(Port-au-Prince) Gang violence affecting Port-au-Prince is spreading outside Haiti’s capital, into rural areas previously considered safe, according to a UN report released Tuesday.
The joint report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti focuses on the Bas-Artibonite sector, approximately 100 kilometers from the capital, which is experiencing a significant increase in gang violence for two years.
Between January 2022 and October 2023, at least 1,694 people were killed, injured or kidnapped there, according to the report, and kidnapping for ransom “has become a constant fear for public transport users”.
The report cites the example of a 22-year-old woman captured on a bus in March by a gang, beaten and raped during captivity of more than two weeks and who ended her life shortly after her release.
According to the same source, criminal groups are ransacking “rival” villages, in particular resorting to sexual violence against women and young girls.
Their abuses also include the destruction of property, according to the UN, which notes that they “loot farmers’ properties, crops and livestock and destroy irrigation canals”, contributing to the displacement of “more than 22 000 people” outside their villages, reducing the area of cultivated land and increasing food insecurity, which is already very significant.
In a context of “shocking increase in gang violence”, which control 80% of Port-au-Prince, the report calls for “the urgent deployment” of the multinational security mission led by Kenya and validated by the Security Council in October.
“The situation is cataclysmic” in Haiti, indicated the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in a press release from his office, stressing that this violence particularly affects hospitals.
According to him, at least 3,960 people were killed, 1,432 injured and 2,951 kidnapped this year in Haiti in the actions of gangs.
Mr. Türk also requested that the Security Council “update the list of individuals and entities subject to UN sanctions for having supported, prepared, ordered or committed acts contrary to human rights” in this country.