UN report finds spike in gang murders, Haitian police violence

Armed gangs in Haiti killed over 5,500 people last year and injured over 2,000 more, according to a Tuesday report from the United Nations. The data represented a sharp increase over the roughly 1,000 fatalities reported the previous year.

Additional, the report found that:

• Over 1,700 people were killed in gang attacks in the last four months of 2024 alone, with over 400 more injured.

• Nearly 100 women and girls were raped and exploited in the last quarter of 2024.

• Kidnappings rose by 150% last year with gangs increasingly targeting children.

• Child soldier recruitment by gangs increased by 70% from mid-2023 to mid-2024, according to a separate report by UNICEF released on Tuesday.

• Up to half of armed gang members could be children, according to UNICEF estimates.

How did police violate human rights? State police executed over 250 people last year, the UN reported. Many of the executed were shot while in police custody and two were children. Authorities shot street vendors and taxi drivers for merely failing to show identification, the report claimed. The public prosecutor of Miragoâne also conducted six executions without a fair legal trial, bringing the total number of executions conducted by Haitian prosecutors in the last year to 42.

Haitian law enforcement has faced accusations of human rights violations before. The nonprofit medical group Doctors Without Borders accused Haitian police of attacking, kidnapping, and tear-gassing medical humanitarian workers in Port-au-Prince last November. Police also executed at least two of the group’s patients who were being transported and held medical personnel captive for over four hours, Doctors Without Borders alleged.

Why is violence so rampant? Gangs seized control of the nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince early last year by overrunning police stations and freeing over 4,000 inmates from Haiti’s two largest prisons. Kenyan forces launched an international security support mission backed by the United States and the United Nations last June. However, violence continued to plague the island and gangs now control a majority of the capital city.

How are the recent U.S. aid cuts going to affect Haiti? The U.S. Embassy in Haiti clarified on Wednesday that the United States had not stopped funding the multinational security support mission in the country. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved waivers for $40.7 million to support the UN mission and local police, according to a statement.

Dig deeper: Read my recent report on the rescue of a missionary family that was trapped in Haiti.