U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres visited Haiti on Tuesday as gang violence kept surging and a new international force prepared to deploy, another layer of armed authority arriving in a country already crushed by displacement, kidnapping and mass death. The U.N. said 2,300 people have been killed across Haiti so far this year, another 100 kidnapped and 1.5 million displaced. More than 1 in 10 people are homeless, and more than 300,000 people have been displaced by gang violence across Port-au-Prince, a record.
Who Pays for the Collapse
Among those abducted is James Boyard, cabinet director of the Defense Ministry, who was kidnapped last week in one of the few relatively safe areas of the capital. That detail says plenty about the reach of the violence and the weakness of the institutions that claim to govern it. Guterres’ one-day visit to Port-au-Prince came after more than 30 people were killed, injured or missing last weekend in Cité Soleil, a seaside slum, according to Cooperative for Peace and Development, a local human rights organization.
His convoy sped past a neighborhood once fully controlled by gangs that left in their wake decimated car dealerships, abandoned homes and dozens of concrete buildings pockmarked with bullet holes. A colorful bus known as a tap-tap rumbled past, its windshield peppered with bullet holes. Graffiti on a crumbling concrete wall read, “Down with Viv Ansanm, long live the police.” Viv Ansanm is a powerful gang federation that the U.S. government designated a foreign terrorist organization. It is estimated to control 70% of Port-au-Prince.
Guterres traveled past dozens of Haitians who fled the clashes and now live in makeshift homes under large pieces of canvas strung up with frayed rope. They are among the more than 300,000 people displaced by gang violence across Port-au-Prince. Among them are more than 18,000 people who fled the Cité Soleil slum in May, according to the U.N. International Organization for Migration. Gregoire Goodstein, IOM chief of mission in Haiti, said in a recent statement, “Haiti’s displacement crisis is entering an even more alarming phase.”
The New Armed Layer
Guterres’s first stop was the headquarters of the new gang-suppression force, which the U.N. Security Council approved in September. It replaces a U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police that aimed to help Haiti’s National Police fight gangs but remained underfunded and understaffed. So far, Jamaica, Chad, El Salvador and Guatemala have deployed troops that number less than 1,000 to form part of the growing force, which is due to start operations in the coming weeks. They are expected to work with Haiti’s National Police and its growing Armed Forces, with hundreds of Haitian men and a couple of women lining up on a dusty road hoping to interview to join.
That is the machinery being assembled: a new force approved by the U.N. Security Council, replacing another U.N.-backed mission that lacked money and personnel, now paired with Haiti’s National Police and Armed Forces. The people living through the violence are not the ones making those decisions, but they are the ones left to absorb the consequences.
Guterres then met behind closed doors with Prime Minister Alix Didier-Fils-Aimé, who is under pressure to hold elections in the country of nearly 12 million people that hasn’t had a president since Jovenel Moïse was killed at his private residence in July 2021. Fils-Aimé said, “We had a frank conversation about what’s happening in Haiti, the vision the government has for the future.” He said security is a priority so the transitional government can hold elections and “get back to republican rule.” Fils-Aimé added that Guterres can help with that effort by ensuring that the countries backing the gang-suppression force “live up to their engagement.”
Shelters, Not Solutions
Guterres also stopped by a makeshift shelter in a former school where dozens of the people living there crowded around him. Forced to flee their homes after gangs shot up their community and set fire to it, some had been living there for up to four years. “Solino is not ready,” 31-year-old Clifford Lala said of going back to his community. It was one of the last holdouts in Port-au-Prince until gangs overran it.
Guterres ducked into a hot classroom and met privately with a group of six women who decried the lack of privacy at the shelter, even to shower or use the bathroom, and said they worried about their young children. “It’s skin-to-skin and mouth-to-mouth,” said one woman. The shelter houses more than 1,200 people who sleep side by side, and only one meal a day is guaranteed. “We’re going to do our best,” Guterres told the women. Outside, a man began to slap the building’s metal siding and bellowed, “We want to go back home!” His voice grew louder and angrier as security walked into the room and whisked Guterres away.
Wendy Cejour, 26, told the AP that he and his family have been living at the school for a year and a half. “As long as we’re alive we have hope, but … things are difficult,” he said. “We ask ... to return to our neighborhood to live better, because we don’t have a life here.”
A day before Guterres’s visit, Human Rights Watch published a letter urging him to protect the population and target the root causes of violence and human rights abuses. Guterres said he was deeply impacted by what he saw. “What I saw will not leave me,” he said. “Each day is a fight to survive. ... The women and the children pay the highest price.”