The UN-backed Gang Suppression Force in Haiti

The Gang Suppression Force (GSF) was authorised to field 5,500 personnel in Haiti. About 1,500 have arrived, or 27% of the intended strength, and they face at least 26 gangs that control approximately 90% of Port-au-Prince and its surroundings. The force's design complicates the picture further. It is not a UN peacekeeping mission. Member states supply the troops and the command, while a newly created UN Support Office handles logistics. The organisation, in effect, pays for and equips a force it does not lead. If the arrangement works, it will be copied elsewhere, which is reason enough to examine it closely.

The attraction is easy to see. Conventional peacekeeping is costly, slow to authorise and politically exposed, and a model in which the UN provides the plumbing while others take the risk offers action without ownership. Ownership, though, is precisely what Haitians have learned to demand. Professor Robert Fatton Jr, a Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, locates the distrust of outsiders well before the modern UN. The United States occupied the country from 1915 to 1934, and Haitians have long read the racism in how foreign powers regard them. Interest, they have concluded, arrives and departs on someone else's schedule. Haiti has no petroleum and no rare earths, so the incentive to commit resources is weak, and better-equipped contingents elsewhere remain undeployed.

The sharper wound is MINUSTAH, the stabilisation mission that operated from 2004 to 2017. Its personnel were accused of sexual abuse and exploitation, and the cholera epidemic that began in 2010 was traced to a UN base, eventually infecting over 820,000 and killing approximately 10,000 people. Professor Mark Schuller, who directs the Center for Nonprofit and NGO Studies at Northern Illinois University, notes that the organisation spent more money and effort dodging responsibility than repairing the harm, and that a reparations campaign for victims continues. The disease has not gone away. Health authorities recorded 442 suspected cholera cases in the first half of this year, 2 of them fatal. A Haitian harmed by a GSF soldier would meet a chain running through a contributing government, a multinational command and a UN office that describes itself as a supplier. Responsibility is divided so finely that nobody really holds it.

Even a force at full strength would meet a problem that firepower cannot solve. Professor Fatton traces the gangs to political and economic elites who armed loyal groups to capture or defend power, a practice with roots in the 19th century. The gangs have since escaped their sponsors and now operate like a mafia, with connections that run into the police and officialdom, as a recent UN report details. Removing them from a neighbourhood leaves those networks intact. Membership offers young men a livelihood and a measure of protection, and children are recruited early.

The violence continues at scale, with more than 2,300 people killed and over 1,100 injured in the first 6 months of the year. The Secretary-General's May report on disarmament, dismantlement and reintegration offered three options, from a 12-month quick-win programme at $13.5 million a year to a multi-year effort costing $100 million to $150 million. These are small sums beside the cost of the crisis, but without credible exits from armed groups, ground cleared by the force may simply be reoccupied.

Those most exposed to the outcome are the displaced, about 1.5 million people, 751,000 of them children. After the 2010 earthquake, Professor Schuller documented camps in which mutual aid and dispossession existed side by side. What drives displacement now has changed. After the earthquake, people faced a shared disaster. Today they are fleeing political violence, and communities have fragmented as a result. Returning is rarely an option, because the areas people abandoned are emptying or being taken over by gangs. The provinces face absorbing 350,000 newcomers as the US ICE crackdown targets Haitians, though their schools, clinics and food supplies are already stretched very thin. Acute food insecurity already currently affects 5.8 million Haitians. Meanwhile the Dominican Republic keeps deporting more than 20,000 people monthly, a pace held throughout 2026.

The economy has almost nothing left to give. Real GDP per capita fell about 17% from 2010 to 2025. In 2025, 49% of the population lived under the $3.00 daily poverty line. The 2025 fiscal year’s output fell short of the 2018 pre-crisis forecast by an amount equal to 46.5% of GDP. Of the businesses still operating, at least 44% have been hit directly by theft, arson or vandalism, and they report sales 26% lower and employment 20% lower than in 2021. Remittances remain the final cushion, and 79% of inflows in 2025 came from the United States, ever more pressingly pressured by the ICE crackdown. An estimated $5 billion arrives annually. If workers abroad lose their jobs, the effects would fall hardest on the most marginalised households at home, and 2025 cuts to international aid have already weakened the health system.

International aid has also tended to bypass the institutions that might help. Professor Schuller argues that agencies in Haiti routinely worked around the state, leaving no one answerable to the population, and that the localisation commitments made at the 2016 Istanbul summit produced small programmes without altering how money flows. A force judged by territory recovered repeats the pattern. The alternative on offer is slower and more demanding: genuine consultation, including with 16 and 17 year olds, reliable basic services that give people a stake in order, and lawful ways for young men to provide for their families. Haitian groups such as KONBIT, ITECA and FOCAL already work at community level and could anchor such efforts.

Politics adds a final complication. Elections are planned, yet, according to Professor Fatton, around 60% of the population lives under gang control, only about 10% is registered to vote, and the proposed constitutional referendum contradicts the constitution itself. Professor Fatton doubts that voting under armed protection can do more than reproduce the existing order, and he warns that impatience is feeding a taste for strongman rule, with El Salvador's example attracting admirers among elites. Haiti's institutions lack the army and police capacity such a model would require.

The GSF therefore tests two things at once. One is whether the UN can underwrite security without answering for it. The other is whether Haitians, who have heard such promises before, will grant that arrangement their trust. At 27% of its authorised strength, the force cannot yet protect 1.5 million displaced people. At full strength, it would still need an answer to why anyone should believe it will stay.

Further information and opportunities to engage with organisations working in this area are listed below:
Fokal-en – Fokal
KONBIT HAITI
Accueil - Institut de Technologie et d'Animation (ITECA)

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