A UN report released in early 2024 covering 2023 data documented 4,789 reported homicides and 2,490 kidnappings in Haiti during the year — figures that represented a dramatic escalation from already alarming previous years and confirmed 2023 as the deadliest year in Haiti’s recent history. The statistics, compiled by the UN monitoring operation and the Haitian National Police, were widely acknowledged to undercount actual violence given the significant reporting gaps in gang-controlled areas.
The homicide figure represented nearly a 500 percent increase from the levels of just a few years earlier, reflecting the rapid expansion and intensification of gang violence across the country. The killings were not evenly distributed — they were concentrated in Port-au-Prince and its metropolitan area, in the Artibonite department where gang activity had expanded significantly, and in communities targeted by the Bwa Kale vigilante movement and the gang retaliation it provoked.
The kidnapping figures similarly represented a dramatic increase, with more than 2,490 cases reported — many more believed to have gone unreported as families paid ransoms quietly or as victims in gang-controlled areas had no accessible reporting mechanism. The kidnapping industry had become one of Haiti’s largest criminal enterprises, generating tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments annually and affecting the decisions of businesses, schools, and families across the country.
International human rights organizations used the 2023 statistics to argue that Haiti was experiencing a crisis that met the threshold for emergency international intervention. They called on the UN Security Council and its member states to treat Haiti with the same urgency applied to other armed conflict situations with comparable death tolls, arguing that the geographic and political distance from major international power centers had allowed Haiti’s catastrophe to proceed without the response its severity demanded.