As Haitians flee the capital, fears rise that the gangs will follow

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Unrelenting gang warfare in Port-au-Prince is fueling an exodus of people from Haiti’s capital, overwhelming already impoverished cities and towns and sparking fears that the gangs will follow.

More than 578,000 Haitians, or 5% of the population, have fled their homes since 2021, according to the U.N. migration agency. The number jumped 60% from March through May this year alone, the International Organization for Migration reported, as heavily armed paramilitary gangs attacked the international airport and the main seaport, busted prisons open and rampaged through the capital.

With the Dominican border closed to Haitians and regional neighbors intercepting boats, the vast majority of people fleeing the mayhem in Port-au-Prince are heading for the south, where they are cramming in with relatives or strangers.

Their arrival is transforming communities that have been suffering their own crises.

A new school year – delayed a month by security concerns – begins in October with shortages of teachers and classrooms. Health care, water and waste systems, already under strain, are struggling with the new burden.

“People are relying on solidarity, receiving neighbors,” said Claire Daphné France, mayor of the southern city of Les Cayes. “But this complicates their lives. We already had a population problem, but now all our problems are multiplied by four.”

France estimates that the port city of 125,000, a top destination for the displaced, is now hosting at least another 30,000. As a result, she said, Les Cayes and the surrounding area, is seeing more “cases of insecurity and violence,” raising concern that the capital’s gang violence is metastasizing.

“We have a lot of children on the streets,” she told the Washington Post. “Many come from gang-controlled areas and did not arrive with their parents. … Many are in transit, and I’m afraid they’ll become gang members without proper guidance.”

Paramilitaries control 80% of Port-au-Prince, the U.N. office here has estimated, and were already pushing into the countryside. The U.N.-approved, Kenyan-led security force that started arriving here in June has so far shown little effect.

Nearly 1,400 people were wounded or killed in Haiti from April through June, the U.N. office said in its most recent report. A quarter of them were women or children.

Most were victims of indiscriminate gang attacks, the office said. Others were killed in clashes between gangs and the vigilante groups that are increasingly confronting them. Killings were down from the previous quarter, but kidnappings and rapes by gang members jumped.

U.N. humanitarian official Edem Wosornu said she was moved during a July visit “by the generosity of the Haitian people who are splitting and sharing their bread – literally.”

Still, she said, local officials stressed to her that they “cannot deal with this level of crisis.”

“They’re used to dealing with earthquakes,” said Wosornu, the global director of operations for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “They were able to deal with Hurricane Matthew. They were able to deal with all sorts of natural disasters. But this new wave of violence is harming a lot of people and the local authorities are simply overwhelmed.”

Haiti’s presidency has been vacant since the still-unsolved 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The National Assembly has been empty since the last lawmakers’ terms expired at the beginning of 2023.

The Caribbean nation of 12 million is now being governed by an interim council and prime minister. The U.N.-backed security force, led by Kenyan police and funded largely by the United States, is intended to help stabilize the country so it can hold elections for president and the National Assembly in February 2026. But officials are casting doubt on whether that can happen.

Donors, meanwhile, have contributed just 25% of the $674 million in humanitarian aid requested for Haiti by the United Nations. Nearly half the population faces acute food insecurity, the World Food Program says.

It is unclear how many of the displaced people will eventually return home.

“Many people who left won’t come back because what they saw, what they lived through, what they experienced was beyond imagination,” said Daniele Febei, the International Organization for Migration’s emergency response director in Haiti. Others “consider their stay in the provinces temporary” because they believe they can better earn their livings in Port-au-Prince.

It’s critical, he said, to “think about those people staying in those places for protracted periods of time” and to keep “the relationship with the local communities positive,” because a failure to do so could breed grievances and resentment.

Les Cayes was hit hard by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in 2022 that killed more than 2,200 people, injured 12,000 and flattened tens of thousands of homes and buildings. The area was still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Few of the structures have been rebuilt.

“I have relatives who contacted me from Port-au-Prince and I was unable to find them a house,” said Vital-Herne Zéphy, a local official. “Our biggest challenge is that we were not prepared to welcome all these people.”

Many who fled Port-au-Prince were ill-prepared to settle elsewhere. Able in some cases to grab only a few belongings as the gangs closed in, they have arrived in their new communities without the documents needed to set up bank accounts or to enroll their children in school.

Roughly half of the internally displaced people in Haiti are children, according to UNICEF’s top official here, and most of them are school age. That’s putting additional stress on an education system already under strain.

In southern Haiti, many of the schools that were destroyed by the 2022 earthquake have not been rebuilt. Bruno Maes, the UNICEF representative here, estimates that 30% of Haiti’s educators left the country under a Biden administration humanitarian parole program.

Now schools are ill-prepared to accommodate the influx of new students or to support those who will arrive with deep trauma, he said.

“Violence has an impact on people and particularly children,” Maes said. “That is adding an additional mental stress.”

Guybonce Bonnet, the director of an education center in Les Cayes, said his facility will welcome 100 new students with six fewer teachers. There aren’t enough classrooms or clean water, he said, and many families are having difficulty making tuition payments.

In a normal year, he said, more than half of the families would have paid the first of three installments by this point. Now, he said, fewer than 10 parents have paid.

Elsa François fled Port-au-Prince in December with her husband, two children and several relatives as marauding gangs launched yet another attack and torched homes. She doesn’t know whether hers is still standing.

She moved to Jérémie, the city in southwestern Haiti where she was born – and where the challenges remain.

Her business selling clothes is struggling. A gang blockade of the main road leading south from the capital makes everything more expensive. She sold livestock and received help from family to pay her annual rent of 60,000 gourdes, about $450, but the room is so small that her husband lives elsewhere.

François is among those who has managed to register her children for school, but she is struggling to pay their tuition and buy their school supplies. She still owes tuition for the last school year.

Her new life in Jérémie has come with many unknowns, she said, but one thing is certain.

“Despite the struggle,” François told the Post, “I won’t go back.”

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Coletta reported from Toronto.