Haiti death toll hits nearly 5,000 in nine months as gang violence spreads

Al Jazeera

2 days ago

The United Nations has appealed to the international community to bolster its support for Haiti after a report revealed that gang violence has claimed 4,864 lives from October to June.
More than 20 percent of those deaths unfolded in the departments of Centre and Artibonite, indicating that intense violence is spilling into the areas surrounding the capital, Port-au-Prince.
In a report released on Friday, the UN explained that the growing presence of gangs like Gran Grif in those areas appears to be part of a broader strategy to control key routes connecting the capital to Haiti's north and its border with the Dominican Republic.
'This expansion of gang territorial control poses a major risk of spreading violence and increasing transnational trafficking in arms and people,' the report said.
Among its recommendations was for the international community to better police the sale of firearms to Haiti and to continue to offer support for a Kenya-led security mission aimed at strengthening Haiti's local law enforcement.
In a statement, Ulrika Richardson, the UN's resident coordinator in Haiti, explained that propping up the country's beleaguered police force is key to restoring security.
'Human rights abuses outside Port-au-Prince are intensifying in areas of the country where the presence of the State is extremely limited,' she said.
'The international community must strengthen its support to the authorities, who bear the primary responsibility for protecting the Haitian population.'
The report indicates that the violence in the regions surrounding Port-au-Prince took a turn for the worse in October, when a massacre was carried out in the town of Pont Sonde in the Artibonite department.
The Gran Grif gang had set up a checkpoint at a crossroads there, but local vigilante groups were encouraging residents to bypass it, according to the UN.
In an apparent act of retaliation, the gang launched an attack on Pont Sonde. The UN describes gang members as firing 'indiscriminately at houses' along the road to the checkpoint, killing at least 100 people and wounding 16. They also set 45 houses and 34 vehicles on fire.
The chaos forced more than 6,270 people to flee Pont Sonde for their safety, contributing to an already dire crisis of internal displacement.
The UN notes that, as of June, more than 92,300 people were displaced from the Artibonite department, and 147,000 from Centre — a 118-percent increase over that department's statistics from December.
Overall, nearly 1.3 million people have been displaced throughout the country.
The massacre at Pont Sondé prompted a backlash, with security forces briefly surging to the area. But that presence was not sustained, and Gran Grif has begun to reassert its control in recent months.
Meanwhile, the report documents a wave of reprisal killings, as vigilante groups answered the gang's actions with violence of their own.
Around December 11, for instance, the UN noted that the gangs killed more than 70 people near the town of Petite-Riviere de l'Artibonite, and vigilante groups killed 67 people, many of them assumed to be relatives or romantic partners of local gang members.
Police units are also accused of committing 17 extrajudicial killings in that wave of violence, as they targeted suspected gang collaborators. The UN reports that new massacres have unfolded in the months since.
In the Centre department, a border region where gangs operate trafficking networks, similar acts of retaliation have been reported as the gangs and vigilante groups clash for control of the roads.
One instance the UN chronicles from March involved the police interception of a minibus driving from the city of Gonaives to Port-au-Prince. Officers allegedly found three firearms and 10,488 cartridges inside the bus, a fact which sparked concern and uproar among residents nearby.
'Enraged, members of the local population who witnessed the scene lynched to death, using stones, sticks, and machetes, two individuals: the driver and another man present in the vehicle,' the report said.
Haiti has been grappling with an intense period of gang violence since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021. Criminal networks have used the resulting power vacuum to expand their presence and power, seizing control of as much as 90 percent of the capital.
A transitional government council, meanwhile, has struggled to re-establish order amid controversies, tensions and leadership turnover. The council, however, has said it plans to hold its first presidential election in nearly a decade in 2026.
Meanwhile, Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, warned that civilians will continue to suffer as the cycle of violence continues.
'Caught in the middle of this unending horror story are the Haitian people, who are at the mercy of horrific violence by gangs and exposed to human rights violations from the security forces and abuses by the so-called 'self-defence' groups,' he said.