Haiti needs up to 5,000 additional police officers to deal with violence

Haiti currently needs between 4,000 and 5,000 international police to help deal with “catastrophic” gang violencewhich has targeted people and hospitals, schools, banks and other institutions of critical importance, said the United Nations rights expert for the Caribbean country.

William O'Neill said last July that Haiti needed between 1,000 and 2,000 trained international police officers to deal with gangs. Today, he said, the situation is much worse and double that figure is required to help the Haitian National Police regain control of security and put an end to human rights abuses.

O'Neill spoke during a press conference releasing the United Nations Human Rights Office report he helped produce, which calls for immediate action to address the “cataclysmic” situation in Haiti, where Corruption, impunity and bad governance, coupled with growing gang violence, have undermined the rule of law and brought state institutions “to the brink of collapse.”

The report, which covers a period of five months until last February, ensures that gangs continue to recruit and mistreat boys and girls, and that some of the minors are murdered for trying to escape.

Gangs also continue to use sexual violence “to brutalize, punish and control people,” according to the report, which mentions women who were raped during gang attacks in their neighborhoods, “in many cases, after that they saw how their husbands were murdered in front of them.”

In 2023, the number of deaths and injuries as a result of gang violence increased significantly in Haiti, with 4,451 murders and 1,668 injuries, according to the report. As of March 22 of this year, that figure had skyrocketed to 1,554 dead and 826 injured.

As a result of increasing gang violence, the so-called “self-defense brigades” have taken justice into their own hands, according to the report, “and at least 528 cases of lynchings were reported in 2023 and another 59 in 2024.”

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