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Numerous domestic and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate in Haiti, but human rights defenders and activists who address sensitive topics are subject to threats and violence, which creates a climate of fear.
May 20, 2024 · The Haitian National Police (HNP) is unable to fully contain the outbreak of violence, and Haiti’s military is small and only modestly equipped. Just about everyone agrees that assistance from the international community is needed to support the HNP in its efforts to stabilise the situation and make it possible for Haitians to go about their ...
Mar 13, 2024 · World. What to know about the crisis of violence, politics and hunger engulfing Haiti. Chaos has gutted Port-au-Prince and Haiti's government, a crisis brought on by decades of political...
Apr 4, 2024 · 4 April 2024 Peace and Security. As a siege imposed by heavily armed gangs on Port-au-Prince, Haiti, stretches into a second month, the UN migration agency sounded an alarm on Thursday about the...
- Political Crisis
- Investigation of President Moïse’S Assassination
- Violence and Displacement
- Human Rights Defenders
- Criminal Justice System
- Abuses by Security Forces
- Accountability For Past Abuses
- Rights to Health, Water, and Food
- Inequality and Barriers to Education
- Women’s and Girls’ Rights
Haiti’s Superior Council of the Judiciary ruled on February 6, 2021, that Moïse’s presidency would end the next day, but Moïse argued his term would end on February 7, 2022, five years after he took office. He had been ruling by decree since January 2020, due to the inexistence of a seated parliament given postponed legislative elections. On Februa...
A day after the assassination, Haitian police engaged in a shootout with suspected assassins, killing several and taking others into custody. In late July, two judges and two clerks of the Court of Peace who conducted judicial proceedings regarding the murder of President Moïse were threatened. On August 9, Justice Mathieu Chanlatte was appointed t...
Violence is escalating. The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) reported 1,074 intentional homicides and 328 kidnappings from January to August 2021. Intentional homicides increased by 14 per cent, compared with 944 cases in the same period of 2020, and kidnappings continued to rise, compared with 234 for all of 2020. According to the...
BINUH documented 32 cases of attacks, threats, and intimidation against judges, human rights defenders and journalists, from February to August 2021. RNDDH Director Pierre Espérance received a death threat from the “G9” in June. Diego Charles, an anticorruption activist and reporter, and Antoinette Duclaire, a feminist, political activist, and jour...
Haiti’s prisons remain severely overcrowded, with many detainees living in inhumane conditions. Overcrowding is largely attributable to pretrial detentions, BINUH and OHCHR reported in 2021. As of September, prisons housed nearly 11,000 detainees, 82 percent of whom were awaiting trial. New criminal and criminal procedure codes set to enter into fo...
Protests against the government continued to be repressed with excessive use of force. The RNDDH, in January 2021, reported at least 8 journalists injured, 10 demonstrators and 13 political activists arbitrarily arrested, and 2 students beaten by police during several protests. In February, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) repo...
In 2014, a court of appeal ordered investigations re-opened into arbitrary detentions, torture, disappearances, summary executions, and forced exile during Jean Claude Duvalier’s presidency (1971-1986). As of September 2021, investigations remained pending. In 2020, former Haitian death squad leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant was deported from the US...
The country’s most vulnerable communities face dramatic floods and soil erosion caused by deforestation that has nearly eliminated forest cover in the country, leading to reduced agricultural productivity. Over a third of the population lacks access to clean water and two-thirds have limited or no sanitation service. More than a third of Haitians—4...
Just under half of Haitians aged 15 and older are illiterate. The country’s education system is highly unequal. The quality of public education is generally very poor, and 85 percent of schools are private, charging fees that exclude most children from low-income families. Over 3 million children had been unable to attend school for months at a tim...
Gender-based violence is common. Rape was only explicitly criminalized in 2005, by ministerial decree. Gender-based violence was already one of the highest risks for girls and women in the southern province even before the earthquake, with sexual exploitation prevalent in some areas; these risks were expected to rise in the wake of the 2021 earthqu...
Apr 22, 2024 · The first quarter of 2024 was the deadliest for Haitians with around 2,500 people killed or injured in gang violence, a senior United Nations official told the Security Council, calling for the...
Apr 24, 2023 · Haiti. UN. war. Antonio Guterres. Insecurity in Haiti's capital has reached levels similar to countries at war, the United Nations said Monday in a report that highlighted a surge in murders and...
