Haiti’s steady collapse into gang rule has turned much of Port-au-Prince and its surrounding areas into territory effectively governed by armed groups rather than the state. What began as fragmented gang violence following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise has metastasized into a coordinated insurgency capable of overrunning police stations, prisons, ports, and government buildings, leaving Haiti’s transitional authorities with only a fraction of the territory they nominally control.
Estimates suggest that armed factions now control the large majority of the capital, and their reach has steadily expanded into the surrounding Artibonite region, once considered the country’s breadbasket. Kidnappings for ransom, extortion of businesses, and control of key roads have become central to how these groups fund themselves and extend their power, while ordinary Haitians face displacement on a massive scale. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, many crowding into informal displacement sites with little access to clean water, food, or medical care.
The international response has struggled to keep pace. A multinational security support mission, led by Kenyan police and backed by a handful of other countries, was deployed to bolster Haiti’s overwhelmed national police force, but it has arrived with limited personnel, funding, and equipment relative to the scale of the crisis. Haiti’s own police force, meanwhile, remains undermanned and, in some cases, outgunned by the very groups it is meant to confront.
Politically, Haiti has been without an elected government for years, governed instead by a transitional council tasked with organizing elections that have been repeatedly delayed amid the security collapse. That governance vacuum has made it exceedingly difficult to coordinate humanitarian response, rebuild basic services, or plan any long-term recovery, since there is no stable authority capable of implementing reforms or securing sustained international investment.
The regional consequences are also mounting. Neighboring countries, particularly the Dominican Republic, have tightened border controls and stepped up deportations in response to Haitian migration, while other countries across the Americas have seen a rise in Haitian asylum claims as people search for any viable escape route.
Haiti’s crisis illustrates how quickly state collapse can accelerate once security, governance, and economic systems break down simultaneously, and how difficult it becomes to reverse without a sustained, well-resourced international commitment. We examine cases like this, where fragile governance intersects with organized violence, as part of our broader work across Latin America, where similar pressures around organized crime and weak state capacity are increasingly shaping the region’s stability.
Without a dramatic shift in either domestic capacity or international support, Haiti’s path back toward functional governance remains deeply uncertain.