The Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights, Volk­er Türk, Fri­day said that the hu­man rights sit­u­a­tion in Haiti has reached yet an­oth­er cri­sis point and called on re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the me­dia “ to put the spot­light on this cri­sis, so that the in­tol­er­a­ble suf­fer­ing and de­struc­tion can end.

“The Hait­ian peo­ple can­not be for­got­ten,” Türk told the 58th ses­sion of the Hu­man Rights Coun­cil, not­ing that when he last vis­it­ed the French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try, he heard com­mu­ni­ties call­ing out for help, ex­haust­ed and fright­ened from years of vi­o­lence, in­se­cu­ri­ty and un­bear­able pre­car­i­ty.

Türk said that in the two years since then, the sit­u­a­tion has dra­mat­i­cal­ly wors­ened, telling the Coun­cil “their plea must be heard.

“Gangs are spread­ing in­to what were once gang-free ar­eas in Port au Prince and its out­skirts and are cap­tur­ing key ter­ri­to­ry and in­fra­struc­ture. Gangs have unit­ed to launch co­or­di­nat­ed at­tacks, armed with pow­er­ful weapons and in some cas­es out­num­ber­ing and out­pow­er­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces.

“Gangs are killing or­di­nary peo­ple, bru­tal­ly pun­ish­ing those who de­fy their rules, or are sus­pect­ed of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the po­lice or self-de­fense groups,” he said, paus­ing for a minute “be­cause I am not sure the usu­al de­scrip­tion of gang vi­o­lence cap­tures the amount of un­bear­able suf­fer­ing that has been in­flict­ed on the Hait­ian peo­ple”.

He told the Coun­cil mem­bers that the re­port be­fore them de­tails how the use of traf­ficked firearms and dif­fer­ent forms of am­mu­ni­tion are fu­el­ing a de­struc­tive cy­cle of vi­o­lence, lead­ing to se­vere hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions and abus­es.

Türk said that re­ports es­ti­mate that be­tween 270,000 and 500,000 firearms are cir­cu­lat­ing il­le­gal­ly in Haiti, with most weapons in the hands of gangs. He said that these weapons, which are in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed, are not man­u­fac­tured in Haiti, but con­sis­tent­ly flow in from else­where.

The UN hu­man rights of­fi­cial said that the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil’s arms em­bar­go, as well as its tar­get­ed as­set freeze and trav­el ban, “is ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal,” not­ing that be­tween Ju­ly 1, 2024 and Feb­ru­ary 28 this year, 4,239 peo­ple were killed and 1,356 in­jured.

“Our Of­fice es­ti­mates that 92 per cent of the ca­su­al­ties re­sult­ed from the use of firearms. Sev­er­al mass killings were doc­u­ment­ed. For ex­am­ple, dur­ing five days in ear­ly De­cem­ber, at least 207 peo­ple were killed by gangs con­trol­ling the Wharf Jérémie neigh­bour­hood of Cité Soleil.”

Türk said that the Viv Ansanm gang coali­tion and oth­ers have de­stroyed pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing schools, or­phan­ages, health­care cen­tres and courts, at­tacked me­dia out­lets and hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­tors, and ran­sacked busi­ness­es.

“The ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence of guns is cen­tral to their use of vi­o­lence,” he said, adding that sex­u­al vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing col­lec­tive rape and sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion, is in­creas­ing­ly used by gangs as a tool to co­erce com­mu­ni­ties and as­sert their dom­i­nance.

“Un­der the threat of arms, many vic­tims were at­tacked in their homes, while oth­ers were ab­duct­ed, raped in pub­lic spaces, or seized while trav­el­ing on pub­lic trans­port. Sev­er­al vic­tims were shot dead af­ter be­ing raped. Ser­vices for sur­vivors re­main ex­treme­ly scarce.”

Türk said that his of­fice has al­so doc­u­ment­ed the forced re­cruit­ment, ex­ploita­tion and traf­fick­ing of chil­dren by gangs and that it has doc­u­ment­ed more than 700 kid­nap­pings.

