Posted on 09 Oct 2024

On 27 September 2024, the United Nations Security Council added two new names to the list of sanctioned Haitians: Luckson Elan, leader of the Gran Grif gang operating in the Artibonite department of Haiti, and Prophane Victor, a former member of parliament accused of weapons trafficking and support for criminal groups in the same area. This decision followed sanctions imposed two days earlier by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Less than a week later, on the night of 2/3 October 2024, Gran Grif carried out one of the largest massacres the country has seen in decades. In the commune of Pont-Sondé, a commercial hub of Artibonite, 100 kilometres north of the capital, Port-au-Prince, the gang executed men, women and children, looted and destroyed houses, and forced more than 6 000 inhabitants to flee the area. Preliminary estimates put the death toll at around 70, but the number is expected to rise. According to initial reports, the Haitian national police, stationed just 20 kilometres from Pont-Sondé, failed to intervene during the attack.

The Pont-Sondé massacre should mark a political and security watershed. But in a country plagued by impunity, and with the police and the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) still underfunded, understaffed and ill-equipped to deal with the current crisis, there is a substantial risk that the atrocity will go unpunished.

The mass killing follows years of increasing violence in the Artibonite region, linked particularly to rising tensions between Gran Grif, other gangs, and local self-defence brigades and vigilante groups. Over the past weeks, tensions were exacerbated after the gang accused residents of collaborating with a self-defence group that opposed extortion in the area, preventing checkpoints and racketeering from operating smoothly.  During the same period, the region’s police commissioners made a public appeal for government support, denouncing both the grip of the gangs and the material and human deprivation of their institution. This was a plea that apparently went unheeded: although rumors of an imminent attack had been circulating for weeks, the authorities were unable to prevent the assault.

Since 2022, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) has been investigating the expansion of gang activity in Artibonite and documenting the clashes between gangs and vigilante groups in the region. Both sides are said to enjoy the support of influential political and economic figures in the region, who have shown a willingness to use violence to extend their control – or protect themselves from it. Caught in the crossfire, locals are paying an astonishing price.

The United Nations has published several reports documenting the escalating crisis. An October 2023 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), for example, highlighted the deteriorating situation in the lower Artibonite region, driven by more than 20 active criminal groups, with Gran Grif controlling most of the territory. The OHCHR reported that of the kidnappings that occurred between 1 January and 30 June 2024, 35 per cent happened in the West Department (where Port-au-Prince is located) and 65 per cent in Artibonite. Moreover, the gangs’ control over agricultural production has accelerated the food insecurity crisis, forcing farmers to abandon more than 3 000 hectares of land. Gran Grif’s actions, particularly in Artibonite, have devastated local communities, with forced recruitment of children and widespread sexual violence among the most horrific crimes attributed to Luckson Elan’s leadership.

The pressure on land and residents also demonstrates the rural gangs’ ability to translate their capacity for violence and territorial control into active governance. This has taken the form of the imposition of a regime of extortion and protection rackets on farmers, markets, traders, and the networks of trucks and logisticians involved in transporting goods between the north and south of the country.

In an interview with GI-TOC on 4 October, a Haitian police officer explained that the use of force against the population was a means to ‘remind the community who is in charge’.These dynamics underline how criminal violence has expanded in rural Haiti and how gangs, in conjunction with political actors and local entrepreneurs ­– as shown by the sanctions imposed on Prophane Victor – have been able to extend their presence beyond the capital to areas where the State seems unable to intervene. The assassination of several judges and lawyers, in April and May 2024, also illustrates the involvement of criminal groups in political violence, and their desire to directly influence institutional life not only through their political patrons but also through the elimination of key stakeholders.

In the current context, the Pont-Sondé massacre represents a humanitarian tragedy and a major challenge for the Haitian authorities and the international community. The transitional presidential council, still embroiled in a corruption scandal and serious internal conflicts, and the government of prime minister Gary Conille have condemned the atrocities, and announced the deployment of police forces to protect the population and arrest those responsible for the massacre. But the record of impunity for Haiti’s gang bosses and their political sponsors, an under-resourced police service already buckling in the Haitian capital, and the inability of the international community to secure funding for the MSS and its operations, are perplexing.

The massacre should convince the international community of the urgency of the Haitian situation and the need to finance the transition and the MSS to meet the challenge. On both the humanitarian and security fronts, funding falls far short of what is needed. According to the UN Refugee Agency, the Humanitarian Response Plan for 2024, launched by the Haitian government and the international community, requires US$674 million. It currently has less than 40 per cent of that budget. Similarly, the MSS will not be able to carry out its mandate effectively until the necessary funds and equipment arrive.

However, the response cannot be purely security related. Legitimate demands for equipment and weaponry for the police and the MSS cannot eclipse the need to put the Haitian justice system back on its feet, so that the material and intellectual perpetrators of the violence are brought to justice. The country’s institutional future depends on it. In a context of violence characterized by the weight of politico-criminal networks and corruption, security cannot be restored without the full application of justice.

At the political level, the massacre shall also serve as a unifying element for the country’s two-headed governance system. Both the Conille government and the transitional presidential council are currently caught in a latent political strife that can only hinder the resolution of the crisis, and further weaken their legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

Finally, if the national authorities in the first instance, and the international community in their wake, fail to provide security, judicial and humanitarian responses commensurate with the tragedy, this could be interpreted by other gangs, including those operating in the capital, as an admission of their inability to deal with them. As such, it could signal that despite the institutional progress made in recent months, gang violence still goes unpunished in Haiti, and this could prompt certain groups to resume their operations.

The Pont-Sondé massacre has deeply shocked the Haitian people. But if this tragedy is to be the political turning point it should be, and not just another in a long list of unpunished crimes, the Haitian authorities and the international community must respond in a manner commensurate with the catastrophe.

To receive monthly updates about the Haiti Observatory, please subscribe to our mailing list and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

Photo: Local Frantz Baptist shows bullet casings he collected from the streets near his home days after an armed gang attack on Pont-Sonde, Haiti, Tuesday, Oct 8. 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)