Human rights defenders and civil society organizations have made a clear demand for years, while armed groups have driven Haiti into greater turmoil.
Stop the supply of illegal guns, particularly those coming from the US, to criminal organizations.
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Their plea is being heard again as a wave of fatal gang attacks engulfs Port-au-Prince’s metropolis.
“Haiti has no weapons or ammunition factory,” the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), a well-known organization for Haitian rights, has a lawyer named Rosy Auguste Ducena as its program director.
“So the weapons and ammunition that circulate in Haiti and that sow mourning in Haiti are coming from elsewhere and, for the most part, from the United States.”
Due to poor state institutions, corruption, and difficulties in policing the country’s enormous coastline, the variety of weapons and ammunition that flood into Haiti is mostly unregulated. These include pistols, semi-automatic rifles, and even military-style weaponry.
“Today, if the United States in particular wants to help Haiti, they can help control what leaves their country,” Ducena stated. “That would already be a very good thing.”
Years of political unrest in Haiti have been caused in part by foreign interventions, dishonest government figures, and wealthy businesspeople who frequently turn to armed organizations to serve their agendas.
However, with President Jovenel Moise’s killing in July 2021, the situation drastically deteriorated. About 200 armed gangs are active across the nation, and their influence has grown because of the murders, which left a power vacuum.
The gangs currently hold almost 80% of Port-au-Prince, according to the UN. As pressure mounts, Ariel Henry, Haiti’s unelected prime minister, has pledged to retire, but they are making more and more political demands.
Additionally, experts claim that to further their goals, the gangs increasingly use ever-more advanced weaponry. Drug trafficking, kidnappings, extortion, and other illegal activities provide a substantial portion of the cash for those weapons and other gang operations. The UN claimed that 4,789 killings were recorded in Haiti in 2023—a 119.4% rise from the previous year—and that over 2,490 persons had been abducted in that country alone.
Ghada Waly, the director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), warned the UN Security Council about the spread of firearms in Haiti at the end of January.
“As long as the gangs continue to have access to very sophisticated firearms, they will remain capable of subjecting the Haitian population to a reign of terror,” Waly noted.
The World Food Program has issued a warning that the nation is facing a humanitarian catastrophe and the possibility of starvation, and more than 360,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to the violence.
“The fundamental problem” is that “the US is awash with guns, and it’s a very lightly regulated item here,” according to Brian Concannon, executive director of the US-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
According to the Small Arms Survey, there were over 393 million weapons owned by American individuals in 2017. That equates to one gun per 100 persons and about 40% of all civilian arsenals worldwide.
Concannon did concede, though, that in the last 18 months, the US administration had made more progress in attempting to stop the supply of weapons to Haiti. He told Al Jazeera that one effect of it is that traffic has been rerouted to the Dominican Republic.
“Instead of people sending weapons to Haiti, because those boats were being inspected better, they were being sent to the Dominican Republic and then smuggled into Haiti,” Concannon stated.
The 51-year-old convicted weapons trafficker Elieser Sori-Rodriguez is one recent example of this roundabout path. He was found guilty in February of smuggling hundreds of guns and ammo into the Dominican Republic from the US, earning him a sentence of over five years in jail.
The weaponry, which was being transported inside crates labeled as domestic products, was supposedly headed for Haiti, according to the Dominican authorities.
Nevertheless, to address the issue, US President Joe Biden’s government has implemented new policies. This entails stiffening the penalty for smuggling and straw-man purchases in addition to putting fines on Haitian officials who are thought to be supporting the gangs.
Washington designated a coordinator last year to prosecute the trafficking of weapons across the Caribbean, including Haiti. A transnational criminal investigative unit is also being established in Haiti by the US State Department and the Department of Homeland Security’s investigations section, “to facilitate investigations and prosecution”.
“This new unit will focus on crimes including firearms and ammunition smuggling, human trafficking, and transnational gang activity,” the US administration stated.
In addition, the UN has imposed a weapons embargo and penalties on anybody posing a danger to the peace and stability of Haiti. That law, which was approved in 2022, specifically targets Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, the head of Haiti’s potent G9 gang alliance.
A Security Council resolution from July of last year, meantime, encouraged member nations, “to prevent illicit arms trafficking and diversion, including through inspecting cargo to Haiti, in their territory”.
Muggah stated, “The reality is that, so long as there is high supply and demand for firearms and ammunition, they will continue to be trafficked from the US to its neighbors, including in Haiti”.
Muggah went on to mention, “This is not just because of the tens of thousands of firearms retail outlets in the US, but also the persistent appetite from the hundreds of criminal gangs across the Caribbean.”
