By: Staff Writer
July 18, 2025
A report, by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the UN Human Rights Office said that since March 2025, the Centre department in Haiti has been the scene of intensified gang violence and a surge in human rights violations.
“In addition, intense gang-related criminal activity continues to be documented in the Lower and in regions located to the east of the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince (MAPP). Artibonite.”
“Human rights abuses outside Port-au-Prince are intensifying in areas of the country where the presence of the State is extremely limited. The international community must strengthen its support to the authorities, who bear the primary responsibility for protecting the Haitian population,” said Ulrika Richardson, ad interim Head of BINUH and UN Resident Coordinator.
The report also said: “The gangs appear to be pursuing a strategic objective of establishing a presence in localities along key roadways crossing the Centre and Artibonite departments, particularly with the aim of controlling routes that connect the capital to the northern regions and to the border with the Dominican Republic, in the east of the country.
“This expansion of gang territorial control poses a major risk of spreading violence and increasing transnational trafficking in arms and people, which could lead to significant destabilisation for countries in the Caribbean subregion, especially given the extremely limited presence of public administration and United Nations entities in these departments.”
Between 1 October 2024 and 30 June 2025, at least 1,018 people were killed, 213 others injured and 620 abducted in Artibonite and Centre, as well as in Ganthier and Fonds Parisien, west of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, the report says.
Over the same period, the total number of killings across Haiti was 4,864.*
The report notes that the mass killing in Pont Sondé (Lower Artibonite) in October 2024, which left over 100 people dead, marked a major turning point in the cycle of violence between gangs and the so-called ‘self-defence’ groups. Several other mass killings followed, causing mass displacement, including in the town of Mirebalais (Centre department) which earlier this year saw all its 100,000 residents flee.
“In response to this situation, the national authorities deployed several specialised units of the national police, supported by the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, from Port-au-Prince, where a large proportion of the country’s security forces are concentrated. Locally, self-defence groups strengthened in an attempt to counter the rapid rise in gang violence and the authorities’ inability to contain it,” the report further noted.
It continued: “In the short term, these efforts resulted in a slowdown in the expansion of gang activity and a reduction in abuses, although they did not lead to the effective recovery of control over the affected areas. One of the most concerning aspects, however, is the commission of numerous human rights violations and abuses, both by security forces (notably summary executions) and by self-defence groups (carrying out attacks against individuals suspected of supporting gangs). The HRS monitoring and investigation mechanism has confirmed that the MSS was not involved in any of these incidents.”