Executive summary

Amidst Haiti's turbulent history of economic woes and gang violence, a fresh wave of crisis grips the nation as governance falters and the prime minister remains marooned in Puerto Rico. International aid efforts stall against the backdrop of logistical hurdles and security risks posed by gangs controlling vital infrastructure in Port-au-Prince.

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The entrée of over 600 Kenyan policemen has done little to salvage the situation. More Kenyans are expected to arrive in the coming weeks and months along with police and soldiers from the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Chad and Jamaica for a total of 2,500 personnel.

Overview

Relevance

With worsening security in Haiti, Kenya agreed to work with the United Nations Security Council to send a police force to help Haiti stop the violence and instability in the nation, and three batches of policemen, making up 600 police officers, have already arrived on the island. In the same vein, the US believes Canada should lead a military force in Haiti to prevent the crisis from worsening. However, the case for any meaningful foreign intervention is typically met with backlash. For many Haitians, foreign intervention is synonymous with the suffering and conflict that Western colonialism originally brought to the Caribbean country. Beyond political and social qualms inflamed by the possibility of a foreign intervention, the country faces gruelling agricultural and health challenges. These challenges include cholera linked to a sewage leak in a UN base, and economic reforms that sparked a disproportionate and dangerous reliance on US-imported goods in comparison to domestic goods. According to ReliefWeb International, Haiti imports between 50% to 85% of its total food supplies.

History

Located on the island of Hispaniola and contiguous with the Dominican Republic, Haiti holds a special value for many modern democratic leaders as the first state successfully forged by enslaved peoples against the colossal machinations of the Columbian colonial world. While Spain was the first empire to claim the island in the 1490s, French pirates gradually and steadily established a larger presence on the western portions of Hispaniola throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, leading eventually to an implicit Spanish recognition of the French colony Saint-Domingue in 1697.    

Due to the lucrative plantation agriculture the island’s climate supported, Saint-Domingue rapidly earned the reputation of being the “Pearl of the Antilles (West Indies).” However, this affluent agricultural economy was firmly grounded on a slave population estimated to be as high as 500,000 in 1789, compared to a European population of 32,000 on the island.    

Following the French Revolution of 1789, the political philosophy of peoples in the French Empire shifted radically toward a more egalitarian worldview, imbuing unsurprising resentment among the enslaved populations of Saint-Domingue. Simultaneously, the wealthy planter class viewed the French Revolution as an opportunity to support efforts toward independence for Haiti, with farmers such as Vincent Óge and Jean-Baptiste Chavannes initiating the first stages of the Haitian revolt by steering up slave rebellions in late 1789. The island’s large slave populations contributed to the rapid expansion of the revolt’s scale, led by ex-slave Toussaint L’Ouverture, who promptly broke from the Creole planters in favor of supporting Spanish forces in East Hispaniola, which later gave way to a larger civil war between republican and royalist France.   

Despite suffering nearly 100,000 losses, L’Ouverture secured both Saint-Domingue and neighboring Spanish Hispaniola from all European influence by 1801, uniting the island under independent rule and declaring himself emperor for life. As such, Haiti still retains symbolic importance for many African states as the first sovereign Afro-descendant state to emerge independent after a tortuous time of oppression.   

Despite L’Ouverture’s revolutionary successes, Haiti experienced severe diplomatic and economic isolation in its first decades of independence due to fears from the United States and Europe that Haiti would invariably foment a ‘rebellious’ evolution in other parts of the Western world. This situation worsened in 1825 when French king Charles X sent a flotilla to Haiti with an ultimatum demanding reparations totaling $150 billion (as converted to USD in 2024) for damages incurred in Haitians’ pursuit of independence.   

Forced to accept these demands, Haiti could only pay by obtaining loans from French banks with skyrocketing interest rates, taking 122 years for the debts to be settled. Following an American occupation of Haiti during the 1930s, the United States developed a more dominant political and economic presence in the country. This precluded the intervention of American banks to formally repay the external debt in 1947. However, many still credit this period of repayment as the indisputable and chief source of Haiti’s current economic woes.

‍Beyond the shackles of indemnities, Haiti’s economic situation was also hindered by a three-decade period of rampant corruption, repression, and fiscal imprudence.   

