Gang violence continues to grip Haiti, as it has since the assassination of President Juvenal Moïse in July 2021. Moves to send a Kenya-led international policing contingent have stalled – but many Haitians have well-founded doubts that such an intervention could help.

Gangs run amok

It’s now known that a group of mostly Colombian mercenaries carried out the assassination of Moïse, and a US-Haitian citizen has just been found guilty of being part of the plot, but it still isn’t known who ultimately ordered the hit. Among those accused of complicity is Moïse’s acting replacement, Ariel Henry, who many feel lacks legitimacy. Henry has formal political power but no mandate. The terms of all elected government officials have expired. Criminal gangs, historically cultivated by politicians, have thrived in the power vacuum.

It’s estimated that gangs now control around half of Haiti. The capital, Port-au-Prince, is home to over 150 criminal groups, ground zero in a bloody battle for pre-eminence between rival gangs. The consequences are deadly. The United Nations (UN) Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) estimates that so far this year around 2,500 people have been killed, 970 kidnapped and 10,000 forced to leave their homes, although the real figures may be higher, since many crimes go unreported. In the third quarter of 2023 alone, 2,161 people were killed, kidnapped or injured, a 16 per cent increase on the previous quarter. The numbers included 111 killings, while kidnappings are on the rise, despite occasional announcements that gangs are calling a truce.

Anyone can be caught in the crossfire, but peace activists and journalists are being targeted. Gangs are using systematic sexual violence as a means of controlling communities through fear. They’re also skilled at extracting resources, including through kidnapping for ransom and by controlling key roads and hijacking goods.

Webs of corruption link gangs with judges and police officers, leading to widespread impunity. The criminal justice system is weak and police ill-equipped. As a result, there are no recent reported prosecutions or convictions for gang violence. Haiti has no army: it was disbanded in 1995 after multiple coup attempts. It was in a show of impotence that in January, police officers enraged at killings among their ranks went on a violent protest and tried to force their way into Henry’s official residence.

Those who can flee are doing so, facing hostility and danger. They’re not welcome in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti and is building a border wall. Forced further afield, people are flying to South America and attempting to find their way through the dangerous Darién Gap that connects Colombia and Panama to get to the USA, or making hazardous crossings across the Caribbean Sea. This is costing lives: last year at least 17 Haitians died when their boat capsized off the coast of the Bahamas. The Dominican Republic and the USA, along with other countries, are forcibly returning Haitian people. In the first half of 2023 alone, more than 115,000 were sent back against their will.

Another response to the violence has been the formation of public vigilante groups, known as the Bwa Kale movement, to carry out lynchings of suspected gang members. Vigilante groups have killed around 240 people, some of them with no connection to gangs.

The violence has fuelled a dire humanitarian situation in a country where far more than half of people live below the poverty line. There are shortages of essentials including food and water, and the situation was further worsened when floods and an earthquake struck in June. Cholera has returned and many children are malnourished. Gang violence has now spread to key agricultural areas, displacing thousands and endangering access to staple foods such as rice.

The insecurity situation limits access by international humanitarian organisations, which are also struggling with a lack of funding. The UN estimates that 5.2 million people need help, but in July, the World Food Programme was forced to cut the number of people receiving food support by around 100,000.

The latest plan

In such dire circumstances, international help is needed, but of what kind and to what end remains a matter of fierce dispute.

Haiti’s present-day impoverishment and insecurity is no accident. In 1804, enslaved Black people threw off their chains and won independence, but the fledgling republic’s reward was a punitive response from western states that robbed it of vital resources. Its history since has been one of continued foreign interference, particularly by the US government, which propped up bloodthirsty and corrupt dictators rather than risk the country becoming another Cuba. More recently, interventions by the USA and other foreign powers have continued to be self-serving, and at best have brought negative consequences.

UN forces have been no saviours either. A peacekeeping mission from 2004 to 2017 was to blame for a wave of sexual abuse and a cholera outbreak – a disease the mission introduced to Haiti – which the UN stopped short of accepting legal responsibility for. International civil society groups, including those that came in following the devastating 2010 earthquake, are criticised for taking a high-handed approach and have also been accused of sexual abuse.

The latest plan, in a UN Security Council resolution adopted in October, is to send in a security support mission – an international police force – to try to strengthen law enforcement capacity. The US government had been pushing this idea for some time but, presumably mindful of its dismal history in Haiti, was looking for another country to front it.

The government of Kenya offered, promising to deploy a thousand police officers, along with a smaller contingent from several Caribbean countries, but Kenyan courts quickly stepped in and blocked the move following an opposition lawsuit, which argued that the plan was illegal on the grounds that the police can only be deployed on Kenyan territory. In November, Kenya’s parliament voted in favour of a government request to send forces, but the court extended its ban. A further court hearing is due in January 2024, leaving the plan currently at an impasse: if the Kenyan government wants to promote the rule of law elsewhere, it surely has to respect it at home.

The proposal has prompted concern from Haitian civil society, not least because Kenya’s police force has a systemic record of violence. Protests against the high cost of living during 2023 were just the latest to be repressed with excessive and lethal force. The danger is that police will be deployed who don’t speak local languages or understand the context, and when they feel threatened they’ll resort to violence. The pledge by a prominent gang leader to fight any foreign force if it commits abuses, along with his call to overthrow Henry, points to the potential for further escalation.

Need for civil society

Beyond this, Haitian civil society groups are asking what the long-term plan is, and whether they’ll be involved. They wonder how long the unelected politicians presiding over disaster intend to cling to office, and call for a broad-based transitional government as an early step out of the crisis. They don’t want an international response that props up a corrupt elite for even longer.

Haitian civil society is a crucial source of resilience, but its role has long been neglected by both the domestic government and foreign states, international organisations and international civil society groups. It must now be put at the centre. At the very least, there’s a need for Haitian civil society to be enabled to play a strong accountability role over any new security initiative, including the use of foreign police, and for its demands for a more considered response beyond this sticking-plaster approach to be heard.

A multifaceted crisis needs a multipronged response, which must include humanitarian aid, economic support and real justice so human rights abusers are held to account, victims get redress and people can live in safety. Haiti’s security crisis can’t be addressed unless its governance crisis is as well.