Patrols with UN forces in the zone of gang warfare

Two-year-old Shayna is connected to an intravenous drip in one of the few operating hospitals in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Her mother, Wenda, desperately hopes it will ease the acute malnutrition the emaciated young woman suffers from.

Shayna is one of the 760,000 children on the brink of starvation in Haiti.

Terrified by the gang war raging in her neighborhood, for weeks Wenda was too scared to leave her home to seek treatment for her daughter.

Now that she’s made it to the pediatric ward, she hopes it’s not too late for Shayna.

“I want to get proper care for my child, I don’t want to lose her,” she says through tears.

Haiti has been gripped by a wave of gang violence since the 2021 assassination of then-President Jovenel Moise, and now an estimated 85% of the capital is under gang control.

Even in the hospital, Haitians are not immune to the fighting, which, according to the UN, has killed 5,000 people this year alone and brought the country to the brink of collapse.

The medical director of the hospital explains that the day before in the intensive care unit, there were clashes between the police and the gang members among the frightened patients.

Victims of violence are everywhere. One ward is full of young men with gunshot wounds.

Pierre is one of them.

He says he was walking home from work when he got caught in the crossfire of one street fight and a bullet tore through his collarbone.

“I think if the government had been more stable and put in place better youth programs, they wouldn’t have gotten involved in gangs,” he says of the young people who make up a large portion of the groups terrorizing the capital.

In October 2023, the UN Security Council authorized the creation of a Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) to combat the rise in violence.

The Kenyan-led force, funded largely by the US, was deployed to Haiti six months ago with the task of restoring law and order.

On patrol in downtown Port-au-Prince, the fury of gang violence is evident.

Kenyan officers ride the streets in heavy armored personnel carriers (APCs) through once-bustling areas of the capital that now lie deserted. Shops and houses are boarded up.

Burned-out cars and trash line side streets — barricades built by gangs to block access.

The column is making its way through the rubble when it suddenly comes under fire.

Bullets pierce the armor of the APC as Kenyan police fire their assault rifles through gun holes in the vehicle’s walls.

After almost an hour of back-and-forth firefights, the convoy moves on.

But soon there would be signs of more horrific gang violence. A man’s body is burning in the middle of the street.

One of the Kenyan police in our APC says he suspects it was a gang member cornered and killed by a rival gang, his body set on fire to send a grim warning.

The Kenyan officers on our patrol are well used to seeing this kind of brutality on the streets of Port-au-Prince, but they also tell us they are exhausted.

Four hundred officers arrived in June – but there are far fewer. In July, the Haitian government estimated that there were 12,000 armed gang members in the country.

The Kenyans were promised additional personnel. When the UN authorized the mission, a force of 2,500 was envisaged, but this support, due to arrive in November, has yet to materialise.

Despite the situation, the leadership of the force remains optimistic. Commander Godfrey Otunge is under pressure from the Kenyan government to make this mission a success.

Mission commander says MSS has “overwhelming support” in Haiti.

“The population is demanding that our team expand and go to other places, it’s reassuring,” he says.

The uphill battle they face is evident in a former Haitian police station occupied by a gang but now retaken by Kenyan forces.

It is still completely surrounded by gangs, and when the officers climb to the roof, they come under sniper fire.

Kenyan officers fire back, urging everyone to stay low.

Kenyan officers say some of their delayed reinforcements will arrive by the end of this year, bringing their total to 1,000.

And support is needed urgently. There are areas in Port-au-Prince that are so tightly controlled by the gang that they are virtually impenetrable to the police.

In one such area, Wharf Jérémie, nearly 200 civilians were killed by a single gang over a single weekend in early December.

In total, there are an estimated 100 gangs in the Port-au-Prince area, with boys as young as nine joining their ranks.

And the problem seems to be growing. According to the UN children’s agency UNICEF, the number of children recruited into groups has increased by 70% in a year.

One of the gang leaders they flock to is Tee Lapley, whose real name is Renelle Destino.

As head of the Grand Ravine gang, he commands more than 1,000 men from his fortified headquarters high above Port-au-Prince.

Gangs like his have worsened an already dire situation in Haiti and are known to kill, rape and terrorize civilians.

Grand Ravine is notorious for kidnapping people for ransom, a practice that earned Tee Lapley a spot on the FBI’s wanted list.

Tee Lapley tells us that he and his gang members “love our country a lot,” but when pressed about gangs like his raping and murdering civilians, he said his men are “doing things they shouldn’t have do (to members of rival gangs) because they do the same to us.”

The reason kids join Gran Ravine is simple, he says: “The government doesn’t create any jobs, it’s a country with no economic activity. We live on garbage, it’s essentially a failed state.”

He failed to recognize the suffocating effect gangs like his had on the Haitian economy. Often afraid to leave home for work, civilians also regularly demand money.

With 700,000 residents forced from their homes by violence perpetrated by groups like Grand Ravin, the capital’s schools have become camps for internally displaced persons.

The negotiator is one of those who had to seek refuge.

She sits with her five children, squeezed into the small section of the school balcony they now call home.

“Just a few weeks ago I was living in my own house,” she says. “But gangs have taken over my neighborhood.”

She explains that she left for an area of ​​the city called Salino before it was also taken over by gangs and she escaped with hundreds of other people.

“Today I am running away again to save my life and my children,” she says.