.
And the conditions of naturalisation are not stated here
Because the Constitution stopped stating them. Article 11-1 points at the law, and the law meant is the decree of 6 November 1984 on Haitian nationality. We tried to read it and could not: the page that holds it serves the document inside a viewer our tools cannot open, and we found no other host with the French text. So we do not know how many years of residence are required today, what the procedure is, or what marriage to a Haitian does. The five-year figure that fills every guide comes from an article that was abrogated in 2011, and repeating it here on that basis would be exactly the kind of mistake this record exists to avoid.
Country-level policy
On 17 September 2026 Le Moniteur published, as Special No. 47 of its 181st year, a decree of the Council of Ministers instituting a state of emergency over the departments of the Ouest, the Artibonite and the Centre for three months. The Ouest is the department that contains Port-au-Prince, and with it the Direction de l'Immigration et de l'Émigration on Avenue John Brown, where residence permits are applied for. The decree's recitals describe a multiform crisis producing a situation of extreme urgency, marked by increased violence from armed gangs and a worrying humanitarian situation threatening the existence of the population and the foundations of the Republic. An earlier decree to the same effect had been published on 2 June 2026, so this is a renewal rather than a first measure. What we hold of the decree is its opening: the copy we could read carries the gazette heading, the title and the recitals and stops before the operative articles, so we cannot say what powers it confers or what it suspends.
Haiti's official journal, Le Moniteur, is still publishing - its Special No. 47 of 17 September 2026 is in these records - but it has no reachable archive of its own, and the Secrétariat Général du Conseil des Ministres, which hosts the government's collection of laws, did not answer a single request from here. The consequence is specific rather than general. Four instruments between them decide most of what a person moving to Haiti needs to know, and none of them could be read. The decree-law of 26 December 1978 on immigration and emigration is the one the immigration directorate itself cites by article number for the residence permit, and the one the law of 2002 names as imposing that permit at its article 30. The decree of 6 November 1984 on Haitian nationality is where the Constitution has pointed since 2011 for the conditions of naturalisation. The Code Fiscal enacted by decree of 20 January 2023 brings the whole tax code together and is published by the Ministry of Economy and Finance as a 244-page image whose only machine-readable text is a watermark reading "ne pas reproduire". And the decree of 13 March 1963 defines which new undertakings give a foreign shareholder an exemption from the work permit.
Exceptions by origin
No exceptions recorded
Nothing we have read treats any nationality differently for this topic. The rule above applies to everyone.
What the law says
«Possède la Nationalité Haïtienne d'origine, tout individu
> né d'un père haïtien ou d'une mère haïtienne
> qui eux-mêmes sont nés Haïtiens et n'avaient jamais renoncé
> à leur nationalité au moment de la naissance.»Our translation - not official
Every individual born of a Haitian father or a Haitian mother who were themselves born Haitian and had never renounced their nationality at the time of the birth possesses Haitian nationality of origin.
Unamended in 2011. The quotation carries the blockquote markers of the page it was captured from.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Jean-Pierre Maury's constitutional library at the University of Perpignan, which publishes the French text of the Constitution of Haiti of 29 March 1987 in its version amended on 9 May 2011, with every abrogated article struck through in place. It is used here because no Haitian state host we could reach serves the amended Constitution: the Government's own copy is the 1987 original.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: An academic transcription, not a gazette. It is not the authentic text, it carries no date of consolidation, and the strike-through marking of abrogated articles is the editor's apparatus rather than the legislator's. Quotations taken from it carry the blockquote markers and the strike-through tildes of the capture. It must be replaced the moment a Haitian state copy of the amended Constitution becomes reachable. Its reading of the amendments was cross-checked here against the Comparative Constitutions Project's annotated edition and the two agree on which articles were abrogated.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«La loi établit les conditions dans lesquelles un individu peut acquérir la nationalité haïtienne.»Our translation - not official
The law establishes the conditions in which an individual may acquire Haitian nationality.
