Haiti con­tin­ues to wal­low in deep cri­sis as crim­i­nal gangs en­trench their vi­o­lent con­trol over near­ly 90 per cent of Port-au-Prince and oth­er parts of the coun­try. These armed groups have be­come a de fac­to regime of ter­ror.

Es­pe­cial­ly chill­ing is the ram­pant sex­u­al vi­o­lence be­ing used as a twist­ed re­ward for gang mem­bers, some as young as 14. As I not­ed in my pre­vi­ous com­men­tary, young women and girls are be­ing raped with im­puni­ty in ar­eas un­der gang rule. Kid­nap­pings for ran­som are an every­day fear, and nor­mal life is grasped in the brief mo­ments that it comes. The trau­ma in­flict­ed on Hait­ian so­ci­ety is in­cal­cu­la­ble.

The Tran­si­tion­al Na­tion­al Coun­cil (TNC), charged with gov­ern­ing Haiti un­til Feb­ru­ary 2026, has been un­able to con­tain this de­scent in­to chaos. The Hait­ian Na­tion­al Po­lice are both out­manned and out­gunned. Mean­while, the Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port (MSS) mis­sion of most­ly Kenyan troops—de­ployed in the ab­sence of a UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil-au­tho­rised force—is large­ly con­fined to bar­racks. Starved of fund­ing and op­er­at­ing with­out a clear man­date to use force, their ca­pac­i­ty to con­front the gangs is es­sen­tial­ly non-ex­is­tent.