PORT-AU-PRINCE – A new international force is preparing to deploy to Haiti, approved by the U.N. Security Council in September, as 1.5 million people have been displaced across the nation so far this year. This mass displacement means more than 1 in 10 people are now homeless, with over 300,000 driven from their homes in Port-au-Prince alone, marking a record for the capital. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres visited Haiti on Tuesday, observing the widespread cultural dispossession as the international community prepares its latest intervention.
The U.N. reported that 2,300 people have been killed across Haiti this year, with another 100 kidnapped. Among those abducted is James Boyard, cabinet director of the Defense Ministry, who was seized last week from one of the capital's few remaining relatively safe areas.
Guterres’ convoy sped past neighborhoods once fully controlled by gangs, leaving behind decimated car dealerships, abandoned homes, and concrete buildings pockmarked with bullet holes. A powerful gang federation, Viv Ansanm, which the U.S. government designated a foreign terrorist organization, is estimated to control 70% of Port-au-Prince.
Gregoire Goodstein, IOM chief of mission in Haiti, stated recently that “Haiti’s displacement crisis is entering an even more alarming phase.” This follows more than 18,000 people fleeing the Cité Soleil slum in May, according to the U.N. International Organization for Migration.
The Cost to the People
During his visit, Guterres stopped at a makeshift shelter in a former school, where dozens of displaced people crowded around him. Some had been living there for up to four years, forced to flee their homes after gangs shot up their communities and set them on fire.
Inside a hot classroom, Guterres met privately with a group of six women who decried the severe lack of privacy at the shelter, extending even to showering and using the bathroom. One woman described the conditions as “skin-to-skin and mouth-to-mouth,” expressing worries about their young children.
The shelter houses more than 1,200 people who sleep side by side, with only one meal a day guaranteed. Clifford Lala, 31, stated that his community, Solino, which was one of the last holdouts in Port-au-Prince until gangs overran it, “is not ready” for residents to return.
Outside the shelter, 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 personnel whisked Guterres away. Wendy Cejour, 26, who has lived at the school for a year and a half with his family, told the AP, “As long as we’re alive we have hope, but … things are difficult. We ask ... to return to our neighborhood to live better, because we don’t have a life here.”
External Control Deepens
Guterres’ first stop was the headquarters of the new gang-suppression force, which the U.N. Security Council approved in September. This force replaces a previous U.N.-backed mission, led by Kenyan police, which remained underfunded and understaffed in its aim to help Haiti’s National Police fight gangs.
Jamaica, Chad, El Salvador, and Guatemala have deployed troops, numbering less than 1,000, to form part of this growing international force. These foreign troops are due to start operations in the coming weeks and are expected to work with Haiti’s National Police and its growing Armed Forces.
Guterres then met behind closed doors with Prime Minister Alix Didier-Fils-Aimé, who is under pressure to hold elections in a country that has not had a president since Jovenel Moïse was killed in his private residence in July 2021, the fifth year since the assassination. Fils-Aimé stated they had a “frank conversation about what’s happening in Haiti, the vision the government has for the future,” prioritizing security for the transitional government to hold elections and “get back to republican rule.”
Prime Minister Fils-Aimé added that Guterres could assist in this effort by ensuring that the countries backing the gang-suppression force “live up to their engagement,” highlighting the transitional government's reliance on external globalist mechanisms.
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 stated he was deeply impacted by what he saw, saying, “What I saw will not leave me. Each day is a fight to survive. ... The women and the children pay the highest price.”