The In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights (IACHR) Fri­day ex­pressed alarm at the con­tin­u­ing de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty and the in­crease in vi­o­lence by armed gangs in Haiti.

The IACHR, a prin­ci­pal, au­tonomous body of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), said gang vi­o­lence es­ca­lat­ed through­out last year, af­fect­ing al­most the en­tire Hait­ian ter­ri­to­ry: from the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince, to dif­fer­ent de­part­ments of the coun­try such as Gan­thi­er, Cabaret, Arc­a­haie, Car­refour, Gressier, Pe­tit-Goâve and Léogâne.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights, more than 85 per cent of the cap­i­tal’s met­ro­pol­i­tan area are con­trolled by armed gangs and the mas­sacres of the last quar­ter of 2024, such as the one per­pe­trat­ed in Pont Sondé in Oc­to­ber with 70 vic­tims or the one in the Wharf Jérémie neigh­bour­hood in De­cem­ber that claimed the lives of more than 200 peo­ple, in­di­cate the com­plete break­down of the se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try.

The IACHR said this vi­o­lence left at least 5,600 peo­ple dead that year, and 1,000 more than in 2023, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures pub­lished by the Unit­ed Na­tions.

It said by Oc­to­ber 2024, more than 700,000 peo­ple were dis­placed in Haiti and dur­ing the first 17 days of De­cem­ber alone, armed at­tacks in the com­munes of Port au Prince and Pe­tite riv­iere de L’Art­i­bonite caused the dis­place­ment of a fur­ther 21,000 peo­ple.

The IACHR said that ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, the dis­placed in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies are liv­ing in pre­car­i­ous liv­ing con­di­tions in camps, with­out ba­sic ameni­ties, in ter­ror and fac­ing a lack of se­cu­ri­ty. This es­pe­cial­ly af­fects women and girls, ac­cord­ing to UN Women.

“Civ­il so­ci­ety or­ga­ni­za­tions de­nounce these vi­o­la­tions and the ab­sence of rule of law, no ac­cess to jus­tice and im­puni­ty. The ef­forts of the Na­tion­al Po­lice (PNH) and the armed forces to con­trol the armed gangs, with the sup­port of the Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port Mis­sion (MMAS), de­ployed in June 2024 are in­ad­e­quate to meet the scale of the harm to which the pop­u­la­tion is ex­posed.”.

The IACHR said that the paral­y­sis of the ju­di­cia­ry due to mul­ti­ple at­tacks against its main in­sti­tu­tions re­in­forces such a cli­mate of im­puni­ty

“In this con­text, the IACHR re­it­er­ates its call to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to in­ten­si­fy ef­forts to sup­port the Hait­ian State and peo­ple in fac­ing the se­ri­ous mul­ti­di­men­sion­al cri­sis it is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing,” the state­ment de­clared.

“This in­cludes en­sur­ing that a di­ver­si­ty of civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tors is con­sult­ed and can mean­ing­ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in dis­cus­sions and ac­tions to sta­bi­lize the po­lit­i­cal process­es and im­prove se­cu­ri­ty,” said the IACHR, whose man­date de­rives from the OAS Char­ter and the Amer­i­can Con­ven­tion on Hu­man Rights. — WASH­ING­TON, D.C. (CMC)