The United Nations Human Rights Office released a report denouncing thousands of people killed and injured by gangs in Haiti. The UN again called for the deployment of a security force to help police regain control of the country.
A United Nations report released on Tuesday denounced that violence unleashed by gangs in Haiti has led to more than 3,000 murders and thousands more injured and kidnapped, calling for an accelerated deployment of a multinational force to the island.
“The situation in Haiti is catastrophic. We continue to receive reports of killings, sexual violence, displacement and other types of violence, including in hospitals,” said Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The senior diplomat quoted that report This covers events between the entire period and October 2023 and reflects that in the killings committed by gang groups, 3,960 people were killed, 1,432 were injured and a further 2,951 were “abducted in gang-related violence”.
Last October the UN Security Council authorized the deployment of a multinational forceCommanded by Kenya – without the involvement of the United Nations – to support the Haitian police forces in combating the gangs.
Also read: IOM warns of “vulnerability” to internally displaced people due to violence in Haiti
Shortly afterwards, the African country’s parliament froze the mission and demanded that the training and financing conditions set out when the troop deployment was announced must first be met.
Haitians, on the other hand, are wary of an armed presence with UN approval. The Caribbean country was cholera-free until 2010, when the organization’s peacekeepers dumped infected wastewater into a river. More than 9,000 people died from the disease and around 800,000 became ill.
This Tuesday’s report focuses in particular on the Bas-Artibonite district, located in the center of the Caribbean state, about 100 km from the capital Port-au-Prince.
In Bas-Artibonite, 1,694 people had been murdered by October this year, the report said.
Violence in Haiti has reached worrying levels since the armed attacks They assassinated the president of HaitiJovenel Moïse, at his own residence in Port-au-Prince, in July 2021.
Also read: UN calls for “armed violence and terror” in Haiti
Several suspects with Colombian citizenship and Haitian nationals are undergoing trial or have already been convicted in the United States in connection with the attack.
The gangs used sexual violence as a means of intimidating the population, the report said had already reported the same UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Following the report, the UN Panel of Experts on Haiti calls on the Security Council to update the list of individuals and entities under United Nations sanctions “for supporting, preparing, ordering or committing acts” that violate international law violated.