Police patrol near the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on March 19, 2025. More than 60,000 people have been displaced in one month in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince which is "under siege" from a resurgence in gang violence ravaging the country, United Nations migration agency IOM said on March 18, 2025. (Photo by Clarens SIFFROY / AFP)
March 30, 2025
The urgency of the crisis in Haiti
It pains our heart each time we read of the latest developments in our sister Caribbean nation Haiti.
Last Friday, Mr Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in his annual report on the situation in Haiti, told the UN Human Rights Council that the situation was growing worse as armed gangs — which are now more coordinated — have gained ground in the capital Port-au-Prince and its outskirts, are capturing key territory and infrastructure, and are increasingly turning their violence on the population.
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“Gangs are killing ordinary people, brutally punishing those who defy their rules or are suspected of collaborating with the police or self-defence groups,” Mr Turk reported.
His report also documented more than 700 kidnappings, all carried out with guns. Additionally, it told us that sexual violence was increasingly being used by gangs to assert dominance.
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“Several victims were shot dead after being raped,” Mr Turk said, and “services for survivors remain extremely scarce.”
Earlier this month, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that more than 60,000 people have been displaced in one month in Port-au-Prince due to a resurgence in gang violence.
The IOM was also reported as saying that two separate displacement waves occurred within a month: More than 42,500 people sought refuge from February 14 to March 5, and 23,500 were displaced March 11-17.
These developments are alarming, to say the least, and as we have repeatedly argued, people should not be made to live like this — subjected to what the IOM chief Mr Gregoire Goodstein aptly labelled a “relentless cycle of violence”.
The urgency of the crisis has been underlined by former Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who told a World Bank-sponsored webinar on Haiti last week that the country is “perilously close” to being a failed State.
Mr Golding, being a member of the three-member Caricom Eminent Persons Group (EPG) with former prime ministers Dr Kenny Anthony of St Lucia and Perry Christie of The Bahamas, is in a position to offer that analysis, given that the EPG has been having talks with the Haitians for well over a year.
But, as Mr Golding said at the webinar, “I can’t tell you I am happy and satisfied with the progress.”
According to Mr Golding, political differences have continued to disrupt the process and interfere with the programme that had been hammered out at a meeting in Jamaica in March last year.
Although he said the programme arrived at in that meeting is “the best arrangement that we think can work”, Mr Golding correctly stated that the solution to the problem has to be led and managed by the Haitian people.
“Haiti has suffered enough from external interference and, therefore, we have to be very respectful of its sovereignty, bearing in mind it is the country which blazed the trail for independence of black countries,” Mr Golding reminded his audience, adding: “We provide support, but we do not instruct, we do not dictate.”
We couldn’t have said it any better, for we are convinced that the remedy to this tragedy rests in the desire of the Haitian people.
At the same time, we join Mr Golding’s call for the international community to do more. Also, we agree with Mr William O’Neill, the UN’s human rights expert on Haiti, that if the international community moves to stop the flow of weapons and ammunition into Haiti, “the gangs could not survive very long without them”.
But, as Mr O’Neill emphasised, “The time for action is now. If we wait much longer, there could be precious little left of Haiti to save.”
