Haiti’s fading hope: the situation in Port-au-Prince

By Isaac Smith, 2nd Year BA Liberal Arts

Content Warning: Sexual Violence and Graphic Content

After years of dysfunction and repetitive outbreaks of violence, armed gangs now assert authority over most of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city. Bloodshed continues to strike at the Caribbean nation’s rooted and rich soul.

A UN report, released on the 7th of January this year, asserts that at least 5,600 people were killed and nearly 1500 injured last year alone due to gang related conflict. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volver Türk, explained “these figures alone cannot capture the horror perpetrated in Haiti but show the unremitting violence to which people are being subjected”. 

The torment Türk refers to involves the systemic use of sexual violence to rive communities and consolidate power, large-scale food and healthcare insecurity, and mass displacement. 

Another UN human rights report, representing the situations horror and depravity most obviously, explains that women and girls, impoverished and desperate, may now be persuaded by their own families into non-consensual intercourse with gang members in return for material benefits such as food and water, as well as for protection from other dangerous groups or individuals. 

As a consequence of the security void left after the erosion of police and state power, and in a panicked reach of justice, armed civilian brigades have emerged. With impunity for serious gang offences commonplace, these groups have taken to mob killing those affiliated with gang activity. Suspected members have been lynched and burnt alive.  

As the capital tailspins into despair it is suggested that in certain cases, those accused only of common crimes in Haiti have suffered the brutal vengeance of these vigilante groups. 

The UN security council, as requested by the weakened Haitian government, authorised a multinational Security Support Mission, led by Kenya, to enter and work alongside the national police. The forces entered in June 2024.

It is hoped this may help generate stability, though the move is the latest in a litany of complex foreign interventions that continue to complicate any sense of Haitian self-determination. 

The assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021 sparked a spiral of violence, with a former prime minister, a former police chief, and Moise’s own wife charged with conspiracy to murder.  However, the situation is ingrained in Haiti’s longer history involving political iniquity, foreign exploitation, and tragic natural disasters.

Haunted by debt and turmoil after liberating itself from colonial rule at the turn of the 19th century, the nation had to pay 90 million gold Francs in indemnities to avoid French reinvasion. Had this money remained in Haiti, estimates suggest it would have added $21 billion to the economy over time. 

Out of the slave revolt emerged two distinct classes: a mixed-race urban elite and an African, creole-speaking, peasantry. The elite repositioned themselves as a mercantile class and, with military alliance, controlled an extractive, predatory state that taxed the export of peasant agriculture surplus and circulated wealth in a new, narrow upper class. 

Following a period of dictatorship and unrest, the U.S invaded in 1915 as part of a ‘stabilising mission’. The military was overhauled, but public outrage and riots against the occupation forced the U.S out in 1934. No foundations for political stability were established, meaning the U.S failed on the condition upon which it justified its invasion. 

Later, military backed Black nationalists and Marxists experienced a populist upsurge, in a movement known as ‘Noirism’. This transformed Haiti’s political culture and ended Mulatto (mixed European and African Heritage) political dominance. Despite notable economic and social progress, the movement faced strife from the now challenged internal elite, as well as anti-communist U.S pressure. The grievances of Haiti’s masses remained largely unaddressed.  

Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and then Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier both rose to power  on the promise of further economic revolution. However, the poverty-stricken Haitian masses experienced no such progress and remember instead a system of kleptocracy and traumatic human rights abuse. The U.S, who ignored this flagrant maltreatment due to the Duvalier’s anti-communist stance, eventually ushered Jean-Claude into exile after nationwide revolt and outrage. 

Jean Bertrand Aristide’s 1990 election, and his Lavalas movement brought genuine empowerment and political mobilisation to Haiti’s poor. However, less than a year later, a violent coup ousted him, triggering three years of vicious military rule involving state sponsored death squads. 

The poor suffered the brunt of the punitive international sanctions directed towards the dictatorship. To survive, many Haitians turned to black-market, unregulated economic activity, a condition conducive to today's gang criminality. In 1994 a U.S.-led intervention dislodged the Junta and restored Astride. However, his second term was marred by fraud, violence, and economic collapse. 

World Bank structural adjustments after this intervention led to the importation of rice from the U.S, crippling the agriculture sector. Poor rural communities were pushed into urban areas and some, with little choice, turned to gangs to subsist. 

Then, augmenting anguish and desolation in a populace so historically beset, Hurricane Matthew claimed 200,000 Haitian lives. The destruction crippled infrastructure, leaving survivors in dire conditions. The social fabric was then strained further by UN peacekeeper sexual abuse scandals. 

More recently, as in the past, Haitian leaders have utilized street gangs to maintain power, providing them with resources and protection. This symbiotic relationship has empowered gangs, who now wield absolute authority over much of Port-au-Prince. 

Where an indomitable current of chaos and crisis encircles any prospect of constructive lead in the nation, the Haitian populace, having endured so much, can trust its own strength. 

From leading history’s only successful slave revolt whilst surrounded by hostile European colonies, to resurfacing and reorganising after adversaries compete for political control, and now to grass-roots, decentralised organisations, such as PAPDA and MPP working to enhance the well-being of Haitian people in ways that resonate with their own needs and experiences, the country has proven itself resilient time and time again. 

The Haitian people must hold on to this transformative, revolutionary energy of their ancestors if they are to mediate conditions of peace in a nation so wounded.