The appeal from Haiti’s Prime Minister Garry Conille couldn’t have been starker.

“If we fail, it will not only be Haiti that will sink, but the entire region that will bear the scars,” he told the United Nations Economic and Social Council Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haiti in New York this week.

Prime Minister Conille also urged the international community to act now and keep its commitments to Haiti, because “the Haitian crisis, in its security, humanitarian, social, economic, and political components, has been largely underestimated”.

We commend the governments of Kenya, Jamaica, and Belize who have currently deployed security personnel to assist the under-resourced Haitian National Police in restoring law and order under the umbrella of the UN.

The other countries that have pledged security forces need to make good on those promises quickly.

Restoring order is not an easy task, and success will not be achieved overnight, because the reports we are getting out of Haiti are that the country is still being ravaged by violence as heavily armed gangs attack police stations, loot hospitals, occupy courthouses, and destroy other critical installations.

“These are deliberate efforts to erode State authority, sow chaos, and make it easier to prey on vulnerable communities,” UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed told the advisory group on Monday.

Between January and the end of August alone, the UN documented more than 3,400 people killed, 1,600 others injured in gang violence, and more than 1,000 people kidnapped by gangsters.

As if that were not enough, the UN is reporting human rights abuses, including rape, forced recruitment, and exploitation.

The UN also tells us that more than 578,000 people — over half of them children — are internally displaced; nearly half of the population are food insecure and lack access to clean drinking water.

“The proliferation of armed gangs in the capital has led to an alarming rise in sexual and gender-based violence, mainly against women and girls. In some areas health service providers have reported receiving 40 rape victims a day,” Mr Mohammed told the ad hoc advisory group.

He also reported that many children are victims of crossfire, exploitation, and trafficking; and forced to join gangs to carry out attacks.

For those reasons, the multinational security support mission is a welcome development that the international community must use as a foundation to further help Haiti rebuild its institutions, restore health care, and reopen the avenues to educational opportunities to set the country on a path towards the holding of free and fair elections.

Indeed, as Mr Mohammed so correctly stated: “Breaking the cycle of violence requires both political solutions and security measures — in parallel.”

We join former Jamaican Prime Minister and Caribbean elder statesman Mr P J Patterson who, in March this year in an interview with this newspaper, reminded Caricom that Haiti is a member of the regional bloc and as such “Caricom has to demonstrate the will and the determination to help the most populous state in the region to achieve a level of democratic stability and economic development.”

Haiti desperately needs some good news, after the travesty in Springfield, Ohio, where ridiculous lies have been spread that their migrants are eating pets.