Surge of Gang Violence in Haiti Leads U.N. Workers to Flee

A surge in gang violence over the past two weeks has led international aid organizations to rethink their staff levels in Haiti.

A United Nations helicopter has been buzzing nonstop for days over Haiti, as the U.N. starts to draw down its personnel in Port-au-Prince, evacuating 14 people at a time in chopper rides.

Many embassies and international aid organizations — including Doctors Without Borders, which runs some of the few functioning hospitals in Port-au-Prince — are suspending operations in Haiti, where gangs have stormed into more parts of the capital, sowing panic among humanitarian groups.

Port-au-Prince’s international airport remains closed to commercial traffic after gangs shot at U.S. airliners this month.

Many Haitians are particularly alarmed and dismayed by the departure of personnel from the United Nations, the international agency people are relying on to help resolve a crippling gang crisis that has forced many civilians to flee their homes.

“Every Haitian thinks that we are being abandoned by the whole world,” said Dr. Wesner Junior Jacotin, a critical care physician in Haiti. “If I was in a foreign country and I believed at any moment my life could be at risk, I would leave too.”

But, he wondered: “What about the ones who can’t leave?

Nations around the world are looking to the U.N. as the only viable solution for a troubled country that has been unraveling since its last president was assassinated more than three years ago.

The U.N. Security Council met for several hours last week to debate whether to start an official peacekeeping operation, despite a history of failed U.N. interventions in the Caribbean nation.

The Biden administration has pushed hard for the move. Most people in Haiti, including its government, are desperate and want to see the U.N. soldiers return to Haiti, as do most countries in the region. But Russia and China, which have veto power, have balked, arguing that there is no peace to keep.

The United Nations, which before the capital’s airport closed had about 300 employees working for in 18 different agencies, including the World Food Program, UNICEF and the International Agency for Migration, said it would move workers to its offices in safer parts of the country outside of Port-au-Prince.

But dozens more staff members assigned to the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti — the political mission known as BINUH — were evacuated from the country.

Those employees, who are involved in police, human rights, justice and other programs, were flown to the northern city of Cap Haitien by helicopter, where they departed the country because there were no other offices outside the capital where they could work, U.N. officials said.

In addition, a U.S. Air Force C-130 landed in Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince this weekend to transport American diplomats who were evacuating from the U.S. embassy, the U.S. Southern Command said. The embassy has largely been reduced to a skeleton staff with limited operations.

The move came days after Doctors Without Borders — the French medical organization long accustomed to working in hostile environments — announced that it would no longer accept new patients at its five clinics in the Port-au-Prince region.

On Sunday, another humanitarian group, Mercy, Corps said it was considering evacuating its staff to other provinces this week.

“Seems like everyone that can is relocating to somewhere outside of Port-au-Prince,” said David Lloyd, an American missionary whose son and daughter-in-law were killed in a gang attack earlier this year. “My question is, after Port-au-Prince is burned, where is next? Will the gangs go to Cap Haitien then? Someone needs to make a stand and say enough is enough.”

With the airport closed, Mr. Lloyd recently fled the country by taking an arduous journey through the mountains and by sea. He is now in Oklahoma.

The departure of aid workers and diplomats follows intensifying gang violence in recent weeks that gang leaders said was meant to force a transitional presidential council governing Haiti to step down.

Two weeks ago, gangs shot at three American commercial airliners, which led the Federal Aviation Administration to shut down air travel to Port-au-Prince.

About a week ago, gang members tried raiding Petionville, a neighborhood where many aid organizations and their employees are based. Police officers and local residents fought back and killed many gang members, the police said.

The U.N. estimates that at least 220 people, including 115 gang members, were killed in more than a dozen coordinated gang attacks from Nov. 11 to Nov. 19.

The U.N.’s migration agency said Monday that 41,000 people had fled their homes in the past two weeks.

A Multinational Security Support mission, an international police force financed by the Biden administration and largely staffed by Kenyan police officers, was sent to Haiti in June. But the mission has had to face heavily-armed gangs that vastly outnumber the international force.

Even the mission admits that many people have criticized its response.

“Recent developments in Haiti have left many Haitians questioning the role of MSS and its handling of the current security situation amid an apparent surge in gang activities,” the mission said Sunday night on X, referring to its acronym.

The Kenyan-led force said it does not publicize much of its work, though it did acknowledge conducting an operation in a gang stronghold in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince on Sunday. The mission’s statement on X was an apparent reference to media reports that the authorities had attacked the stronghold of a notorious gang leader, Jimmy Cherizier, who is known as Barbecue. He remains at large.

Ulrika Richardson, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator, said the attack in Petionville where the international agency has offices sent a strong message that the organization had to re-evaluate its staffing.

In Haiti, the United Nations needed to pare its presence to a level where in a major emergency, all its workers could be evacuated within 24 hours, an agency spokesman said. The U.N. has one helicopter that seats 14 people and can make five trips to the northern city of Cap Haitien in a day.

“The U.N. is not leaving Haiti; we are committed to staying in Haiti,” Ms. Richardson said. “We want to accelerate and intensify humanitarian aid in Haiti. It requires ingenuity and creativity.”

The U.N. feeds 40,000 people a day, she said, adding that she and a skeleton crew of people considered critical to the agency’s work will remain behind.

“We can do this,” Ms. Richardson said.

Leslie Voltaire, who heads the transitional presidential council in Haiti, said many embassies had whittled down their staffs, but said he did not know that BINUH, the U.N. political mission, had left.

Reginald Delva, a security consultant in Haiti and former minister of interior, criticized the departures.

“It’s unfortunate that those who are here to stop the mess are running away from it, leaving a country in total chaos,” he said. “Moving to the north region and leaving a capital in total anarchy is an act of cowardice and can only make it worse.”

Other longtime experts in the country said the evacuations were understandable, but dismaying nonetheless.

“We have seen a ton of embassy and diplomatic evacuations that are not normal,” said David Ellis, who runs a nonprofit medical helicopter service that suspended operations after the F.A.A. grounded flights. “It makes me very concerned that the international community is giving up on Haiti.”

Mr. Ellis left for Georgia.

Pierre Espérance, a leading human rights activist in Port-au-Prince, said at most embassies only the ambassadors and senior staff members remained.

“This week we saw a lot of helicopters. Everyone is gone — Canada, Japan, the U.S.” he said.

“The state has completely collapsed.”