Security may improve slightly over the coming year, but little else will
By Hal Hodson, Americas editor, The Economist
For the past four years, since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, Haiti has been slipping ever deeper into chaos and anarchy. In January 2023, the terms of the country’s last ten sitting senators expired, leaving it with no nationally elected officials. In theory, Haiti is now run by a Transitional Presidential Council (tpc), an unelected body of politicians appointed by consensus in a process overseen by the Caribbean Community, an intergovernmental organisation.
In practice, it is run by gangsters. They control most of Port-au-Prince, the capital, as well as the routes in and out of the city, giving them a tight grip on the country. This slide into lawlessness has been stark, but upheaval is the norm for Haiti; since it won independence from France in 1804, the country has adopted a new constitution, on average, every eight years.
Expecting things to improve much in 2026 would be foolish. A security force of about 1,000 police officers, mostly from Kenya, authorised but not backed by the un, completely failed to push back the gangs. They, alongside the Haitian police, have resorted to using bombs strapped to drones to target gangsters, often leading to horrifying collateral damage. Holding legitimate elections in these conditions is impossible. That means Haiti is extremely unlikely to inaugurate an elected president by February 7th 2026, as envisaged when the tpc was set up in 2024. Democracy is unlikely to return in the coming year.
Security might improve a little, however. On September 30th the un Security Council (unsc) approved a more muscular mission. This new “Gang Suppression Force” will have a maximum size of 5,550, and include a mixture of soldiers and police officers. The United States has intensively supported the new and expanded mission. In the days before the UNSC vote it said it would pull out of the Kenyan-led mission if the new mission was not approved. That may not necessarily make much difference on the ground, but the force may also benefit from a new un logistics body created by the resolution, to help move troops, materiel and supplies into Haiti swiftly—all things that the Kenyan mission lacked.
Even if the gangs can be pushed back in 2026, Haiti will need help for a long time to come. According to the UN, just under a fifth of the people in the country face starvation, which comes with acute malnutrition and significantly increased risk of disease. That is about the same proportion as in Sudan, a country wracked by civil war. Some 10,000 people are suffering from famine. About 10% of children in Haiti are out of education, endless violence having forced their schools to close; 40% of all health-care facilities are shut. Cholera has been spreading in Port-au-Prince.
That may remind Haitians of the last time the un sent thousands of troops to the country, after an earthquake killed around 200,000 people in 2010. Some 13,000 peacekeepers arrived to restore order in the aftermath. Seven years later they left in disgrace. More than a hundred of their number had committed horrifying acts of sexual abuse against Haitian children. They also managed to start a cholera epidemic from their latrines.
The memory of this failure may well be part of what prevents the un from deploying a fully fledged peacekeeping force to Haiti now. Haitians are left hoping, once again, that foreigners can help bring their country into the light. ■
