Haiti – 90% of Capital Controlled by Violent Gangs, says UN
Since January, the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), recorded over 4,000 individuals deliberately killed – a 24 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2024.
“The capital city was for all intents and purposes paralysed by gangs and isolated due to the ongoing suspension of international commercial flights into the international airport,” Miroslav Jenča, Assistant Secretary-General for the Americas at the department of political affairs (DPPA), told ambassadors in the Security Council on Wednesday.
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Having visited the country recently, he warned that, gangs have only “strengthened their foothold”, which now affects all communes of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and beyond, “pushing the situation closer to the brink.”
He called on the international community to act decisively and urgently or the “total collapse of state presence in the capital could become a very real scenario”.
Ghada Fathi Waly, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), echoed that warning.
“As gang control expands, the state’s capacity to govern is rapidly shrinking, with social, economic and security implications,” she told ambassadors, briefing remotely from Vienna.
“This erosion of state legitimacy has cascading effects,” she said, with legal commerce becoming paralysed as gangs control major trade routes, such conditions worsening “already dire levels of food insecurity and humanitarian need,” she added.
