Over 1.5 million people, more than one in ten of Haiti's population, are homeless, and 300,000 have been displaced by gang violence across Port-au-Prince, a record, as U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres visited the country. The U.N. said 2,300 people have been killed across Haiti so far this year, and another 100 kidnapped. Guterres’ visit coincided with the final preparations for a new international gang-suppression force, approved by the U.N. Security Council in September, to deploy to the nation.
Among the displaced 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, stated that “Haiti’s displacement crisis is entering an even more alarming phase.” Many, like 31-year-old Clifford Lala, who stated “Solino is not ready,” remain unable to return to communities overrun by gangs.
Guterres visited a makeshift shelter in a former school housing over 1,200 people, where residents sleep side by side and are guaranteed only one meal a day. Some have lived in these conditions for up to four years, with 26-year-old Wendy Cejour reporting his family has been there for a year and a half. Women in the shelter decried the lack of privacy, even for basic hygiene, and expressed worries about their young children, describing the living situation as “skin-to-skin and mouth-to-mouth.”
The State's Role in Crisis Management
Prime Minister Alix Didier-Fils-Aimé, who met behind closed doors with Guterres, stated that security is a priority for the transitional government to hold elections and “get back to republican rule.” This focus on formal political processes comes in the fifth year since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse at his private residence in July 2021, a period marked by a profound power vacuum and the collapse of state functions.
The new international force, composed of troops from Jamaica, Chad, El Salvador, and Guatemala, numbers less than 1,000 and is due to start operations in the coming weeks. It replaces a previous U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police that remained underfunded and understaffed, failing to stabilize the situation. This new deployment, framed as a gang-suppression effort, aims to work with Haiti’s National Police and its growing Armed Forces, with hundreds of Haitian men and a couple of women lining up to interview to join.
The U.S. government has designated Viv Ansanm, a powerful gang federation estimated to control 70% of Port-au-Prince, as a foreign terrorist organization. This designation provides a framework for international intervention, even as the underlying conditions that allow such groups to flourish remain unaddressed.
Capital's Interests and Liberal Promises
During his visit, Guterres told the women in the shelter, “We’re going to do our best,” and later stated he was “deeply impacted” by what he saw, adding, “Each day is a fight to survive. ... The women and the children pay the highest price.” These statements offer symbolic reassurance without outlining concrete structural changes to address the systemic causes of displacement and violence.
A day before Guterres’s visit, Human Rights Watch urged him to protect the population and target the root causes of violence and human rights abuses. The organization's call highlights the gap between the stated goals of humanitarian aid and the actual deployment of a military force focused on suppressing symptoms rather than transforming the conditions that produce them.
Guterres’s convoy passed through neighborhoods once fully controlled by gangs, leaving behind decimated car dealerships, abandoned homes, and concrete buildings pockmarked with bullet holes. This destruction of existing capital and the widespread displacement of the workforce create a landscape ripe for future exploitation, where the re-establishment of “order” by an imperial garrison can pave the way for new forms of capital accumulation.
As Guterres was whisked away from the shelter, a man began to slap the building’s metal siding and bellowed, “We want to go back home!” His voice, growing louder and angrier, underscored the direct demand of the dispossessed to reclaim their communities and livelihoods, a demand that stands in stark contrast to the top-down security solutions offered by international bodies and the transitional government.