Inserted by the constitutional law of 9 May 2011. It replaced a Constitution that stated the naturalisation test itself.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Jean-Pierre Maury's constitutional library at the University of Perpignan, which publishes the French text of the Constitution of Haiti of 29 March 1987 in its version amended on 9 May 2011, with every abrogated article struck through in place. It is used here because no Haitian state host we could reach serves the amended Constitution: the Government's own copy is the 1987 original.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: An academic transcription, not a gazette. It is not the authentic text, it carries no date of consolidation, and the strike-through marking of abrogated articles is the editor's apparatus rather than the legislator's. Quotations taken from it carry the blockquote markers and the strike-through tildes of the capture. It must be replaced the moment a Haitian state copy of the amended Constitution becomes reachable. Its reading of the amendments was cross-checked here against the Comparative Constitutions Project's annotated edition and the two agree on which articles were abrogated.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«Tout haïtien, hormis les privilèges
> réservés aux Haïtiens d'origine est soumis à
> l'ensemble des droits, devoirs et obligations attachés à
> sa nationalité haïtienne.
>
> Aucun haïtien ne peut faire prévaloir sa nationalité
> étrangère sur le territoire de la République
> d'Haïti.»Our translation - not official
Every Haitian, apart from the privileges reserved to Haitians of origin, is subject to all the rights, duties and obligations attached to his Haitian nationality. No Haitian may make his foreign nationality prevail on the territory of the Republic of Haiti.
This is what replaced the prohibition on dual nationality. It regulates which nationality counts inside Haiti; it does not forbid holding another.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Jean-Pierre Maury's constitutional library at the University of Perpignan, which publishes the French text of the Constitution of Haiti of 29 March 1987 in its version amended on 9 May 2011, with every abrogated article struck through in place. It is used here because no Haitian state host we could reach serves the amended Constitution: the Government's own copy is the 1987 original.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: An academic transcription, not a gazette. It is not the authentic text, it carries no date of consolidation, and the strike-through marking of abrogated articles is the editor's apparatus rather than the legislator's. Quotations taken from it carry the blockquote markers and the strike-through tildes of the capture. It must be replaced the moment a Haitian state copy of the amended Constitution becomes reachable. Its reading of the amendments was cross-checked here against the Comparative Constitutions Project's annotated edition and the two agree on which articles were abrogated.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«~~La double nationalité haïtienne et étrangère
> n'est admise dans aucun cas.~~»Our translation - not official
Dual Haitian and foreign nationality is not admitted in any case.
Quoted here because it is the sentence everyone still cites. It was abrogated by the constitutional law of 9 May 2011 published on 19 June 2012. The tildes around it are the Digithèque's strike-through marking the abrogation, and they are part of the text as captured.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Jean-Pierre Maury's constitutional library at the University of Perpignan, which publishes the French text of the Constitution of Haiti of 29 March 1987 in its version amended on 9 May 2011, with every abrogated article struck through in place. It is used here because no Haitian state host we could reach serves the amended Constitution: the Government's own copy is the 1987 original.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: An academic transcription, not a gazette. It is not the authentic text, it carries no date of consolidation, and the strike-through marking of abrogated articles is the editor's apparatus rather than the legislator's. Quotations taken from it carry the blockquote markers and the strike-through tildes of the capture. It must be replaced the moment a Haitian state copy of the amended Constitution becomes reachable. Its reading of the amendments was cross-checked here against the Comparative Constitutions Project's annotated edition and the two agree on which articles were abrogated.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«Article 12-1
[Abrogated by the Constitutional Law of 9 May 2011 / 19 June 2012]
Article 12-2
[Abrogated by the Constitutional Law of 9 May 2011 / 19 June 2012]
Article 13
[Abrogated by the Constitutional Law of 9 May 2011 / 19 June 2012]
Article 14
[Abrogated by the Constitutional Law of 9 May 2011 / 19 June 2012]
Article 15
[Abrogated by the Constitutional Law of 9 May 2011 / 19 June 2012]»An English edition, carried here only for its amendment annotations: it marks each of the five articles as abrogated by the constitutional law of 9 May 2011 / 19 June 2012. The English wording is a translation copyrighted to its publisher and is not the authentic text; the French above is.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
An academic repository of constitutional texts. Carried here for one thing only: its edition of Haiti's Constitution annotates each article with the amending instrument, which is how the abrogation of articles 12-1, 12-2, 13, 14 and 15 by the constitutional law of 9 May 2011 / 19 June 2012 can be checked against a second source.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: What it publishes for Haiti is an English translation copyrighted to a commercial publisher, not the authentic French. It must never be quoted as the text of the Constitution, only for its amendment annotations, and every record resting on it here also quotes the French. Its file is dated 27 April 2022 and is not revised on any schedule.