Under dictators François and Jean-Claude Duvalier, an estimated 40% of Haiti’s debt in 2000 was incurred from aggressive international borrowing between 1957 and 1986. After the fall of the Duvalier dynasty, Haiti experienced a series of civilian and military leaders who struggled to establish a lasting democracy. This instability led to a 2004 UN peacekeeping mission and partial international debt relief efforts. Meanwhile, Haiti faced severe challenges, including a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010 that killed over 200,000 in Port-au-Prince and left around half a million people homeless for much of the decade.   

International aid efforts failed to remedy any of these negative effects. Unironically, many blame the presence of UN workers from Nepal for a cholera outbreak that claimed 10,000 lives following the earthquake. All of these factors contribute to Haiti’s present political instability, which rapidly devolved in 2021 following the assassination of democratically elected President Jovenel Moïse. His assassination took place after a constitutional showdown over the specified term length of an elected president. The exact motivations of his assassins remains uncertain, but the circumstances leave little room for interpretation. The resulting power vacuum produced a political crisis between Moïse’s preferred successor Ariel Henry and previous prime minister Claude Joseph, the latter of which resigned his position following widespread international support for the former. However, Henry’s interim reign has failed to create any meaningful stability in the country, with gang violence endangering domestic welfare to the point that Haitian infrastructure has nearly completely crumbled. Prominent gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier has emerged as the face of these criminal movements, working to unite multiple warring gangs in Haiti in the last few years, to create a large revolutionary syndicate named the “G9 Family and Allies,” which successfully led a prison break in Port-Au-Prince on March 4 that released over 3,500 federal convicts. On March 12, 2024, Henry announced that he would resign as prime minister once a transitional presidential council was put in place, amid calls for international aid to remedy the situation in Haiti. 

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Policy Problem

Haiti, a country of 12 million, has often had bouts of gang violence, but the onslaught in February this year plunged the country into chaos never seen in decades. William O’Neill, a U.N. human rights expert who has worked extensively in Haiti, told a news conference in New York that the current situation was the worst violence he had seen in Haiti since the early 1990s military dictatorship, when ‘rapes’ and ‘execution’ were ingrained in the daily parlance of a despotic regime. Gang violence has already resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people this year, the United Nations human rights office reported in March 2024, the result of what it described as a “cataclysmic situation” in the country. Corruption, impunity, and poor governance, in tandem with increasing levels of gang violence, have brought the Caribbean nation’s state institutions “close to collapse,” the agency said. Further exacerbating the situation is widespread, deadly vigilantism, with community groups taking police charge—some calling themselves “self-defense brigades”— and killing more than 100 people suspected of petty crimes, including those stealing food due to hunger pangs in a capital that has been besieged.    

In a rare public appearance via a video statement, Frantz Elbe, the head of the Haitian National Police force, stood before fellow officers, wearing a protective vest to assuage the anxieties of a tormented population. “Our society is going through a political crisis linked to a security crisis that the country has never experienced before,” he said, vowing that the police would “continue the fight so that you return to your neighborhoods and to your family.” 

‍Despite concerted efforts by the Haitian and Kenyan police force, armed gangs have seized 90% of the nation, destroying police stations and government offices, as well as looting banks and hospitals.

‍The last few weeks of gang fighting have grown even more violent, prompting the US to send in an elite team of Marines to defend the American Embassy.   In the power vacuum that followed the assassination of democratically elected President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, Henry assumed power with the support of several nations, including the U.S. When Haiti failed to hold elections multiple times, citing logistical problems and violence, protests against President Henry intensified. By the time Henry announced last year that elections would be postponed again to 2025, the country hadn’t held an election in eight years. To the latent gangs in Port-au-Prince, the resulting anti-incumbency feelings that plagued the populace was yet another way to quickly ascend to power.

‍It is important to discern that gangs have always been a tool wielded by the upper echelons of power in Haiti.  

Preceding former President Moïse’s assassination, these militias and armed gangs have existed alongside politicians who often used them to do their bidding, including intimidating the opposition and collecting votes. In many ways, therefore, the politicians sowed the seeds of their own destruction. Once in a while,  groups of gangs would overpower the political class and vice versa. Caught up in this dichotomous tug-of-war are ordinary civilians.  

