UN says at least 3,661 killed in Haiti’s first half-year of gang violence

# UN says at least 3,661 killed in Haiti’s first half-year of gang violence

*Event date: 2024-09-27*

The United Nations says at least 3,661 people were killed in Haiti in the first half of the year amid gang violence that has deepened the country’s humanitarian emergency.

According to Al Jazeera’s report on the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the death toll from January to June included 100 children. UN rights chief Volker Turk said the scale of violence showed that last year’s high levels of bloodshed had continued and called the situation senseless criminality.

The report says the violence worsened sharply at the end of February, when gangs attacked prisons and other state institutions across Port-au-Prince. It also documented extremely serious patterns of rights abuses in the capital and in the Artibonite Department, north of the city, while violence spread further into the southern part of the West Department.

Sexual violence remained part of the pattern, with gangs continuing to use it to punish, spread fear and subjugate populations. The UN also linked the violence to arms trafficking, saying gangs were gaining access to high-calibre weapons, drones, boats and a seemingly endless supply of ammunition through poorly monitored airspace, coastlines and porous borders.

Turk urged the international community to move ahead with a global arms embargo, travel ban and asset freeze. The report says the surge in violence helped drive the resignation of Haiti’s unelected prime minister, the creation of a transitional presidential council and the deployment of a Kenya-led, UN-backed multinational security mission.

The scale of displacement and hunger followed the same trajectory. The number of internally displaced people had almost doubled in six months to more than 700,000, while about 1.6 million people were estimated to be facing emergency food insecurity.

The report also noted that about 430 personnel had deployed to the security mission, well short of the more than 3,100 pledged by roughly 10 countries. That shortfall gave added weight to the UN’s warning that the mission needed sufficient equipment and personnel if it was to contain the gangs sustainably.

At its core, the UN message was blunt: without stronger controls on weapons, more robust international support and a functioning state response, Haiti’s violence would keep feeding itself.

The death toll is therefore more than a statistic. It is a measure of a society where the armed groups are outpacing the institutions meant to stop them.