In July 2025, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) published alarming data on the escalation of violence in the country. The report states that in just the last six months, more than 4,000 people were killed — a 24% increase compared to the same period the previous year — and 1.3 million were forced to flee their homes, which amounts to nearly 11% of the population, most of them women and children in situations of extreme vulnerability. These record figures reveal not only the collapse of the Haitian state but also the predictable effects of an international intervention model that continues to impose external solutions, disconnected from local realities and needs.
According to the IJDH, the current crisis is a direct consequence of the actions of the international community. It was shaped by historical policies of exploitation, continued support for the Pati Ayisyen Tèt Kale (PHTK) party while it dismantled democratic institutions, and the imposition of changes to the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) to favor allies linked to armed groups. Added to this were the failure to stem arms trafficking, particularly from the United States, and the withdrawal of humanitarian funding amid the growing emergency.
The assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 marked the definitive breakdown of Haiti’s fragile institutional order. Although he ruled by decree and faced massive protests, Moïse still embodied the figure of a head of state. The legitimacy vacuum deepened with successive interim governments, allowing armed groups to consolidate themselves as parallel powers. The IJDH reports that between 85% and 90% of Port-au-Prince is under the control of gangs that regulate the movement of people and control strategic infrastructure.
The scenario unfolding is one of chaos and ungovernability — precisely the elements that pave the way for foreign intervention under the pretext of ensuring local and regional stability. But we must not fall into the trap of the international diagnosis that normalizes external presence as the only way out of the crisis, ignoring its historical roots, many of which are tied to foreign intervention itself. To insist on failed models, militarized missions, pacts among delegitimized elites, and formulas disconnected from local realities is to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Haiti’s crisis does not stem from the absence of the state, but from the presence of a captured state, shaped by exclusionary logics and sustained by international interests that profit from instability. Overcoming this cycle requires active listening and abandoning the colonial belief that Haitians are incapable of governing themselves.
The human cost of violence
The humanitarian emergency is not parallel to the security crisis; it is its direct consequence. Haiti is currently one of the five countries at risk of severe famine, with 5.7 million people facing acute food insecurity. Gangs control routes, goods, and distribution points, preventing supplies from reaching those most in need. The logic of dismantling the situation has forced the closure of more than a thousand schools and about 40% of hospitals. This is especially concerning given the new cholera outbreak sweeping the country, due to the large number of internally displaced people without access to clean water or basic sanitation. The collapse of public services is part of a deliberate strategy that weakens governance and undermines the very notion of the state.
The report highlights the complicity of public officials with armed groups, with accusations of crime financing, arms and drug trafficking, and political exploitation of gangs. The CPT itself stands accused of obstructing police operations and embezzling public funds. Despite the official discourse on security and governance, international actions remain riddled with contradictions, the maintenance of corrupt elites, and support for ill-conceived strategies such as the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS), which, two years after its authorization, has still not contained the violence.
UN interventions: Between principles, failures, and ambiguous reinventions
UN operations rest on three pillars: consent, impartiality, and limited use of force. Yet these principles are collapsing in Haiti. With gangs in territorial control, consent becomes impossible; impartiality translates into widespread repression; and the limits on force are increasingly stretched, legitimized by international mandates.
In 2023, the Security Council once again authorized the deployment of foreign troops in Haiti, but outside the traditional framework of peacekeeping operations. The Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS), known as a “non-UN mission,” operates under Chapter VII of the UN Charter — which permits the use of force — but without subordination to the chain of command, accountability mechanisms, or regular UN funding. If previous institutional frameworks failed to protect the population, their absence now exposes an even more fertile ground for violations. The most evident example is MINUSTAH (2004–2017), which promised to restore security and strengthen institutions but left behind a legacy of violence, sexual abuse, impunity, and anger.
The Transitional Presidential Council’s proposal to transform the MSS into a peacekeeping mission was rejected by the Secretary-General, who argued that such a change would only be possible after a substantial reduction in gang territorial control. However, this condition inverts the logic of intervention: it demands achieving the goal before providing the means to reach it and places on the Haitian people the responsibility of meeting, under enemy fire, the prerequisites for receiving effective assistance. Peace cannot be built through diplomatic blackmail.
Meanwhile, the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) operates under a political mandate and demonstrates impotence in the face of paramilitary escalation. Between ineffective action and dependence on interventions without institutional backing, the pattern of missions lacking local grounding and solid stabilization mechanisms is repeated. The UN also proposes the creation of an Office in Support of the Ministry of Security. Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs, police reform, and the possibility of direct elections are once again in focus: useful measures, but insufficient when centered on fragile institutions and lacking coordination with civil society.
From omission to listening: The urgency of Haitian participation
Haiti, historically considered a laboratory of interventions, can, and must, be reconceptualized as fertile ground for approaches based on dialogue, inclusion, and local initiative. Integrating Haitian knowledge and perspectives into international agendas is not only ethical but an essential condition for generating lasting structural change. In recent decades, international missions of various formats have failed to achieve the goals set in their mandates. Presented as solutions for stabilization, they underestimated the country’s complexity and ignored local conceptions of development, democracy, and peace.
It is necessary to end conditional promises, failed experiments, and improvised resolutions. The cradle of an unthinkable revolution can be a space for genuine transformations, centered on Haitian protagonism and the active listening of the sectors of society that sustain life and resistance in the country. Haiti needs committed solidarity and the recognition that any reconstruction will be done with the Haitians, or it will never be done.This is part of a series of eight articles on Haiti in collaboration with the Research Group Haiti: Decolonization and Liberation – Contemporary and Critical Studies, under the direction of UNILA. The group recently published the book: “Haiti at the Crossroads of the Present Times: Decoloniality, Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Racism“.
*Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves.
Autor
PhD in Social Anthropology from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), with research on international cooperation and UN peacekeeping operations in Haiti.
