Posted on 17 Jan 2025
Haiti is at a crossroads, facing an unprecedented politico-criminal crisis. In 2024, gang violence escalated to record levels, with criminal groups controlling 85% of Port-au-Prince and expanding across provinces. Over 1 million people were displaced, and at least 5 601 murders were recorded in 2024, an increase of more than 1 000 victims compared to 2023, equivalent to an annual homicide rate of almost 48 per 100 000 inhabitants, a national record.
Beyond the security dimension, 2024 was marked by shifts in the gangs’ strategy. Three key developments stand out.
Firstly, the gangs forged a criminal coalition known as Living Together (Viv Ansanm, in Haiti creole). Through this collaboration, the gangs consolidated their capacity for criminal governance, which they have enforced through extortion and the enactment of ever stricter rules over the daily life of Haitians. Finally, through their capacity for violence and by increasing their voice in public debate, criminal leaders have influenced the course of the country’s political transition, to put pressure on Haitian authorities and the international community, and to become more embedded than ever in Haiti’s political and economic system.
Meanwhile, the Haitian Police and the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support mission remain tactically and operationally overwhelmed by adversaries who have vastly increased their arsenals and territorial control. While Haitian people are subjected to unprecedented human rights violations, the pathway to resolving the crisis has reached an operational and conceptual impasse.
This Brief offers avenues of action for 2025. It begins by outlining how the gangs’ governance has developed alongside the inadequacy of the current public security strategy, before looking at the political challenges ahead for Haiti’s transition and the international community. To have a significant impact, the Brief makes the case for a paradigm shift in the national and international response, which must take full account of the Haitian organized crime ecosystem. The challenge is immense, but the tools are at our disposal to forge joint action in the face of a criminal crisis that is unique on a global scale.
The Brief outlines critical steps, including:
- Providing more resources to the strategic analysis of the political economy of violence in Haiti, at the political and operational levels.
- Bolstering the HNP and MSS with funding, personnel, and strategic coordination.
- Investing in the criminal justice system, to act against the actors that fuel illicit activities.
- Relaunching Haiti’s political transition with an emphasis on transparency and accountability.
- Establishing a cohesive sanctions and arms embargo regime targeting gang financiers and enablers, in Haiti and abroad.
- Strengthening the international and national implementation of sanctions and the arms embargo.
- If a peacekeeping operation were deployed, building a transition strategy that would focus on adapting it to an organized crime mandate.
- Designing a coherent disarmament, demobilization, and community violence-reduction strategy.
The pathway to peace requires addressing systemic impunity and rebuilding governance, A peacekeeping operation alone will not be the panacea that will cure Haiti’s gang problem and the structures that support the criminal groups. This is a far greater challenge, requiring the deployment of all available domestic and international instruments, including a mix of public security, justice, development aid and humanitarian cooperation.
By addressing root causes and ensuring coordinated action, Haiti can begin to dismantle the structures that perpetuate its crisis and move toward a future of stability and self-determination.
