Efforts to establish a United Nations office in Haiti to provide logistical and operational support for the newly authorized Gang Suppression Force are on track to meet Security Council deadlines, Secretary-General António Guterres’ office said.
“The first air asset from the mission, which is a helicopter, is now in Port-au-Prince,” Stéphane Dujarric, Guterres’ spokesman said. “This is an important step for our colleagues’ logistics and operational mobility.”
Additional equipment is being shipped from the U.N. logistics base in Brindisi, Italy, he added, and another shipment has been confirmed from Baghdad. That cargo includes equipment from the now-closed U.N.s Assistance Mission for Iraq.
The Security Council authorized the Haiti Support Office, directing the U.N. to establish it within six months of the measure’s adoption. Dujarric said the organization remains on schedule to provide support to the force by March 31, and support services to the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti by Feb. 1.
The preparations are unfolding amid mounting concerns over governance in Haiti’s ongoing transition. Five members of the Transitional Presidential Council have sought to remove the prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, and council president Laurent Saint-Cyr ahead of the expiration of the council’s mandate on Feb. 7. The move prompted the Trump administration to impose sanctions on the five council members as well as a cabinet minister reportedly selected by the group to replace Fils-Aimé.
“The next few weeks are extremely concerning for everyone,” Diego Da Rin, Haiti analyst for the International Crisis Group, said Thursday during a webinar to discuss the organization’s latest report, “Undoing Haiti’s Deadly Gang Alliance.”
Haiti’s gangs, which have united under the Viv Ansanm banner, “very frequently exploit the rise in political disputes to launch large scale offensive and try to build on this lack of focus of the authorities on the security front to destabilize the government as they did in early 2024 and in other periods,” Da Rin said.
The concerns extend beyond the current crisis. The possible end of immigration protections for over 350,000 Haitians in the United States could exacerbate the situation if large numbers are forced to return to a country where more than 1.4 million people have already been internally displaced by gang violence and the political future remains uncertain.
On Tuesday, Haitians could lose legal protections from deportation if a decision by the Trump administration to end Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status designation stands.
“It is likely that the gangs will, at some point in the near future, try to mount an offensive, try to derail the plans to have this stronger force with a more robust mandate that should be deployed in the coming months,” Da Rin said. “Also with the prospect of political disputes that could rise… this will be like the perfect scenario for Viv Ansanm to try to escalate their offensive and try to overwhelm security forces that are combating on the ground.”
New personnel
The interim director of the new support office, Stephen McOwan, arrived in Port-au-Prince over the weekend, Dujarric said. McOwan has joined 37 staff members already deployed to the Haitian capital.
In December, the U.N. announced that Jack Christofides, a veteran peace-building expert, would lead the new force, which has a stronger mandate than the previous Kenya-led Multinational Security Support to neutralize gangs and protect critical infrastructure.
A second office was established last week in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. The Dominican Republic has also been designated as a medical evacuation destination as part of its cooperation with the mission.
The Santo Domingo office will provide human resources, finance and travel services to both the new Haiti Support Office and the U.N. Integrated Office in Port-au-Prince.
Voluntary contributions
The Gang Suppression Force, expected to be five times the size of the Kenya-led mission that was first deployed to Haiti over a year and a half ago, is the creation of the United States and Panama at the U.N.. The idea is to help Haitian authorities take on armed gangs whose violence led to the deaths of more than 8,000 people and thousands of rapes last year.
A dozen countries have so far offered to deploy troops, and the first contingent is expected to begin arriving in April, with most of the soldiers expected to be in Haiti by summer. Unlike the Kenya-led police mission, the new force is more military-focused and will be deployed independently of the Haiti National Police.
The force will be funded through obligatory contributions of U.N. member states, while the salaries of the deployed personnel will come from voluntary contributions. While it’s still unclear how much funding the force has, a U.N. Trust Fund set up for countries to support salaries has generated $173 million in pledges.
Armed groups in Haiti seek to expand their territory and to enter into politics to get amnesty. Gangs continue to control large swaths of Port-au-Prince and are expanding into other regions of the country.
In June, the U.N. Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict listed the Viv Ansanm gang coalition as one of the groups that commits most of the most grave crimes against civilians in Haiti and children.
This story was originally published January 29, 2026 at 1:45 PM.
