Haiti's insecurity is worsening as gangs seize more territory, UN rights expert says

A man rests inside a makeshift shelter built inside a public school that serves as a safe place for those displaced by gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -

A UN human rights expert warned on Friday that gang violence is spreading across Haiti as a UN-backed mission targeting criminals in the troubled Caribbean country remains underfunded and understaffed.

Haiti’s National Police still lack the “logistical and technical capacity” to fight gangs, which he said are encroaching on new territories as arms and ammunition flow into Haiti despite an international embargo, said William O’Neill, who visited Haiti this week.

“Humanitarian consequences are dramatic,” he said, and warned of galloping inflation, lack of basic goods and ”internally displaced people further increasing the vulnerability of the population, particularly children and women."

From April to end of June, at least 1,379 people were reported killed or injured in Haiti, and another 428 kidnapped, according to the United Nations.

Meanwhile, at least 700,000 people have been left homeless in recent years as gang violence persists in the capital of Port-au-Prince and beyond — more than half of them children, according to O’Neill.

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He said he spoke with Haiti’s police chief, Rameau Normil, who said they only have 5,000 officers for a country of more than 11 million people.

“It is impossible to provide security,” O’Neill said Normil has told him.

O’Neill noted that Haiti’s population “lack everything” and added that the authorities must be held accountable “to fight corruption and bad governance, which continues to plunge the country into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”

He cautioned that the current mission, led by 400-strong Kenyan police officers who arrived in Haiti in late June, has deployed less than a quarter of its pledged contingent.

“The equipment it has received is inadequate, and its resources are insufficient,” O'Neill said.

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Washington is mulling a UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti as one way to secure funding and staffing for the Kenya-led mission but the UN has pushed for more funding for the current mission.