United Nations secretary general António Guterres visited Haiti on Tuesday as the Caribbean nation continued to grapple with escalating gang violence and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
His one-day trip to Port-au-Prince underscored the dire situation facing the nation where more than one in 10 people remained homeless.
According to new figures released by the UN, 2,300 people have been killed across Haiti this year alone, with a further 100 kidnapped. Among those abducted last week was James Boyard, the cabinet director of the defense ministry, seized from one of the capital’s few relatively safe areas.
The violence has displaced more than 1.5 million people, with a record 300,000 now displaced within Port-au-Prince.
Mr Guterres’s visit followed a weekend of intense violence in Cité Soleil, a seaside slum, where some 30 people were killed, injured or went missing, according to human rights group Cooperative for Peace and Development.
His convoy navigated through neighbourhoods once entirely controlled by gangs, passing decimated car dealerships, abandoned homes, and concrete buildings riddled with bullet holes. A colourful tap-tap bus, its windshield peppered with bullet marks, rumbled past. Graffiti on a crumbling wall declared: “Down with Viv Ansanm, long live the police.” Viv Ansanm, a powerful gang federation designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the US government, is estimated to control 70 per cent of the city.
The UN chief also witnessed dozens of Haitians living in makeshift shelters under canvas, having fled the clashes. They included over 18,000 people who escaped the Cité Soleil slum in May, according to the UN International Organization for Migration.
“Haiti’s displacement crisis is entering an even more alarming phase,” said Gregoire Goodstein, IOM chief of mission in Haiti.
Mr Guterres’s first stop was the headquarters of the new Gang Suppression Force, approved by the UN Security Council in September. This force replaces a previous UN-backed mission led by Kenyan police, which remained underfunded and understaffed.
Troops from Jamaica, Chad, El Salvador, and Guatemala, numbering fewer than 1,000, form part of this growing force, expected to begin operations in the coming weeks.
They are set to work alongside Haiti’s national police and its expanding armed forces, with hundreds of Haitian men and a few women reportedly queuing for interviews to join.
Later, Mr Guterres met behind closed doors with prime minister Alix Didier-Fils-Aimé, who faces immense pressure to hold elections in a country that is without a president since Jovenel Moïse’s assassination in July 2021.
“We had a frank conversation about what’s happening in Haiti, the vision the government has for the future,” Mr Fils-Aimé said, adding that security was paramount for the transitional government to hold elections and “get back to republican rule”.
He urged Mr Guterres to ensure that countries backing the new force “live up to their engagement”.
‘We don’t have a life here’
Mr Guterres visited a makeshift shelter in a former school, where dozens of residents gathered around him. Many had been living there for almost four years, forced to leave after gangs attacked and torched their communities.
“Solino is not ready,” said Clifford Lala, 31, referring to his community, one of the last holdouts in the capital before being overrun by gangs.
Inside a hot classroom, Mr Guterres met privately with six women who spoke of the severe lack of privacy at the shelter, even for basic needs like showering or using the bathroom, and expressed deep concerns for their young children.
“It’s skin-to-skin and mouth-to-mouth,” one woman described. The shelter houses over 1,200 people, sleeping side by side, with only one meal guaranteed daily. “We’re going to do our best,” Mr Guterres assured the women.
Outside, a man began to bang on the building’s metal siding, shouting, “We want to go back home!” before security escorted Mr Guterres away.
Wendy Cejour, 26, said his family had lived at the school for 18 months. “As long as we’re alive we have hope, but things are difficult,” he said.
“We ask to return to our neighbourhood to live better, because we don’t have a life here.”
The day before Mr Guterres’s visit, Human Rights Watch published a letter urging him to protect the population and address the root causes of violence and human rights abuses, calling for a “full-fledged UN mission” in Haiti.
“Even when fully staffed and resourced, security measures alone will not suffice to address this situation,” the rights group said. “Any meaningful strategy should include effective protection for victims of violence, credible pathways for disengagement from criminal groups, accountability for abuses, and a coordinated humanitarian response to help restore access to basic goods and services.”
