Haiti is experiencing a humanitarian crisis as gang violence escalates, displacing more than 60,000 individuals in a matter of weeks and bringing the country closer to collapse, the United Nations has cautioned.
Special Representative of UN María Isabel Salvador said the UN Security Council Haiti is “approaching a point of no return.” Haiti faced around 1,000 casualties and almost 400 wounds in February and March. Aid efforts are struggling due to blocked roads, cancelled flights, and severe funding shortages that restrict lifesaving support.
The current crisis rests at the core of a long-standing pattern of instability dating back centuries, calamitously aggravated by the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. His assassination created a destabilizing void in power and precipitated an epidemic of political upheaval, with a free run for gangs to increase their presence.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a warning recently that all but a fraction of Port-au-Prince are under the sway of armed groups, with fighting spreading into normally secure areas. Schools, hospitals, and vital infrastructure have been leveled to the ground, and the healthcare infrastructure continues to weaken. Vulnerable members of society, mainly women and children, are victims of mass atrocities, including rape, forced recruitment, and kidnapping. HRW criticized the international community for its failure to act, with a warning that civilians were at “grave riské because only 10 percent of the capital is in government hands.”.
Haiti’s transitional administration created in 2024 has laboured to control the violence. A state of emergency was reported amid growing general outrage and road demonstrations. Self-defense companieshave appeared, but are incapable of resisting well-armed gangs.
It was earlier this month that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) urged calm. It stressed the significance of the transitional council in fixing constitutional governance. The UN has also reaffirmed its obligation under Resolution 2699. It was completed the MSS to support Haiti’s dominated police force.
The UN cautioned that only global cooperation, through immediate security aid and humanitarian support, can avert complete societal breakdown.
The United nations has already blamed the recent upsurge in gang violence in Haiti as naming the growth in displacement “the worst on record in recent times,” more than triple the number reported last year. Head of the UN migration agency (IOM) in Haiti, Grégoire Goodstein, “[t]he scale of the crisis is unprecedented.” He also said that “[f]amilies are being uprooted time and time again, forced to leave everything behind.”
