The Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights, Volk­er Turk, Tues­day said that the scale of hu­man rights abus­es is un­prece­dent­ed in mod­ern Hait­ian his­to­ry.

“The es­ca­la­tion of vi­o­lence has had a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on the pop­u­la­tion. All hu­man rights are im­pact­ed, Turk said in a video mes­sage to the UN Hu­man Rights Coun­cil.

“This ses­sion on Haiti is tak­ing place at a crit­i­cal mo­ment for the coun­try. A sit­u­a­tion that was al­ready alarm­ing has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed rapid­ly in re­cent weeks. This is clear­ly doc­u­ment­ed in the re­port pre­sent­ed by my Of­fice to­day,” he said.

He said Haiti is in the grip of to­tal chaos which start­ed with civ­il un­rest at the be­gin­ning of the year and has been fol­lowed, since the end of Feb­ru­ary, by un­re­lent­ing, co­or­di­nat­ed at­tacks by crim­i­nal gangs against po­lice sta­tions, pris­ons, crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and oth­er pub­lic and pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties with the stat­ed aim of de­pos­ing the cur­rent au­thor­i­ties.

Turk said a state of emer­gency is cur­rent­ly in place and while while in­sti­tu­tions are crum­bling, the tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment is not yet es­tab­lished.

“The peo­ple of Haiti await anx­ious­ly the out­come of the talks to es­tab­lish these tran­si­tion­al arrange­ments, which would even­tu­al­ly pave the way for elec­tions. The de­ploy­ment of the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil man­dat­ed Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port mis­sion is al­so ur­gent,” he said, adding “peo­ple in Haiti can­not wait any longer.

Haiti has been thrown in­to se­vere po­lit­i­cal and so­cio eco­nom­ic chaos ever since its Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moi­se was as­sas­si­nat­ed in on Ju­ly 7, 2021 with crim­i­nal gangs now seek­ing to over­throw the gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ariel Hen­ry, who re­mains strand­ed in the Unit­ed States and un­able to re­turn to his French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try.

Hen­ry had trav­elled to Kenya to sign an agree­ment al­low­ing for the de­ploy­ment of the Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port (MSS) Mis­sion, an in­ter­na­tion­al po­lice force ap­proved by the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Oc­to­ber 2 last year.

“The on­go­ing in­se­cu­ri­ty has wors­ened the al­ready dire hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in Haiti,” the UN said over the week­end, adding that 360,000 peo­ple are cur­rent­ly dis­placed, in­clud­ing some 160,000 in the Port-au-Prince met­ro­pol­i­tan area, and more than 1,000 schools have been closed across the coun­try.

Last month, the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) group­ing, which is spear­head­ing ef­forts for a Hait­ian-led so­lu­tion to end the sit­u­a­tion in the French-speak­ing CARI­COM coun­try, said that an agree­ment had been reached that would al­low for Prime Min­is­ter Hen­ry to step down and for a tran­si­tion­al gov­er­nance arrange­ment “which paves the way for a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er, con­ti­nu­ity of gov­er­nance and ac­tion plan for near term se­cu­ri­ty and the road to free and fair elec­tions”.

CARI­COM said that it was al­so agreed that there would be the cre­ation of a CPT com­prised of sev­en vot­ing mem­bers and two vot­ing ob­servers.

Those with votes in­clude the ‘Pitit De­salin’ par­ty head­ed by Jean-Charles Moi­se, the EDE par­ty of for­mer prime min­is­ter Charles Joseph; the Fan­mi Lavalas par­ty; the De­cem­ber 21 coali­tion led by Hen­ry; the Mon­tana Ac­cord group; and mem­bers of the pri­vate sec­tor.

The non-vot­ing mem­bers will be rep­re­sent­ed by one mem­ber from civ­il so­ci­ety and one mem­ber of the in­ter­faith com­mu­ni­ty.

On Sun­day, the CPT al­so is­sued a state­ment deny­ing that it had is­sued a doc­u­ment that dis­cuss­es the dis­missal of se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials and deals with the pro­ce­dures for its in­stal­la­tion.

In his ad­dress to the UN Hu­man Rights Coun­cil, Turk said there had been a “shock­ing rise in killings and kid­nap­pings” as well as per­va­sive sex­u­al vi­o­lence in the coun­try that is very like­ly to have reached lev­els not seen be­fore.

“First and fore­most, the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty must be restor­ing a de­gree of pub­lic or­der to pre­vent fur­ther harm to the pop­u­la­tion from vi­o­lence and to en­sure ac­cess to life-sav­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance,” Turk said.

The UN hu­man rights of­fice said that gang vi­o­lence had left more than 1,500 peo­ple dead in the first three months of the year.

Turk said be­tween 1 Jan­u­ary and 20 March alone, 1,434 peo­ple have died and 797 have been in­jured in gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence across the coun­try.

“This has been the most vi­o­lent pe­ri­od since the es­tab­lish­ment two years ago of the hu­man rights mon­i­tor­ing mech­a­nism on gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence, set up by our hu­man rights pres­ence in Haiti,” he said, adding “an es­ti­mat­ed 5.5 mil­lion Haitians are now de­pen­dent on hu­man­i­tar­i­an pro­tec­tion and as­sis­tance, in­clud­ing three mil­lion chil­dren.

He said in the re­port be­ing pre­sent­ed to­day, “we have set out rec­om­men­da­tions for steps that must be tak­en ur­gent­ly.

“First and fore­most, the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty must be restor­ing a de­gree of pub­lic or­der to pre­vent fur­ther harm to the pop­u­la­tion from vi­o­lence and to en­sure ac­cess to life­sav­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance.”

Turk said this re­quires strong co­op­er­a­tion with the man­dat­ed Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port mis­sion whose de­ploy­ment,”I hope, will be im­mi­nent.

“All mea­sures tak­en to re­store se­cu­ri­ty must be ful­ly com­pli­ant with hu­man rights stan­dards. Hu­man­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dors need to be es­tab­lished as soon as pos­si­ble.

“I call on all na­tion­al stake­hold­ers to place the na­tion­al in­ter­est firm­ly at the cen­tre of their cur­rent talks so an agree­ment can be reached, with­out fur­ther de­lay, on tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment arrange­ments.”

Turk said that the tran­si­tion­al au­thor­i­ties must work to­wards the con­di­tions for free and fair elec­tions.

“And they must start the process of strength­en­ing the po­lice and jus­tice in­sti­tu­tions so that the rule of law is re-es­tab­lished and, with it, an end to im­puni­ty.”