International Neglect Has Left Haiti Spiraling Toward Total Collapse
“Haiti could face total collapse,” Maria Isabel Salvador, the United Nations special representative to Haiti, said last week. She also said the country was nearing the “point of no return” and close to “total chaos.”
Officials and analysts struggle with the language to describe the dire situation that Haiti now faces. The country has been in such bad shape for so long that warnings about Haiti’s plight can easily be ignored as just more of the same. However, as Salvador warned, the reports from the capital and elsewhere signal that the country is experiencing a new level of conflict in which the degree of state failure and gang control could be far worse than seen previously.
Violent gangs control about 85 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and are engaged in an offensive to take over the remaining areas that have avoided the worst of the violence up to now. The transitional government is already shutting down operations in the capital and will likely be forced to flee the city. Outside the capital, a coalition of gangs is taking over cities, towns, and rural areas at an increasing pace.
Much of the country’s healthcare and education infrastructure has collapsed. The University Hospital of Mirebalais, the last remaining major hospital in the country with strong infrastructure, was forced to close as gangs took over the city, released 500 gang members from a local prison and looted the equipment at the hospital. UNICEF says over a million children face the threat of malnutrition in the near future, and the World Food Program reports about half the population is experiencing some form of food insecurity.
The U.N. mission that is supposed to be stabilizing the situation and improving the country’s security is overwhelmed, underfunded and understaffed. Voluntary contributions have only reached about $100 million of the $600 million that is needed to cover this year’s Multinational Security Support, or MSS, mission. Only 1,000 of the proposed 2,500 foreign police have arrived in the country. As I wrote at the outset of the mission in late 2023, the international community “authorized a mission that is clearly too small to succeed at the current proposed levels.” The numbers should have been closer to 15,000 at a minimum, but the U.N. simply could not reach an agreement. The challenges in Haiti aren’t in any way a criticism of the actions of the Kenya-led police mission in the country. There simply aren’t enough of them and they don’t have the funding to succeed. The international community has set them up for failure, which is another reason that more countries have avoided contributing personnel.
Analysts must not just warn that Haiti might collapse but begin thinking about what it means for Haiti to be under the full control of violent gangs instead of a recognized government.
The United States, rather than offering to help, has announced that it will cut funding for Haiti. At the U.N., the U.S. is demanding other countries contribute more even as the U.S. reduces its financial support for the MSS and other U.N. programs that are helping Haiti’s security and humanitarian situation. Combined with cuts in U.S. foreign assistance and the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, it means the funds available for Haiti have been suddenly and drastically reduced. The loss of the U.S. assistance and the surge of the gangs is not a coincidental combination.
Last week, the Miami Herald reported that the Trump administration plans to designate Haiti’s gangs as terrorist groups, as it has done for Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, El Salvador’s MS-13 and six Mexican cartels. Unfortunately, this move is not a sign of a new security strategy or a plan to help Haiti retake the initiative to defeat the groups. Instead, the designation appears to be part of Trump’s deportation agenda, giving U.S. domestic authorities greater latitude to detain Haitian migrants and deport them to either Haiti or, potentially, El Salvador, as they have done with Venezuelan migrants.
This is the point where columnists usually write the word “should.” The U.S. should reverse course on Haiti, and providing greater funding and support. The Trump administration should not deport people to a country where violence is increasing so drastically. The U.N. should authorize a much larger and more comprehensive peacekeeping mission. Countries should contribute more police and other peacekeeping personnel to halt the advance of the gangs trying to take over the country. The international community should fully fund that security mission as well as the vast humanitarian needs of the country in food, health, and education. And, though conditions keep getting further from ideal, Haiti should try to hold some form of elections so there is a democratically chosen leadership group that legitimately represents the population.
But realistically, none of these things that should happen will happen. No significant new funding will appear as every country in the world focuses on responding to a global economic slowdown amid the trade war. Countries won’t contribute personnel to a mission that is an active combat zone where they will be outgunned by the gangs. Haiti’s transitional leadership has no interest in holding elections soon and couldn’t pull off the conditions for voters to freely go to the polls right now given the gang control of most areas.
The gangs are about to win within months if not weeks. That is a dark analysis, but likely accurate, and analysts must not just warn that Haiti might collapse but begin thinking about what it means for Haiti to be under the full control of violent gangs instead of a recognized government. One of the smaller gangs within the coalition of violent groups sometimes refers to itself half-jokingly as the “Taliban” and has even set up a radio station in Mirebalais that it calls “Taliban FM.” There is no real comparison or connection between Haiti’s gangs and the radical group that took over Afghanistan, but the analogy to the Taliban takeover in August 2021 as the U.S. withdrew may be a good one to consider when thinking about Haiti’s future. However, Haiti’s version of it is likely to be even more chaotic as there will not be one powerful group taking over but rather dozens of groups, some of whom will compete violently against each other within and outside the capital.
The Taliban have survived for almost three years as the leaders of Afghanistan, and they are fully entrenched. Once the gangs take over Haiti, they are also likely to remain in control for years to come, even as they fight each other. The humanitarian situation will worsen and those who can will flee, though both the U.S. and the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighbor, have shown themselves to be more hostile than ever towards migrants and refugees from the country.
Perhaps the most damning lesson from Haiti’s collapse is that the international community knows today what is needed to prevent it, yet collectively chooses not to provide it. Years of warnings went unheeded, funding requests went unfulfilled, and mere statements replaced decisive action. Ongoing chaos in Haiti isn’t inevitable, but it is the scenario that is very likely to play out in 2025, the predictable outcome of international neglect.
James Bosworth is the founder of Hxagon, a firm that does political risk analysis and bespoke research in emerging and frontier markets, as well as a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program. He has two decades of experience analyzing politics, economics and security in Latin America and the Caribbean.