Haiti gang violence: A total of 184 killed in Haiti capital violence over weekend: UN human rights chief Volker Turk

A Kenyan police officer, part of a UN-backed multinational force, kneels for cover from an exchange of gunfire between gangs and police at a base in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on December 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Volker Turk, United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said on Monday (December 9, 2024) that 184 people had been killed over the weekend in the Haitian capital, rocked by a spike in gang violence.

“Just this past weekend, at least 184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, in the Cite Soleil area,” Volker Turk told reporters in Geneva. “These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people.”

Cite Soleil, a densely populated slum by the port of the capital Port-au-Prince, is among the poorest and most violent areas of Haiti. Tight gang control, including the restriction of mobile phone use, has limited residents’ ability to share information about the massacre.

In October, at least 115 people were massacred in Pont-Sonde, a town in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region, in what the Gran Grif gang said was retaliation for residents working with a self-defence group hindering their road toll operations.

The government, wracked by political infighting, has struggled to contain armed gangs’ growing power in and around the capital.

Haiti violence: At least 3,661 killed this year; six lakh people displaced, says UN

Haitian authorities had in 2022 requested international security support for local police, but the mission — based on voluntary contributions — that the United Nations approved in 2023 has only partially deployed and is severely under-resourced.

Haitian leaders have since called for the mission to be converted into a U.N. peacekeeping force to ensure it is better supplied, but the plan stalled amid opposition from China and Russia in the Security Council.