PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti--Inside a former school now used as a shelter, more than 1,200 Haitians live side by side after fleeing homes overrun, burned or shot apart by gangs. Privacy is nearly impossible. One meal a day is all that is guaranteed. Parents worry about their children. Families who once had communities now sleep in crowded classrooms, waiting for security to return to neighborhoods they are not sure still exist.
For many, the demand is simple: they want to go home.
That pain was on display Tuesday as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres visited Haiti, where gang violence has deepened one of the country’s worst humanitarian and security crises in years. According to new UN statistics, about 2,300 people have been killed across Haiti so far this year, another 100 have been kidnapped, and 1.5 million have been displaced.
Among those forced from their homes are more than 300,000 people in Port-au-Prince alone. More than 18,000 fled Cité Soleil in May, according to the UN International Organization for Migration. Last weekend, more than 30 people were killed, injured or reported missing in that seaside community, according to the local human rights organization Cooperative for Peace and Development.
Guterres’ convoy moved through areas scarred by violence, passing abandoned homes, damaged businesses, bullet-marked buildings and Haitians living beneath makeshift shelters of canvas and rope. In one neighborhood, graffiti called for the defeat of Viv Ansanm, the powerful gang federation that the United States has designated a foreign terrorist organization. The group is estimated to control about 70 percent of Port-au-Prince.
At the shelter, Guterres met privately with six women who spoke about the lack of privacy, the hardship of raising children in crowded conditions and the daily humiliation of life without proper shelter. One woman described the conditions as “skin-to-skin and mouth-to-mouth.”
Outside, frustration boiled over. A man slapped the metal siding of the building and shouted, “We want to go back home!” before security moved Guterres away.
Wendy Cejour, 26, told The Associated Press that he and his family have been living at the school for a year and a half.
“As long as we’re alive we have hope, but … things are difficult,” he said. “We ask ... to return to our neighborhood to live better, because we don’t have a life here.”
The visit came as Haiti prepares for the deployment of a new gang-suppression force approved by the UN Security Council in September. The force will replace the UN-backed mission led by Kenyan police, which was intended to support Haiti’s National Police but remained underfunded and understaffed.
So far, Jamaica, Chad, El Salvador and Guatemala have deployed personnel, with the combined force still numbering fewer than 1,000. Operations are expected to begin in the coming weeks. The force is expected to work alongside Haiti’s National Police and the country’s growing Armed Forces.
Guterres also met behind closed doors with Prime Minister Alix Didier-Fils-Aimé, whose transitional government is under pressure to restore security and organize elections. Haiti has not had a president since Jovenel Moïse was killed at his private residence in July 2021.
Fils-Aimé said security remains the priority if the country is to return to constitutional order. He said Guterres can assist by ensuring that countries supporting the gang-suppression force honor their commitments.
The crisis has reached the highest levels of government. James Boyard, cabinet director of the Defense Ministry, was kidnapped last week in one of the few areas of the capital still considered relatively safe.
Human Rights Watch, in a letter published a day before Guterres’ visit, urged the UN chief to prioritize protection for Haiti’s population and address the root causes of violence and human rights abuses.
Guterres said the suffering he witnessed would stay with him.
“What I saw will not leave me,” he said. “Each day is a fight to survive. ... The women and the children pay the highest price.”
