UN urges accountability for escalating violence in Haiti

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations Security Council on Friday called for those responsible for violence in Haiti to be held accountable and expressed deep concern at the Caribbean nation's “ongoing and protracted crises” including escalating gang violence.

The UN's most powerful body urged all political stakeholders “to engage constructively to address Haiti's underlying drivers of instability (and) to enable a path towards elections.”

Council members also expressed concern about Haiti's humanitarian situation and called for continued international support for its people.

The Security Council issued the press statement after a briefing by Helen La Lime, the UN special envoy for Haiti, who said the situation in Latin America's poorest country “remains fraught and highly politicised,” warning that “gang violence continues to plunge major urban centres into lawlessness and grief.”

“Criminal armed groups have a stronghold on the economic and social lives of millions of children, women and men,” she said.

“Their indiscriminate use of abduction, murder, as well as sexual and gender-based violence as a means to terrorise local populations in the fight to extend their territorial control is particularly abhorrent.”

La Lime said Haiti's National Police has sought to improve the effectiveness of its anti-gang operations and adopt a more balanced approach between prevention and repression. But she stressed that “an over-stretched, understaffed and under-resourced police force cannot on its own curtail the alarming rise in gang-generated insecurity.”

The UN envoy said Haiti needs international funding and technical support not only for the police but for projects and activities to promote employment and revenue in the most affected neighbourhoods. And it also urgently needs to address impunity and the “grave structural weaknesses” in the country's judicial system.

Haiti has been contending not only with escalating gang violence but the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last July 7, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that killed over 2,200 people in the country's south and damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes last August, and the need to restore what La Lime described as “fully functional, democratically elected institutions.”

On February 7, seven months after Moïse was slain at his private residence and the official end of his term, opponents demanded that Prime Minister Ariel Henry step down, arguing that his administration is unconstitutional.

Henry has also faced accusations that he is not a legitimate leader given that Haiti's chief public prosecutor -- whom Henry has since fired -- said the prime minister spoke with one of the main suspects in the presidential slaying hours after it occurred. Henry has said he received multiple calls that day and doesn't remember all of them.

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