The United Nations has issued a warning about the devastating impact of Haiti’s brutal gang wars, which have spread from the capital to key farming heartlands, displacing tens of thousands of people and severely impacting access to food staples.
According to a new report released on Tuesday, violence has escalated in the Bas-Artibonite region north of the capital, the source of staples such as rice. The report stated that about 22,000 people have been displaced amid murders, looting, kidnappings, and widespread sexual violence.
The most powerful gangs in the region are allied to members of the capital’s powerful G-Pep alliance, indicating a strategy to extend their influence. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, emphasized the urgent need for international security assistance to be deployed as soon as possible.
The gangs, armed with semi-automatic rifles and pistols, have burned houses, attacked irrigation systems, stolen crops and livestock, and demanded “taxes” for farmers to access fields. Kidnappings and torture for ransom are also frequent, with gangs now increasingly targeting residential neighborhoods and carrying out mass abductions and gang rapes.
The violence has severely limited humanitarian access to the area, leaving support for victims of sexual violence to cash-strapped rural associations. Aid groups have been forced to halt operations and slash budgets, while the UN’s food agency estimates that nearly half the country is going hungry, including over 45% of people in Bas-Artibonite.
Turk described the situation as “cataclysmic” and called for the international force, more state action, wider sanctions, and stronger controls on arms believed to be largely trafficked from the United States to be deployed as soon as possible. He stressed the urgent need for multinational security support to be deployed to Haiti to address the ongoing crisis.
“We are continuing to receive reports of killings, sexual violence, displacement, and other violence – including in hospitals,” Turk said. “The much-needed multinational security support mission needs to be deployed to Haiti as soon as possible.”