UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States on Tuesday extended its ban on flights to Haiti’s capital until Sept. 8 because of escalating gang violence, which the U.N.’s human rights expert on the Caribbean nation said is more dire than ever.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s announcement extends a ban on U.S. flights to Port-au-Prince that began in November after gangs opened fire on three commercial planes. The initial ban was set to expire on Wednesday.
William O’Neill, the U.N. human rights commissioner’s expert on Haiti, who just visited the country for the fourth time since his appointment two years ago, told U.N. reporters on Tuesday that the gang violence is worse, as is “the pain and despair of an entire population.”
Despite efforts by Haiti’s national police and a U.N.-backed Kenya-led multinational police force, he said, “the risk of the capital falling under gang control is palpable.”
“These violent criminal groups continue to extend and consolidate their hold even beyond the capital,” O’Neill said. “They kill, rape, terrorize, set fire to homes, orphanages, schools, hospitals, places of worship.”
He said the gangs have infiltrated all spheres of society, “with the utmost impunity and, sometimes, as many sources point out, with the complicity of powerful actors,”
The gangs have grown in power since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and are now estimated to control up to 85% of the capital.
O’Neill said over 1 million people have been displaced, with nowhere to go. In makeshift camps, he said, hunger and sexual violence are widespread and “for many it’s a matter of survival.”
He urged Haitian authorities to fight the impunity and corruption that he said were the major obstacles to dismantling the gangs. He said they must also beef up the police force, which he said numbered 9,000 to 10,000 in a country of 11 million people, compared with about 50,000 in the neighboring Dominican Republic, which has a similar population.
O’Neill called for a substantial reinforcement of the multinational force, which started arriving last June and now numbers about 1,000 police. He said a well-equipped force of 2,500 “could have an enormous impact on controlling, dismantling, overpowering the gangs.”
He said both the international force and the Haitian police need more mobility — helicopters and better ground vehicles — as well as night vision goggles and body armor.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently proposed to the U.N. Security Council that logistics and equipment for the Kenya-led force, including drones, fuel, ground and air transportation, be funded from the U.N. budget — instead of the current fund that relies on voluntary contributions. That fund would be used to pay the international police.