Haitians are trapped in ‘an open air prison’ cut off from the world by air, land, and sea. Leaving their homes to go to the market has inevitably become a ticket to torture. Those who do make it to markets may witness plundering and pillaging by gangs – merciless torture and extortion – to steal goods from vendors.   

As the burgeoning violence in the country clamoured into the global stage, the US State Department announced that it was sending $10 million in equipment, including weapons and ammunition, to Haitian security forces “as they fight to protect people and critical infrastructure against organized and targeted gang attacks.” However, this falls far short of the $674 million the UN says Haiti needs. In the US, Congressional Republicans are reluctant to authorize funds for the crumbling island country. It is what many consider a tragic and painful track record of international intervention in Haiti that has led to extreme reticence from the United States, the international community, and human rights groups about once again employing force to solve the island’s problems. Haiti has languished under a complex history that includes several failed US interventions of the twentieth century, and brutal military regimes that received tacit support from Washington. UN peacekeeping missions from 2007 to 2017 were accused of sexual abuse and exploitation, introducing diseases to the island, and committing human rights abuses against the very people they were meant to protect.   

The creation of a presidential transitional council, though, has given Haitians a glimmer of hope. The council will be tasked with appointing an acting prime minister to head a new government and hold new elections, while also paving the way for the deployment of a UN-backed international police mission. However, it is imperative that any foreign interference in Haiti carefully consider the will of the populace. Whilst poking into the internal affairs of any sovereign nation is always riddled with complexities, an August poll released by the business alliance AGERCA and the consultancy DDG confirmed that about 63 percent of Haitians supported the deployment of an “international force” to combat the gangs. An even higher portion—75 percent—said the Haitian police needed international support to reestablish order.    

Only 700 Haitian police officers are currently working in Port-au-Prince, with just 9,000 police active across the whole country, less than half the UN’s recommended policing level. Against the gangs, the police are palpably outnumbered. Exacerbating the already-bleak status quo is the fact that gangs running amok on the island are armed with powerful American-made weapons, including .50 caliber sniper rifles and semi-automatic AR-15 rifles.    

Firearms are bought legally in the US at gun shops or shows. They are then smuggled in shipments leaving from Miami-Dade and Port Everglade in Florida, paid for with gang profits derived from extortion and drug sales. The ships often dock in nearby countries such as Jamaica or Panama before sending shipments through smaller vessels to Haitian ports at Port-au-Prince or Port-de-Paix, according to a 2023 United Nations report.    

Firearms can also arrive in Haiti through small planes flying into airports. In the country, gangs control key access to maritime ports, airports, and border crossings with the Dominican Republic, another avenue for arms trafficking. With the collapse of the government, few people are employed to halt the flow of arms once they reach Haiti. The Biden administration has worked to crack down on this problem, but with Haiti’s porous borders and non-existent governmental control, hundreds of thousands of illegal guns find raucous refuge. Robert Fatton, a professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia who has written books on Haiti, said the gangs would never have grown so strong without the mass proliferation of US weapons.Even an international arms embargo has failed to stop illegal weapons and ammunition getting into the hands of gangs in Haiti, the UN report said. “It is shocking that despite the horrific situation on the ground, arms still keep pouring in,” Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, said in a statement. “I appeal for a more effective implementation of the arms embargo,” he added. While it is tempting for nations to impose a complete naval blockade, the human cost is extremely high. Haiti depends on imports for all kinds of goods and supplies, including essential commodities, meaning shipments will have to keep flowing to sustain an already debilitated population. Dovetailing this necessity of continuous shipment is deep-seated corruption, with Haitian police officers sometimes diverting weapons provided to them from countries, including the US, into the hands of gangs.These groups have continued to flamboyantly assert their new-found control over the capital, letting as many as 4,000 prisoners escape. The besieged government called a 72-hour state of emergency, including a night-time curfew, but its authority had long evaporated.    

