Haiti is descending into lawlessness reminiscent of the “Wild West,” with armed gangs expanding their influence, self-defence groups acting like criminal organizations, and public officials operating with impunity, according to William O’Neill, the UN’s designated human rights expert for the country.
O’Neill says the root cause of the crisis is desperation. With over 1.3 million people displaced and half the population going hungry, he warns that poverty and lack of opportunity are driving Haitians, especially young people, into gangs.
“I have never met a gang leader. I have met some young boys who were in a gang, who had been arrested by the police,” O’Neill told UN News. “One of the boys we interviewed was about 12, and he was a street child. His family had abandoned him. He was living on his wits, stealing, begging. And at one point, a gang member approached him and said, ‘We’ll give you a hot meal a day. We’ll give you some money every week, but you’re going to be a lookout.’”
O’Neill describes daily life in Port-au-Prince as “hell on earth,” with gangs operating like a mafia that terrorizes civilians. “The impact of violence on economic, social and cultural rights — in addition to the right to life, the right to bodily integrity and the right to access to food, health care, clean water, shelter, education — have all been severely compromised,” he said.
The UN expert also highlighted the troubling role of some public officials. He noted the case of the Miragoâne prosecutor, accused of killing upwards of 80 people with “total impunity,” yet remaining popular locally because he is seen as standing up to gangs. “Why is he popular? It’s because the institutions have failed. It’s this vicious cycle that as long as the institutions are still so weak, you have the Wild West like in old American movies, where the sheriff is the judge, jury and executioner, all in one,” O’Neill said.
Self-defence groups are also controversial, sometimes morphing into violent, gang-like entities themselves. “If you’re a young man that they don’t recognize and have a tattoo or don’t have ID, they will kill the person on the spot and burn the body,” O’Neill said.
Authorities have recently deployed drones to target gang leaders in dense urban areas, a tactic O’Neill warns raises serious human rights concerns. “Police are only allowed to use deadly force in very limited circumstances… I find it hard to see where you meet those conditions with these drones. They call them kamikaze drones. They just send them in, and they hope that when it explodes, it kills a gang leader.”
Despite the dire situation, O’Neill believes Haiti’s crisis is not insurmountable. He says the UN Security Council has identified three key measures to restore stability: a fully equipped multinational force, sanctions, and stopping the flow of weapons from the United States. “If you did all those three things at once, with robustness, you would be able to overcome the gangs fairly quickly because they’re not popular. The people hate them,” he said.
Haiti continues to receive life-saving humanitarian aid, but O’Neill stresses that political will and decisive action are essential to ending the cycle of violence and impunity.
