Haiti, the poorest nation in Latin America with a history of foreign interventions, is on the cusp of total anarchy — and the rest of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, is frantically searching for ways to restore a degree of order and tranquillity to a Haitian population increasingly run by gangs and criminals.
While the numbers tell only part of the story, they are nevertheless damning. Four and a half million people, about 41% of the nation’s population, are dealing with some degree of food insecurity. Haiti ranks 163rd out of 191 on the Human Development Index, which measures quality of life. Haiti’s political class is notoriously corrupt, with some political and economic stakeholders colluding with the gangs that terrorize citizens, run entire city districts and are more than willing to use arms against police and politicians to instill fear and expand their fiefdoms.
Haiti has gone through a particularly bad stretch since its president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated in his home last year. Gangs have always been a part of Haitian life — there are plenty of gangs in the United States as well — but their power has risen considerably since Moise’s killing. More than half of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, is controlled by gangs. Haitian security forces, either too underequipped or uninterested in doing much about the problem, have written off whole sections of the capital. Nearly 100,000 Haitians have fled their homes this year to escape the gang-related violence in their neighborhoods, adding to a humanitarian burden the Haitian government is already unable to manage.
