UN rights chief requires crackdown on arms trafficking that fuels ‘criminality’ and widens humanitarian disaster.
At the least 3,661 individuals have been killed in Haiti within the first half of this yr amid the “mindless” gang violence that has engulfed the nation, in response to the United Nations.
The UN Workplace of the Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) mentioned on Friday that the dying toll between January and June – which included 100 kids – confirmed that final yr’s “excessive ranges of violence” had been maintained.
“No extra lives must be misplaced to this mindless criminality,” mentioned UN rights chief Volker Turk in an announcement.
Haiti was already reeling from years of unrest as highly effective armed teams – typically with ties to the nation’s political and enterprise leaders – vied for affect and management of territory.
The scenario worsened dramatically on the finish of February, when the gangs launched assaults on prisons and different state establishments throughout the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The UN report documented “extraordinarily critical patterns of human rights violations and abuses going down” in Port-au-Prince and the Artibonite Division north of the capital.
It additionally tracked rising violence within the southern a part of the West Division, the place the capital is positioned, an space of the nation that had to this point been largely unaffected.
In response to the report, “gangs have continued to make use of sexual violence to punish, unfold concern and subjugate populations”.
Violence within the nation is fuelled by arms trafficking, primarily from the USA, but additionally from the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
OHCHR mentioned poorly monitored airspaces, coastlines and porous borders had been permitting gangs to acquire high-calibre weapons, drones, boats and “a seemingly infinite provide of bullets”.
Turk urged the worldwide neighborhood to implement a world arms embargo, a journey ban, and an asset freeze programme imposed by the UN Safety Council.
Peacekeeping
The surge in violence this yr prompted the resignation of Haiti’s unelected prime minister, the creation of the transitional presidential council, and the deployment of a UN-backed, Kenya-led multinational pressure referred to as the Multinational Safety Help Mission (MSS).
About 10 international locations have pledged greater than 3,100 troops to the MSS, however solely 430 of those have deployed to this point, mentioned OHCHR.
The report was printed days earlier than the MSS’s one-year mandate to assist Haiti expires, with the UN Safety Council scheduled to vote on September 30 on whether or not to resume it.
Haiti has requested the UN to think about turning it into a proper peacekeeping mission to safe secure funds and capability.
Turk mentioned it was clear the mission wanted “satisfactory and enough tools and personnel to counter the legal gangs successfully and sustainably, and cease them spreading additional and wreaking havoc on individuals’s lives”.
On Wednesday, Haiti’s interim prime minister, Garry Conille, referred to as for worldwide assist on the sidelines of the UN Basic Meeting in New York.
“We’re nowhere close to profitable this, and the straightforward actuality is that we received’t with out your assist,” he mentioned.
The variety of individuals internally displaced by the violence has nearly doubled within the final six months to greater than 700,000, whereas some 1.6 million individuals are estimated to be dealing with emergency meals insecurity.