“All were car­ried out by peo­ple with guns. Those who at­tempt­ed to re­sist ab­duc­tion were of­ten shot dead.”

Türk told the Coun­cil that gangs are im­ple­ment­ing their own form of gov­er­nance in the ar­eas un­der their con­trol and de­spite sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts by the Hait­ian Na­tion­al Po­lice, gang at­tacks are chal­leng­ing the state’s con­trol over re­main­ing ter­ri­to­ry and its abil­i­ty to re­gain ter­ri­to­ries from the gangs.

He said dur­ing the re­port­ing pe­ri­od, more than 2000 peo­ple were killed or in­jured in law en­force­ment op­er­a­tions against gangs, a 60 per cent in­crease com­pared to the pre­vi­ous six-month pe­ri­od.

Türk said al­most one third of those killed were hit when they were not in­volved in acts of vi­o­lence, of­ten struck by stray bul­lets while in the streets or at home.

“My Of­fice has doc­u­ment­ed at least 219 cas­es of sum­ma­ry ex­e­cu­tions by spe­cial­ized po­lice units dur­ing the re­port­ing pe­ri­od, a sub­stan­tial in­crease from 33 in 2023.”

The UN of­fi­cial said that lynch­ing of gang mem­bers by self-de­fense groups and spon­ta­neous an­gry mobs, some­times fa­cil­i­tat­ed or wit­nessed by Hait­ian po­lice of­fi­cers, have in­creased over the past few months, as the Hait­ian Na­tion­al Po­lice and the Kenya-led Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port (MSS) Mis­sion are over­whelmed and lack re­sources.

“I urge States to quick­ly ad­vance the de­ploy­ment of this mis­sion. OHCHR is pro­vid­ing ad­vice to the mis­sion, in re­la­tion to the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the hu­man rights com­pli­ance mech­a­nism re­quest­ed by the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.”

The Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in 2023 passed a res­o­lu­tion for the MSS mis­sion, aimed at com­bat­ing gang vi­o­lence and restor­ing sta­bil­i­ty in the coun­try. Crim­i­nal gangs are seek­ing to take com­plete con­trol of the cap­i­tal Port au Prince, and have launched sev­er­al at­tacks, killing women and chil­dren among oth­ers.

Türk said cor­rup­tion con­tin­ues to be wide­spread in state in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the ju­di­cia­ry and the po­lice, which im­pedes their ef­fi­cien­cy and the de­liv­ery of cru­cial ser­vices.

“Im­puni­ty for hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions deeply erodes pub­lic trust,” Türk said, adding “the cat­a­stroph­ic hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion is deep­en­ing”.

He said more than one mil­lion peo­ple have been dis­placed in Haiti, many mul­ti­ple times, 40,000 of whom have been forced to move in the past few weeks alone.

“One in every two Haitians – 5.5 mil­lion peo­ple – face acute food in­se­cu­ri­ty. Two mil­lion peo­ple face emer­gency lev­els of hunger. Near­ly 6,000 dis­placed peo­ple are liv­ing in famine-like con­di­tions.

“The im­pact on chil­dren is par­tic­u­lar­ly dev­as­tat­ing. Over half a mil­lion chil­dren are dis­placed, 50 per cent more than in Sep­tem­ber 2024. Near­ly one in four chil­dren in Haiti suf­fers from stunt­ing due to mal­nu­tri­tion, which will im­pact them for life,” Türk said, telling the Coun­cil that on­ly half of health fa­cil­i­ties are ful­ly op­er­a­tional in the Port au Prince met­ro­pol­i­tan area, with 31 per cent forced to close due to in­se­cu­ri­ty over the years.

“Amidst all of this, the po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tion, which held so much hope is hang­ing by a thread,” he said, re­it­er­at­ing that the most cru­cial first step here is to stop the il­lic­it flow of arms in­to the coun­try.

“And with­out sus­tained ac­tion on the fac­tors that are per­pet­u­at­ing this chaos, any gains in se­cu­ri­ty or sta­bil­i­ty will be tem­po­rary,” Türk warned.