Haiti’s youth continue to be sucked into the maw of gangs on a scale that is rapidly pushing the already chaotic country further toward the abyss, while efforts backed by the United Nations Security Council to combat the gang scourge appear to be all but stalled.
The plight of the country’s youth is described in a recent UN report on child trafficking, saying that the country’s notorious gangs are engaged in widescale recruitment of children and teenagers by inducement or by force. Some youngsters run errands or act as lookouts, but many become fully fledged armed members who pillage, kill and wage war on rival gangs or on the Haitian police.
The report adds urgency to kick-start the military-style Gang Suppression Force (GSF) that the UN Security Council approved in September 2025 to replace the struggling Kenya-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) policing mission that deployed in 2024. As the Kenyans are withdrawing, the new, more comprehensive force is supposed to begin operating fully in April, working closely with the Haitian National Police to take better control of the gangs in the country. According to a diplomat whose country is participating with the GSF, meetings on logistical and military matters are ongoing.
But the proposed 5,500-strong GSF has yet to come together, and it’s unclear if one of the initial, major troop-pledging countries, Chad, will send personnel. Meanwhile, the government of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé has launched his own initiative with a private US company, contracting Erik Prince’s Vectus Global to fight the gangs by relying heavily on drone strikes. [Update, April 1: Chad has reportedly sent 50 Army Corps of engineers as of April 1, assigned to building the GSF’s infrastructure]
The transformation of the MSS into the GSF was driven by the Trump administration, in partnership with Canada, in a rare departure from Washington’s current scorn of UN activities. (The US still owes the UN $4.2 billion in mandated current and back dues.) Some US officials have suggested the Trump administration’s motive in trying to restore some stability in Haiti was to stave off further migration attempts by desperate Haitians to American shores.
Henry Wooster, the US ambassador to Haiti, did not respond to a request for a comment from PassBlue.
But while the US has urged other nations to get involved — 18 countries apparently pledged to contribute money and/or personnel in December 2025 — it has itself taken little tangible action to get GSF boots on the ground. That seems even less likely to do so as the US is waging war on Iran with Israel.
Chad is reportedly prepared to send a police contingent of about 800 officers to the GSF in April to take over the role of the Kenyan force running the MSS, according to some diplomats informed by the US mission to the UN. The Standing Group of Partners on Haiti — US and Canada, as well as Bahamas, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica and Kenya — vet the pledges to the GSF.
Guatemala, at least, said it would continue its deployment of several hundred military police in the MSS through the GSF framework, and the personnel have received training on protecting high-level officials to help deal with Haiti’s security challenges. More Guatemalan personnel are expected to deploy this spring.
Commitments of the deployment by Chad, however, appear to be growing questionable. A person familiar with the situation said that Chad had yet to communicate its intent to sending police units to operate in the GSF, and had yet to agree to training or other requirements to participate.
Chad has taken part in UN peacekeeping missions such as MINUSMA, in Mali, and Chad’s security forces are used to working in tough, dangerous environments, said Ulf Laessing, the head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, based in Bamako, Mali, adding: “They are real warriors who grew up in a country where coups and rebellions are sort of daily life.”
“Such missions are for the government a welcome way to raise revenues,” Laessing noted. “Chad is overstaffed with soldiers and security officers as authorities integrate former rebels as a way to buy political loyalty, so the Haiti operation is a welcome gig. But let’s see how soon this deployment actually happens.”
The State Department press office missed its own requested deadline of March 27 to send a comment to PassBlue. PassBlue also asked the Department of Defense for comment but got no reply. A Caribbean diplomat familiar with the GSF plan said the situation was a “mess.”
Through last fall’s UN Security Council resolution, led by the US and Panama, the UN opened a Haiti support office early this year. Ultimately, it is meant to provide logistics, rations, transport, medical support and rotations to the GSF but not be directly involved in anti-gang action. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has named Daniela Kroslak of Germany as his assistant secretary-general and head of the support office, or UNSOH.