We re-read it every 365 days. More about this source
Practical notes
This record rests on Title II of the Constitution of 29 March 1987 in its version amended on 9 May 2011, read in full, and on the Constitute Project's English edition of the same text, which annotates each article with the amendment that changed it. The French text is from an academic digital library rather than from Le Moniteur; Haiti's own published copy of the Constitution that we could reach is the 1987 original as printed in Le Moniteur No. 36 of 28 April 1987, which does not carry the amendments.
The decree of 6 November 1984 on Haitian nationality is the operative law and was not read. Nothing in this record states a naturalisation condition, and nothing should be inferred from the silence.
The abrogated article 15 is quoted deliberately. It is the single most repeated statement about Haitian law in circulation and it has not been in force since 2012.
The Government's own copy of the Constitution that we could reach is the 1987 original as printed in Le Moniteur No. 36 of 28 April 1987. It is a scan whose text layer is a machine recognition and prints, among other things, "distinbtion" for distinction, "H~i tüme" for Haïtiens and "candi tians" for conditions. Quotations from it are left exactly as the layer has them, and the amended text of 2011 is quoted from a separate source because this one predates the amendments.
- reportsConstitution du 29 mars 1987, version amendée le 9 mai 2011
Digithèque MJP, Université de Perpignan
About this source
Jean-Pierre Maury's constitutional library at the University of Perpignan, which publishes the French text of the Constitution of Haiti of 29 March 1987 in its version amended on 9 May 2011, with every abrogated article struck through in place. It is used here because no Haitian state host we could reach serves the amended Constitution: the Government's own copy is the 1987 original.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: An academic transcription, not a gazette. It is not the authentic text, it carries no date of consolidation, and the strike-through marking of abrogated articles is the editor's apparatus rather than the legislator's. Quotations taken from it carry the blockquote markers and the strike-through tildes of the capture. It must be replaced the moment a Haitian state copy of the amended Constitution becomes reachable. Its reading of the amendments was cross-checked here against the Comparative Constitutions Project's annotated edition and the two agree on which articles were abrogated.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
- reportsHaiti's Constitution of 1987 with Amendments through 2012
Comparative Constitutions Project - constituteproject.org
About this source
An academic repository of constitutional texts. Carried here for one thing only: its edition of Haiti's Constitution annotates each article with the amending instrument, which is how the abrogation of articles 12-1, 12-2, 13, 14 and 15 by the constitutional law of 9 May 2011 / 19 June 2012 can be checked against a second source.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: What it publishes for Haiti is an English translation copyrighted to a commercial publisher, not the authentic French. It must never be quoted as the text of the Constitution, only for its amendment annotations, and every record resting on it here also quotes the French. Its file is dated 27 April 2022 and is not revised on any schedule.
We re-read it every 365 days. More about this source
- issuesConstitution de la République d'Haïti du 29 mars 1987, Le Moniteur No. 36 du 28 avril 1987
Ministère de l'Économie et des Finances d'Haïti - portail budget
About this source
The Haitian finance ministry's budget portal, which also hosts gazette issues. It serves the Constitution of 29 March 1987 as printed in Le Moniteur No. 36 of 28 April 1987, which is the only copy of the Constitution on a Haitian state host that we could reach.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: The constitutional text it serves is the 1987 original and does not carry the amendments made by the constitutional law of 9 May 2011, published 19 June 2012 - which abrogated five articles of Title II, including the prohibition on dual nationality and the five-year naturalisation rule. It must never be cited for the Constitution as it now stands. It is also a scan whose text layer is a machine recognition: it prints "distinbtion" for distinction, "H~i tüme" for Haïtiens and "candi tians" for conditions, and quotations from it carry those mistakes.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source