At least 81 people were reported kidnapped in Haiti between April and June 2026, a 42% increase from the first quarter, according to U.N. statistics. Gangs are increasingly targeting prominent people and carrying out mass abductions as the country prepares for its first general elections in more than a decade.
Who Is Being Taken
James Boyard, police inspector general and cabinet director of Haiti’s Defense Ministry, was kidnapped in broad daylight in June. Gangs took him from Bourdon, a Port-au-Prince neighborhood considered relatively safe, and haven’t released him. Local media also reported the kidnappings of well-known attorney Caleb Jean-Baptiste and Stéphanie Paultre, director general of Haiti’s National Office for Educational Partnerships.
Most families never go public. Most Haitians don’t report a loved one’s abduction because they fear reprisals, higher ransoms or disrupting negotiations with kidnappers. That makes Haitian attorney Dorime Boulos’s mid-September press conference rare. He announced a fundraiser to help free Jean-Baptiste. “We don’t have the amount they’re asking for,” he said, declining to reveal the ransom demanded. He also called for dialogue. “We are condemned to live here. We don’t have another society or spare country.”
The violence is spreading beyond the capital’s edges. This summer, gangs attacked Kenscoff, a farming community near Port-au-Prince that had once been peaceful. They killed at least 164 people and kidnapped more than 70 others. Gangs later released six children and seven women, but the rest remained captive, “creating a very concerning precedent,” said Romain Le Cour, head of the Haiti Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
In the waning days of September, gangs in the central town of Petite-Rivière held hundreds of civilians hostage for two days. They retaliated after police arrested a couple of gang members. At least eight people were killed and 10 others injured, said Bertide Horace, spokesperson for the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite. “People were trying to escape, and they shot them for no reason,” she told The Associated Press. “The state needs to take more action.”
A Pattern Years in the Making
Mass kidnappings began around 2020, when authorities reported 234 cases, a 200% increase from the 78 abductions reported in 2019, according to the U.N. The abduction and killing of high school student Évelyne Sincère that year sparked large protests demanding government action. Reported cases hit 655 in 2021, a 180% increase. A February 2022 U.N. report said, “No social group was spared; among the victims were laborers, traders, religious leaders, professors, medical doctors, journalists, human rights defenders and foreign citizens.”
The numbers kept climbing. Reported kidnappings rose to 1,359 in 2022 and 2,490 in 2023, an 83% increase. At least 2,058 people were reported kidnapped in 2024, when gangs at war with each other joined forces to target key government infrastructure. In 2025, reported cases fell nearly 40% to 1,268, but they’re rising again. The real figure is believed to be much higher because so many abductions go unreported.
Le Cour said a new wave has hit in the past six to eight months. Criminal groups use official or cloned police uniforms, vehicles and license plates, he said, and he pointed to allegations that some law enforcement agents were involved. “It takes intelligence to kidnap high-level targets, and that intelligence usually comes from collusion,” he said. Every major wave, he added, has followed a political rupture, including the fall of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and the assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
The Official Response
Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé told a meeting during the recent U.N. General Assembly that restoring security was a top priority. He said 4,000 new police officers were being trained in 2026 and another 1,500 soldiers had completed training, with 15,000 new soldiers planned over the next three years. In late September, Haiti’s National Police said nearly a dozen officers had been trained to negotiate with kidnappers. “We are strengthening our national forces to meet our security challenges,” Fils-Aimé said. “Given the scale of the challenges, the support of our international partners for security remains essential.”
That support just got extended. On Tuesday, September 29, 2026, a U.N. Security Council meeting renewed the mandate of a U.N.-backed gang suppression force. The force has almost 1,600 personnel, and its size will likely double soon, said Daniela Kroslak, assistant secretary-general and head of mission of the U.N. Support Office in Haiti. “Over the next three months, this will all pick up quite considerably,” she told the AP. “We all hope, of course, that this formula the international community has put together to face the crisis in Haiti will yield the result that the Haitian people want and need and deserve.”
Why This Matters: Haiti has had no president since Moïse was killed in July 2021, and the vote meant to restore elected government is arriving amid abductions in neighborhoods once considered safe. Families without money to pay ransoms are turning to fundraisers, and many stay silent out of fear. Le Cour’s warning that “the police cannot protect the population, and the state itself is vulnerable” frames the stakes for ordinary Haitians. Training thousands of officers and soldiers, and doubling a U.N.-backed force, are public-sector answers. From this perspective, the test is whether those institutions can protect people in Kenscoff, Petite-Rivière and beyond, not just officials in the capital.