José-Luis Díaz, a spokesperson for the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, told PassBlue in an email: “The GSF is not a UN entity.”
He added, though, that setting up UNSOH in Port-au-Prince was on track to meet the end-of-March deadline to start operating. A second office has been established in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic capital, to provide resources, finance and travel services, according to the UN.
Referring to such companies as Vectus, Díaz said: “There is no coordination between UN actors in Haiti and private security providers.”
PassBlue contacted Vectus Global for a response but got no reply.
Children killed in drone ops
Human Rights Watch reported in March that Haitian security forces and private contractors have used armed quadcopter drones in densely populated areas in operations that appear unlawful in some cases and may amount to extrajudicial killings.
The report said at least 1,243 people were killed in 141 drone operations between March 1, 2025 and Jan. 21, 2026, including 17 children. In August 2025, the Associated Press reported that Prince’s firm planned to deploy nearly 200 personnel to Haiti as part of a one-year deal to help push back gangs.
William O’Neill, the UN-designated expert on human rights in Haiti, told PassBlue that Vectus’s role was “very obscure, there’s no transparency.” He said the company’s contract with the Haitian government has not been made public and that questions remain about who oversees operations and how civilian harm is investigated.
A main concern of O’Neill’s is Haiti’s youth and the child trafficking described in the UN’s recent report. “Child” in this case is anyone 17 or younger, and “trafficking” covers the various ways that gangs use and abuse these young people, including press-ganging them into joining up.
O’Neill said the problem has become worse in recent years as Haiti’s instability becomes more fraught. “I think I would use the word ‘intensified,’” he said. “The gangs still rely on both terror and deprivation. Some children are threatened with violence if they refuse to join. Others are recruited with offers built around hunger and desperation.”
O’Neill recalled one boy who had been living on the street when a gang member approached him with an offer: “Would you like to have a hot lunch every day? Would you like to make a few dollars a week?” The boy joined and became a lookout and messenger. For children with no school, no money and no protection, O’Neill said, gangs can offer a kind of refuge.
For girls, he said, the choices can be more brutal. Some, he said, come to believe that “it’s safer for them to become associated with a gang,” and they end up attached to members as “concubine and mistress.” As the UN report says, girls are forced to provide domestic labor for gangs and are subjected to repeated sexual exploitation and sexual violence.
About 90 percent of Port-au-Prince is reported to be controlled by gangs, and by December 2025, gang violence had forced more than 1.4 million people to flee their homes. Children made up just over half of the displaced, making them especially vulnerable to gang recruitment. UN estimates say that about 50 percent of members are under 18.
The gangs have slowed their spread, but nothing has been to drive them out of the areas they control.
“But beyond the policy failures,” O’Neill said, Haitians are exhausted and “just want to be able to live a decent, boring life.”
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the Gang Suppression Force?
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Arshi Qureshi is a freelance journalist based in New York City, focusing on politics and social issues. She holds a master’s degree in political journalism from the Columbia University School of Journalism.
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Arshi, thank you for your contribution, first i want to tell to Mr Ulf Laessing of KAF that he should know that the Malian authorities have chassed MINUSMA out of their country because it was a total failure! Secondly I am asking myself if we are learning from history and our mistakes as I see us repeating the same unsuccessful things again and again. How many UN missions were in Haiti without success since 1994, let us remember that after UNMIH the first UN mission to Haiti then came MINUSTAH from 2004 to 2017 both ended without success and then the world has sent the Kenyan police officers and we see their failure and without learning the root causes of these failures since 1994, the world is now sending again a new force GSF, changing the name of a mission will not change its outcome and the same destiny is waiting for the GSF! CARICOM has said it many times and for many decades that without a development leg, the force leg will never work, thus a multipronged approach is necessary because poverty especially poor young people without any future are easy to enroll in terrorism and gangs and the vicious circle of destruction will continue. My humble conclusion is that without a multipronged approach there will be zero success in Haiti.