An attack by a notorious gang in the town of Pont Sondé, Haiti, left at least 70 people dead on Thursday, after gunmen armed with automatic rifles opened fire, a spokesperson for the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Friday.
The UN Security Council on Monday re-authorized the deployment of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti for 12 months.
At least 3,661 people have been killed in Haiti since January due to rampant gang violence, “maintaining the high levels of violence seen in 2023,” the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said in a report issued on Friday.
Haiti is becoming more resilient, but can only fully recover with international solidarity, Edgard Leblanc Fils said on Thursday, voicing support for a UN-led peacekeeping mission to combat gang violence that has “paralyzed” the nation and left its people desperate and nearly without hope.
Haiti is facing a “catastrophic and cataclysmic” human rights situation according to the UN’s designated expert on rights issues in the Caribbean island nation, William O’Neill.
Attacks by gangs, executions, kidnappings for ransom, violence against women – including rape – as well as corruption, inmates dying in jail and a paralyzed judicial system, are just some of the rights challenges the country is facing.
A series of crises is making it difficult for Haiti’s most vulnerable farming households to work their land, recover from natural weather events and build their livelihoods according to a senior representative of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Extreme weather, including hurricanes, as well as the effects of climate change and now rampant insecurity have dramatically impacted successive growing seasons leaving around five million Haitians hungry.
Ongoing violence in Haiti is putting the education of over 100,000 displaced children in the south at risk, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Wednesday.
More work needs to be done to bolster support for Haiti’s police force as gang violence continues to rock Haiti, said Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN and the newly elected president of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), who just returned from visiting Port-au-Prince.
