Violence, Abuses and Hunger in Haiti

A Call to the International Community

O’Neill boarding UN helicopter for flight to the south. @OHCHR/Marion Mondain.

I have worked in Haiti under a military dictatorship, in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake and in other crisis periods.  Yet I have never seen greater violence or suffering than Haitians are currently experiencing.  The human rights violations and abuses are appalling.

I’ve visited Haiti three times in the past 18 months as the United Nations Designated Expert on Human Rights in Haiti.  With each visit, I witnessed a deterioration in the respect of the most basic human rights such as the right to life, physical integrity, right to food, education health care, clean water and to adequate housing. My UN Human Rights colleagues (OHCHR) based in Haiti have stopped counting the number of rapes and cases of sexual violence because any statistic would be misleadingly low.

Yet the level and intensity of violence has accelerated since my last visit in September 2024.  Every morning, I wake up to a barrage of messages, videos on WhatsApp and e-mails that convey a terrifying picture of daily life in Haiti:

• More than 5,000 people have been killed thus far in 2024 by gang-related violence, some involving self-defense groups, unorganized members of the population, as well as the involvement of some police officers.
• Thousands of people fleeing their homes from gang attacks
• Gangs have ransacked and destroyed dozens of hospitals and the few still open are overrun with gunshot victims, while Doctors without Borders has suspended many of their services in the capital after an attack on one of their ambulances and staff, allegedly by Haitian National Police and self-defense groups or armed members of the population
• Neighborhood vigilantes have killed dozens of suspected gang members in the last few weeks, filling social media with pictures of burned bodies in the streets, many of them teenagers.
• Gang leaders vowing revenge on whole neighborhoods because of these killings creating the risk of a spread of violence throughout the population.
• Port-au-Prince, a city of four million people, is held hostage, a vast open-air prison as gangs control all the main roads in and out of the capital and the bay to the west of the city.
• After hitting three U.S.-based planes in early November, the gangs once again succeeded in closing the international airport in Port-au-Prince and these airlines have suspended all flights to Haiti until at least March 12, 2025.
• The gangs have a stranglehold on the delivery of humanitarian assistance essential to keeping many Haitians alive; food and medical supplies are in short supply and have become extremely expensive due to the violence.
• A fuel shortage has rendered dysfunctional the few institutions still trying to function including health clinics, government offices, banks, markets and small businesses.
• Garbage is piled in any open space and fills drainage canals that flood every time it rains, thus presenting a high risk of infectious diseases spreading even more rapidly through a malnourished and terrified population with little access to health care.
• Many schools in the capital Port-au-Prince are closed; at least 50, 000 people, in addition to the 700,000 already forcibly displaced, are desperately searching for safety, food and water after a recent surge of attacks by gangs.

Site for internally displaced children in Port—au-Prince. @OHCHR/Marion Mondain.

My visits have shown that Haitian children especially suffer from this violence.  The statistics can be numbing:  UNICEF and the World Food Program report that 3.3 million children in Haiti urgently need humanitarian assistance including food, access to clean water, shelter and health care.  Roughly half the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs), which the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates to be at least 700,000, are children.

Many gang members are also children.  On my last visit I interviewed three young boys, aged 16 to 17 years old who had managed to escape one of the most notorious gangs in Haiti, the G-9.   I asked them why they had joined the gang.  They answered it was because they had no job prospects, the state offered them no support and they needed to help their parents and siblings.  They needed food and money.  When I asked if they had been afraid of joining, one responded: “When you are hungry, you don’t think about fear.”  They received a hot meal a day, about $10 every other week and a big gun which gave them some power and prestige in a neighborhood where both were in short supply.

A massacre over the weekend of December 6-8, 2024, crystalizes the nightmare dominating the lives of many Haitians and also in a perverse way relates to the health of a child.  The son of a notorious gang leader in the Wharf Jeremie section of the huge slum of Cite Soleil fell sick.  According to OHCHR, between December 6 and 11, mass killings occurred in Wharf Jérémie (Port-au-Prince) where the gang leader controlling the area ordered the execution of 207 people (134 men and 73 women). Most of the victims were elderly individuals accused of casting a spell, and of allegedly causing the gang leader’s child to fall ill. The remaining victims were either family members of the elders who attempted to flee the area or individuals suspected of leaking information to local media.  The gang killed dozens more people when they tried to escape the area.  They burned their victims’ bodies and threw them into the nearby bay.

The Wharf Jeremie area has been under gang control for more than three years and the state, including the police, has not entered this area for years.  This is not the first gang massacre either in Cite Soleil, yet no one has ever been arrested or prosecuted for these killings.  In 2018, more than 70 people were killed by gangs in La Saline, another Cite Soleil neighborhood.

I will never forget the faces of those former gang members. Statistics in Haiti can be paralyzing and overwhelming:  six years of negative economic growth, highest infant mortality rate in the Americas, lowest literacy rate in the region, cholera and tuberculosis ravaging poor neighborhoods where only a very few have regular access to clean water and adequate sanitation facilities.

But the faces stick with me. And not only those of the boys who are former gang members.  I met a little girl, probably about five years-old, when I visited a site for internally displaced persons where she has  been living for over a year after a gang raided her neighborhood, raping and killing and burning down houses.  She told me she had not eaten in two days.  She was thin yet her eyes burned bright and she said how much she wanted to go home.  The face of an older girl, about 12, also stays with me.  She has not gone to school for two years and desperately wants to continue her education. But she has no way to go to a school since there is none at the site and the nearby schools, even when open, are too expensive.

