Author(s)

Romain Le-Cour-Grandmaison

Posted on 16 Jul 2025

In 2024, crime-related violence triggered the displacement of at least 1.2 million people globally – more than twice the number recorded in the previous year. In a report to the Human Rights Council in June 2025, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Paula Gaviria Betancur, warned of the growing role of organized crime as a catalyst for internal displacement worldwide and as a source of serious human rights violations.

Haiti has emerged as the epicentre of this crisis. The country accounted for approximately three-quarters of all crime-induced displacement in 2024, reflecting the scale and severity of gang-driven security, political and humanitarian collapse currently underway. The situation has continued to deteriorate in 2025. As of July, over 1.3 million people have been internally displaced in the country, an increase of at least 24% since January.

The situation in Haiti is a prime example of how organized crime can systematically drive displacement and transform it into a mechanism of territorial and social control. Displacement in Haiti is not a collateral consequence of insecurity. Rather, it is a calculated component of armed criminal governance – a mechanism for control and domination.

Organized crime remains too often overlooked as a driver of forced displacement. Confronting this reality demands a fundamental shift in how displacement is conceptualized, and how protection strategies, mandates and response mechanisms are formulated. The Haitian case underscores the extent to which criminal actors shape conflict dynamics and humanitarian conditions, requiring stakeholders to adapt frameworks and interventions accordingly.

A new kind of crisis

For the third consecutive year, conditions in Haiti continue to deteriorate. Humanitarian indicators now resemble those of countries engaged in active conflict, with homicide rates placing Haiti among the most violent nations in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to the latest data, around 11% of Haiti’s population are currently displaced within the country, as armed gangs have expanded their territorial control across the capital and towards the Centre and Artibonite departments since April 2025.

Haiti’s crisis is multifaceted and defies traditional classification. Despite the chronic violence and the widespread presence of heavily armed groups, criminal actors are not seeking to seize power in a conventional sense. Instead, they are aiming to infiltrate, manipulate and profit from existing state, economic and social systems.

National and international actors have struggled to prioritize organized criminal actors and their governance practices in their political and technical responses. Consequently, organized crime is all too often treated as a purely technical issue, either delegated to the police or subordinated within broader stabilization frameworks, rather than being addressed as a cross-cutting political, social and humanitarian concern. Yet Haiti exemplifies what we might call a political–criminal crisis, in which organized crime, corruption and illicit economies are not merely symptoms of disorder but key causes of violence and displacement.

Forced displacement as a tool of control

The patterns of internal displacement in Haiti are complex and go far beyond civilians fleeing clashes or seeking to escape generalized violence. Internally displaced persons, particularly women, children and young people, have particular vulnerabilities when criminal groups control territory. Sexual and gender-based violence and coercive control are widespread and are often used as tools of subjugation. Young boys, in particular, are targeted for forced recruitment by criminal groups, putting them at risk of becoming both victims and vectors of violence. The trauma and loss of protection associated with displacement make these populations especially susceptible to exploitation, trafficking and cycles of criminalization.

Thousands of families have experienced multiple displacements over the course of just days or weeks (particularly in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area) during periods of intensified violence linked to gang territorial expansion. Such was the case during offensives in the Delmas and Solino neighbourhoods in October and December 2024.

Moreover, criminal groups are increasingly using displacement as a strategy to assert territorial and social control. According to research conducted by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), this approach is implemented by gangs in three distinct but interconnected phases.

The first phase is conquering, characterized by large-scale attacks, including massacres, arson and mass shootings. The aim is to remove both state presence and community resistance. Through forced displacement, gangs are able to establish strategic buffer zones (depopulated and often devastated areas positioned between their strongholds and territories controlled by state forces), providing protection against potential security operations. On 3 July 2025, for example, gang attacks in the area between Mirebalais and Lascahobas, about 30 kilometres from the border with the Dominican Republic, led to the displacement of nearly 30 000 people in just a few days.

Displacement – sometimes occurring within the same neighbourhood or commune, and thus failing to free populations from gang control – tends to be gradual yet persistent, driven by worsening living conditions and social fragmentation. In areas not fully destroyed, gangs may encourage the return of displaced populations to consolidate control. Despite the devastation, the potential loss of housing and the pressures of living under criminal rule, some residents may still choose to return to the areas they had previously fled. Communities in strategic areas such as transport corridors, markets, agricultural zones and water sources – in the Artibonite and the Centre departments, for example – are dispersed under threat of violence and then selectively repopulated on the gangs’ terms.

Finally, a phase of consolidation often follows, during which the return of the population enables gangs to reinforce territorial governance, impose extra-legal systems of taxation, and assert control over humanitarian access, justice and basic service provision. The remaining population is subjected to systematic coercion, including selective killings, sexual violence, the destruction of public infrastructure and manipulation of aid distribution. While displacement tends to slow, it may continue in a more targeted manner – through the selective expulsion of certain families, for example – aimed at neutralizing dissent and reinforcing compliance.

In some instances, according to interviews conducted by the GI-TOC, civilians have been used as human shields, particularly since March 2025, following the Haitian government’s use of drones against gang-controlled areas. This dynamic could also lead to a resurgence of kidnappings, particularly in Port-au-Prince, for the purpose of protection but also as a bargaining chip between gangs and the government.

Throughout this process, displacement is instrumentalized as a tool used to manipulate economic flows, exert political control and manage demographics, a dynamic that must be taken into account in the long term, particularly in the event of general elections. This cycle of violent expulsion, multiple waves of displacement and potential, selective reintegration fractures social cohesion and trust.

Moving beyond traditional approaches

Despite their public statements, the Haitian Transitional Presidential Council, the interim body that exercises the functions of the presidential office until a new president is elected, and the government of Prime Minister Fils-Aimé have yet to implement an effective strategy to address the situation of internally displaced persons. It is of the utmost urgency that the Haitian authorities treat the protection and resettlement of internally displaced persons as a national priority, by developing a comprehensive strategy to address the instrumentalization of population displacement by armed groups, while also accounting for the potential risk of criminal infiltration or exploitation in the management of existing and future displacement camps.

Betancur’s report calls for renewed international attention and urgent reforms to existing protection frameworks to address this escalating global threat. It emphasizes that Haiti is not an isolated case, but rather a warning sign, underscoring the broader regional and international implications of crime-induced displacement. Tackling this crisis will need a wholesale review of the current approaches. Political, humanitarian, development and security stakeholders must unite around a shared understanding of how organized crime operates and the human rights violations it perpetuates, including forced displacement.