Haiti needs outside help to fight gangs
UNITED NATIONS: Haiti now needs between 4,000 and 5,000 international police officers to help tackle gang violence targeting key individuals and hospitals, schools, banks and other critical institutions, a UN rights expert for the Caribbean nation said Thursday.
Last July, William O’Neill said Haiti needed between 1,000 and 2,000 international policemen trained to deal with gangs.
Today, he said the situation is much worse so more are needed to help the Haitian National Police regain control of security and curb human rights abuses.
O’Neill spoke at a news conference launching a UN Human Rights Office report he helped produce which called for immediate action to tackle the “cataclysmic” situation in Haiti where corruption, impunity and poor governance compounded by increasing gang violence have eroded the rule of law and brought state institutions “close to collapse.”
The report, covering the five-month period ending in February, said gangs continue to recruit and abuse boys and girls, with some children being killed for trying to escape.
Gangs also continue to use sexual violence “to brutalize, punish and control people,” the report said, citing women raped during gang attacks in neighborhoods, “in many cases after seeing their husbands killed in front of them.”
In 2023, the number of people killed and injured as a result of gang violence increased significantly — with 4,451 killed and 1,668 injured, the report said.
Up to March 22 this year, the numbers skyrocketed to 1,554 killed and 826 injured.
As a result of the escalating gang violence, so-called “self-defense brigades” have taken justice into their own hands, the report said, and “at least 528 cases of lynching were reported in 2023 and a further 59 in 2024.”
The human rights report reiterated the need for urgent deployment of a multinational security mission to help Haiti’s police stop the violence and restore the rule of law.
It urged tighter national and international controls to stem the trafficking of weapons and ammunition to gangs and others — much of it from the United States.
O’Neill, who was appointed by the Geneva-based UN human rights chief, said the “alarming” began in the last four or five weeks — with 18 attacks on hospitals documented, attacks on schools including one set on fire three days ago, and one of Haiti’s elite academic institutions set ablaze on Wednesday night.
In addition, he said, gangs have made two attempts to take control of the National Palace, and they are targeting human rights defenders, journalists and people they see as threats to their continuing control of territory.
Another new element documented by the UN human rights team in Haiti, O’Neill said, is the use of children as messengers, lookouts, sex slaves, and cooks.
The number of people fleeing their homes has increased from 50,000 last July according to the UN International Organization for Migration to at least 362,000.