Many armed groups had been built from the ground up in recent years, claiming to be community groups carrying out essential work in underprivileged neighborhoods, but they have instead been burnished with accusations of murders. One of the two main groups, G-9, is led by a former elite police officer, Jimmy Chérizier—also known as “Barbecue”—who has become the de facto leader of the unrest and claimed credit for various attacks on public institutions. He terms his campaign an “armed revolution.” In the wake of the crisis in February, then-President Henry had signed a security deal with Kenya calling for the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police personnel. In Kenya, however, the opposition is rather staunch, with opposition leaders exhausting legal avenues to repudiate the deployment. Their case, however, is set to fail the test of legality. It is perhaps reassuring to many citizens that there is little to stop a democratically-elected government from exercising its will. In de jure terms, the government has the prerogative to proceed with the deployment to Haiti. Kenyan officials say they are committed to sending police officers to Haiti to combat gang violence. However, after Haiti’s PM agreed to quit, the deployment was put on hold until a new government was installed. At the time of writing this brief, three batches of Kenyan Police have arrived on the Island. 

‍At the same time, prominent Haitians have raised concerns about the ‘reprehensible’ track record of the Kenyan police, linking them with several known human rights abuses.   

Who will ensure that Haitians are protected and not subjected to an even stronger military mandate remains a deeply divisive question. Assuming arrangements are made for the physical protection of an interim administrative body and that it can begin governing, the longer-term issues of legitimacy and inclusion are set to continue blazing even still. The newly-established government will be caught at the crossroads of gangs who seek dangerous control and angry citizens who want a legitimate government; this comes at the end of decades of ineffective, incompetent, and corrupt governance. Results of this dilemma most dramatically manifested in 2019, when Haitians took to the streets en masse to hold the government to account for a theft of up to $2 billion in a scandal.

Policy Options

As gangs take over Port-au-Prince with rifles, machine guns, and other weapons, the United States is trying to seize the weapons at a facility in South Florida before they leave the country. A United Nations assessment from 2023 named the United States, notably Florida, as the primary supplier of weapons and explosives imported into Haiti. Aside from efforts in Miami to stem the flow of guns and other weapons into Haiti, a group of lawmakers has introduced the Caribbean Arms Trafficking Causes Harm (CATCH) Act to reduce the flow of illegal firearms that have fuelled violence and instability in the Caribbean region, particularly in Haiti. The United States intends to provide $200 million to the Multinational Security Support operation to assist the Haitian National Police in a variety of areas, and it encourages other nations to join the operation. President Biden has also authorized a $10 million assistance package for Haitian security personnel, which may include firearms, ammunition, bulletproof vests, and helmets to defend important infrastructure and aid in peaceful transition operations. To maximize security, experts from the Humans Rights Watch believe the United States can help Haiti by stepping up America’s border security efforts to curtail, seize and destroy weapons heading toward Haiti. The lack of a government-controlled border demands greater US involvement. UNHCR, the refugee agency of the United Nations, implores the United States that Haitians seeking international protection must have access to fair and efficient asylum processes. UNHCR also urges states to cease the forceful repatriation of Haitian people who had their asylum petitions denied prior to current events. This includes persons who may not have previously required international protection but whose altered circumstances in Haiti provide fresh grounds for an asylum petition. Given the current circumstances, the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies has urged President Biden to ensure that Haitians fleeing danger have access to a range of safety and support services. For people who are unqualified for refugee protection, this could be accomplished by awarding supplemental protection, temporary protection, humanitarian admittance, or another form of legal stay.

Conclusion

The situation is worsening by the day in Haiti, with gangs taking control of Port-au-Prince’s key airports and seaports combined with a collapsed government and a disenchanted populace who are running short on supplies. It has been near-impossible to deliver life-saving humanitarian aid and medical supplies to Haiti. With the population at imminent risk, the majority of Haitians believe international invention is necessary to restore peace and order to the Caribbean country. A relatively small aperture by the Kenyan police is just the inception of more potent foreign interventions that some believe should follow to put out the fire. However, Haitians also remind surrounding nations that it is imperative that due attention is paid to their qualms with foreign involvement.                           

Acknowledgment

The Institute for Youth in Policy wishes to acknowledge Eli Solomon, Anagha Nagesh, Nolan Ezzet and other contributors for developing and maintaining the Policy Department within the Institute.

References

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