The UN reported Friday that hundreds of individuals were slain in lynchings by vigilante mobs among the more than 2,400 people who have died in Haiti since the beginning of 2023 as a result of severe gang violence.
The death toll comes after riots this week in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, left 30 locals dead and more than a dozen injured.
“Between January 1 and August 15 of this year, at least 2,439 people have been killed and a further 902 injured,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
And as anger grows, she warned that a rise in popular justice movements and “Since April 24 up to mid-August, more than 350 people have been lynched by local people and vigilante groups,” she said, adding that of those, 310 were alleged gang members and one was a police officer.self-defence groups was fuelling the fire.
The others were people from the general public.
An initial death toll from the attacks, which included the burning of homes in Port-au-Prince’s Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhood and the deaths of two police officers, was reported to AFP by the National Human Rights Defense Network.
The neighborhood serves as a key location for the gangs, who rule over 80% of the city. Authorities reported that more than 5,000 individuals have left their houses.
Kidnappings for ransom, carjackings, rapes, and armed thefts are examples of violent crimes.
“Reports from Haiti this week have underscored the extreme brutality of the violence being inflicted on the population and the impact that it is having on their human rights,” Shamdasani said.
In the face of the violence, UN rights chief Volker Turk called for urgent action to be taken on an appeal for a non-UN multinational force to be sent in “to support the Haitian police in addressing the grave security situation and restoring the rule of law”.
“The human rights of the Haitian people must be protected and their suffering alleviated,” Turk said.
Kenya made the announcement at the end of July that it was prepared to command a multinational force and send out 1,000 police officers “to help train and assist the Haitian police restore normalcy in the country.”
Years of intertwined political, security, and economic challenges have plagued Haiti.
The situation has drastically worsened since President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021, with gangs gaining a stronger foothold.
The head of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network said that the population had been “left to fend for itself”.
“The national police is dysfunctional and is facing leadership problems,” said Pierre Esperance, criticizing the “highest level connivance” with the crime gangs.
“The Haitian police cannot solve the problem of insecurity because it is part of insecurity,” he said, noting that the crisis cannot be tackled “without tackling the problems of governance, the absence of the rule of law, impunity and political instability”.
