The gangs responsible for these deaths control roads, coasts, and mountains, sowing terror far beyond the capital, adds the document signed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the world body, released in this capital.

The armed groups are no longer confined to Port-au-Prince, extending their influence to departments such as Artibonite and Central and taking control of vital land and sea routes that guarantee the country’s main economic exchanges.

The gangs – the UN report adds – attacked positions in the hills above Petion-Ville in January 2025, one of the routes between this capital and the south, which until now has remained uncontrolled by UN forces. These irregular forces maintain the same modus operandi wherever they go, based on homicides, kidnappings, extortion, child trafficking, and property destruction.

Some victims—the statement specifies—are executed on the spot and their bodies incinerated, while others are tried in makeshift courts before being illegally detained, which, the report emphasizes, results in “a catastrophic human toll.”

The number of fatalities from such acts reached 5,519 between March 1, 2025, and January 15, 2026; 1,424 of them directly from gunfire; nearly 4,000 during security force operations; and 598 at the hands of self-defense groups.

According to the UN, other consequences of gang violence include approximately 1,500 women and girls who are victims of sexual violence, many of them through gang rapes. Children also suffer abuse, forced to live under the control of armed gangs, acts that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights describes as “crimes of extreme gravity.”

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