The faces of prisoners in Haiti’s cells also haunt me.  Gaunt, haggard, desperate faces staring through the bars of fetid and overcrowded cells. In Port-au-Prince, Cap Haïtien, Fort Liberté, Les Cayes, Jérémie:  every prison was the same— inhumane conditions, reports of prisoners dying of starvation due to inadequate nutrition, communicable diseases like TB and scabies rampant with little to no health care provided.

At least four out of every five detainees have never been convicted of any crime.  They are awaiting trial, some for years now and often for petty offenses.  I interviewed one teenager in a cell with adults who had been arrested for stealing a pair of shoes; he had been in the prison for three years without ever having a trial.  Even if he is guilty, he has spent much more time in prison than the sentence would require.

Inside prison for minors in Port-au-Prince. Up to 50 people are held in small cells. @OHCHR/Marion Mondain.

Haitians’ suffering must end, and they are asking for help which is not easy for a proud people that led the way in the fight to end slavery and recognize racial equality, the first country in world history to do so in 1804.  We simply cannot let them down.  But so far, we have.

In October 2023 the United Nations Security Council passed a Resolution authorizing the creation of a Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission of at least 2,500 international police officers to support the Haitian National Police (HNP) to re-establish security.  The Resolution also called for an arms embargo and for sanctions on anyone supporting the gangs financially or otherwise.

While controversial, given the past experience of international interventions in Haiti, by October 2023 the vast majority of Haitians were so desperate they welcomed the possibility of having international police come to help the HNP neutralize the gangs.  I heard frequently from Haitians from all walks of life a similar message: “We want our lives back.  We want to be able to breathe again.  We want to be able to go to the market, to the doctors, to church, to send our children to school without worrying that they would not come back alive.”  One added: “We want to be just poor again.”

Market women heading to work on a street in the capital. Photo credit: UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, @OHCHR/Marion Mondain.

Yet over one year later, only 400 Kenyan police are in Haiti.  A handful of officers from Jamaica, the Bahamas and Belize are also there.  They lack helicopters, drones, night-vision goggles and the armored vehicles necessary to operate in dense urban neighborhoods under gang control. For example, the tires on the vehicles were easily punctured by simple bullets shot by the gangs who disabled a vehicle worth over half a million dollars. It took weeks to replace the tires with dense rubber tires that are bullet-resistant.

The HNP is severely under-staffed and under-resourced also, with about 9,000 officers on a good day for the entire country of 11 million people. This is well under one-half the recommended ratio for police to population.

So, it is no wonder that the gangs continue to dominate the terrain, controlling about 85% of the capital and the surrounding area.  My visit to the southern peninsula of Haiti in September showed how one gang has made the lives of three million people living there, far from this gang’s territory, more precarious and expensive: the gang controls the main roads leading to the region from the capital.  One thousand gang members, half of them teenagers, hold these three million people hostage because there is no way for people or goods to move safely by land, sea or air.

The international community must enhance its efforts and act quickly to prevent gangs from completely taking over the capital. Gang violence must not prevail over the institutions of the state. The UN and especially the Security Council must support the MSS mission and provide it what it needs to succeed. While the initial deployment of the first contingents of the MSS mission authorized by the U.N. Security Council and led by Kenya finally arrived in June and July 2024, the MSS needs its full authorized strength of 2,500 officers equipped with helicopters, night vision googles, drones and effective armored vehicles.

In addition, the UN sanctions regime and embargo on weapons need to be fully implemented. This includes taking urgent and stricter measures to prevent the direct or indirect illicit shipment of arms to Haiti.  According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, most of these weapons and ammunition come directly from the United States or indirectly through the Dominican Republic or Jamaica.  Not a single gun or bullet is manufactured in Haiti.

View of Morne-l’Hopital in Port-au-Prince. Unregulated housing covers a mountain formerly a forest. @OHCHR/Marion Mondain.

The UN Security Council needs to continue to update the list of individuals and entities subject to the Council’s sanctions regime on Haiti.  The UN Sanctions Committee Panel of Experts has identified people engaging in, directly or indirectly, supporting the gangs. The Security Council needs to publish the names of these individuals and subject them to universal sanctions. An arms embargo and sanctions would strangle gangs’ access to firepower and financing.  This is not complicated but takes political will.

While these are necessary measures, they are not sufficient. If Haiti is to break the cycle of violence Haitian institutions must deliver security and services.  Corruption and impunity must end.  In addition to bolstering the HNP, a profound reform of the judicial and penitentiary system is necessary.

Haiti’s poverty and inequality provide fertile ground for gangs to recruit youth.  Laennec Hurbon, an eminent Haitian anthropologist, has written about “La vie sans”:  a life without education, food, shelter, work, clean water, toilets, health care, hope.  Unless Haiti’s youth have a future, gangs will spring up again.  The government and the international community must have a laser focus on providing job training and economic opportunities for youth and basic services to all.

Haitians have a wonderful tradition dating from slavery called “Kombit” where neighbors gather to pool their resources and unite to help someone in need. This spirit remains and all of us need to act in one huge Kombit to help Haiti in its hours of need.

William O’Neill is the United Nations Designated Expert on Human Rights in Haiti. He has created and delivered courses on human rights, rule of law and peacekeeping for several universities and peacekeeping training centers, and has taught senior military, police and humanitarian officials from dozens of countries. He holds a J.D. degree from New York University.