UN says violence still rising in Haiti despite support mission

Members of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force arrive at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 18, 2024. [AFP]

Gang violence is surging in Haiti despite the deployment of a multinational force to prop up the struggling Caribbean country's police, a top United Nations official warned Tuesday.

"The security situation remains extremely fragile, with renewed peaks of acute violence," Maria Isabel Salvador, the UN secretary-general's special representative to Haiti, told the Security Council.

Her update comes just weeks after 115 civilians were killed and dozens injured in a gang attack in the central town of Port Sonde.

Salvador cited that "horrific and brutal" event, and mentioned a series of other attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince, as well as sexual violence of "unheard-of brutality" against women and girls.

And with over 700,000 internally displaced persons, a 22 per cent increase over the past three months, "the humanitarian situation is even more dire," she said.

"Haitians continue to suffer across the country as criminal gang activities escalate and expand beyond Port-au-Prince, spreading terror and fear, overwhelming the national security apparatus," she said.

She voiced concern about Haiti's political process, saying that "despite initial advances, which I reported in July, is now facing significant challenges, turning hope into deep concern."

The violence comes despite the presence of a UN-backed multinational mission to support the overwhelmed Haitian police, which began deploying during the summer.

In a recent report, UN chief Antonio Guterres noted that Haitian police, supported by the Kenya-led mission, "launched large-scale anti-gang operations" in several districts of the capital, "but still face challenges to sustain control over these areas due to the lack of personnel and other resources."

The mission, whose mandate was recently extended by one year, currently has some 430 police and military personnel, mainly Kenyans, and 600 additional Kenyans are expected soon, but the mission is still "cruelly" underfunded and undersupplied, complained Salvador.

The UN is particularly concerned about children, who represent half of the displaced population and who fall prey to gangs.

UNICEF chief Catherine Russell estimated that children make up 30 to 50 per cent of members of armed groups.

"They are used as informants, cooks, sex slaves, and forced to commit armed violence themselves," Russell said.

Guterres lamented that children affiliated with gangs can become victims of mob justice.

He reported a 10-year-old boy who was shot dead and his body burned by a vigilante group in the capital Port-au-Prince in July after he was accused of being a gang informant.