21 January 2026: Haiti is facing multiple, overlapping humanitarian, political, economic and security crises, with dire consequences for the local population. 16,000 people have been killed since January 2022, 1.5 million have been displaced and more than half do not have enough food to eat.
Powerful gangs now control vast swathes of territory and infrastructure in the country. Abetted by a steady flow of trafficked arms, they are inflicting horrific violence on civilians, including homicides, kidnapping and sexual violence.
Since 2023, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has been providing the UN Security Council (UNSC) with quarterly updates on the sources and routes of illegal arms and illicit financial flows in Haiti, with its 10th report being discussed at the UNSC today. Below, find out what you need to know about the security situation in the country.
Haiti’s strategic location, lengthy land and maritime borders – as well as its many public and private ports, irregular roads and clandestine airstrips – have made the country particularly susceptible to the trafficking of smuggled goods, notably firearms, ammunitions, and drugs.
Haiti is also heavily dependent on imports, with nearly every part of its economy connected to goods from abroad. As a result, there is an extensive exchange of goods and services across its borders and ports – giving criminal actors plenty of opportunities to smuggle contraband.
Haiti’s policing and customs authorities – frequently the target of gangs – also struggle to staff and resource their agencies, meaning that many borders and airstrips are poorly surveilled and patrolled, and shipments inadequately monitored.
Over the past decade, the criminal landscape has transformed in Haiti. Gangs once operated as fragmented, neighborhood vigilantes who committed sporadic violent acts, much like gangs in other countries. Now, however, gangs have formed larger criminal coalitions that control a considerable part of the country, including an estimated 80-90 per cent of Port au Prince, Haiti’s capital, in addition with key areas in the Artibonite and Central Departments.
Gangs dominate supply chains and extort commerce and humanitarian transport routes, giving them huge power to siphon off Haiti’s resources and destabilize its economy. With access to sophisticated, military-grade weaponry – a supply that outmatches that of the Haitian National Police – they are able to conduct coordinated operations against the Haitian government and rivals, while terrorizing populations via extortion, kidnappings for ransom and killings.
Armed gangs exercise effective control over all access routes to Port-au-Prince, including maritime approaches to the main ports, internal road networks linking the capital to the north and south of the country, and the principal land routes connecting Port-au-Prince to the border with the Dominican Republic. This territorial dominance enables gangs to regulate movement in and out of the capital with near impunity and to generate substantial revenue, primarily through systematic extortion of commercial traffic, including trucks, buses and maritime shipments transiting these corridors and sea lanes.
Such control requires sustained access to military-grade firepower, which gangs are able to procure from abroad and transport into the capital through the same routes they dominate.
Drugs
The country seems to mainly be a transshipment point for cocaine or cannabis, which arrive from other countries in Latin America or the Caribbean and are mostly destined for markets in North America or Europe. While southern Haiti has long been identified as a transit corridor for cannabis trafficking, cocaine flows – significantly reduced for several years –appear to be resurging.
Although there is, to date, no judicially established evidence directly linking gangs to cocaine trafficking—such as arrests or seizures involving gang members—gang leaders and affiliates have on multiple occasions publicly claimed, notably on social media, to derive substantial income from drug trafficking activities.
Firearms
Firearms, meanwhile, are mostly trafficked to Haiti from the United States for local use. Since 2021, the UN has documented a surge in the trafficking of high-caliber and military-style weapons. Many of these weapons, which can include AK-47s, AR-15s and assault rifles, are behind the gangs’ sniper attacks, mass lootings, kidnappings, attacks on prisons and seizures of new territories. The emergence of calibre .50 rifles has also been witnessed in the last years, which further demonstrates the increased firepower of the criminal groups in the country.
Corruption and economic crimes, such as money laundering, together with limited financial oversight, are enabling trafficking and organized crime in Haiti.
Corrupt political and economic elites, as well as customs, law enforcement, and ports officials often collude with traffickers, facilitating the movement of arms, drugs or other illicit goods.
Gangs’ proceeds from extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking and arms sales, meanwhile, are reportedly smuggled through bulk amounts of cash, unregulated money transfer services, or front companies – many of which are linked to politically-connected economic elites.
According to Haiti’s Central Financial Intelligence Unit (UCREF), illicit proceeds are often also laundered through “smurfing” (the breaking down of large sums of illicit money into smaller transactions to avoid detection), false invoicing, construction material or buying real estate.
As noted by UN News, UNODC is supporting Haitian law enforcement to reinforce border security, strengthen maritime control, advance intelligence-led policing and address the corruption and financial crime that allow trafficking networks to operate.
Its work begins at the sea, air and land borders, where Haiti remains highly vulnerable to illicit flows.
A nationwide border-management initiative designed to increase interdiction capacity at ports, airports and land borders has been launched at the request of the Haitian authorities.
At sea, UNODC is focused on strengthening the Haitian Coast Guard, which plays a critical role in securing maritime routes that are heavily used for narcotics and human trafficking.
On land, UNODC is strengthening the ability of law enforcement to carry out intelligence-led operations against organized criminal groups involved in migrant smuggling, trafficking in persons and overlapping criminal activities. The exchange of information between Haiti and regional partners, which is essential for identifying and dismantling cross-border criminal networks, has also been stepped up.
Recognizing that drug and arms trafficking is enabled by entrenched corruption and the laundering of criminal proceeds, UNODC has supported Haitian authorities in delivering more robust anti-corruption results. Over the past three to four years, the Anti-Corruption Unit of Haiti (ULCC) has produced 55 investigation reports - more than in the previous 17 years combined - and referred priority cases for prosecution. At the same time, compliance with asset declaration obligations among senior officials (Presidential Transitional Council – CPT, Ministers and state secretaries of the current government) reached 100 per cent."
Specialized tribunals are being launched, which are capable of handling cases involving financial crime, money laundering, gang-related offences and other sensitive criminal matters, with the objective of reducing impunity and restoring confidence in the justice system.
