The Haitian government’s security Task Force began conducting armed drone operations in areas controlled by criminal groups in March 2025, deploying explosives-laden drones against gang positions in Port-au-Prince in an aggressive new tactic designed to degrade criminal capacity in areas that conventional police operations could not safely enter. The UN reported that the Task Force drone operations, reportedly directed by the prime minister’s office, killed at least 547 people by September 20, including 20 individuals with no verified criminal affiliation and 9 children.
The drone campaign produced documented results in terms of disrupting gang operations and killing or wounding gang fighters and leaders. In areas where drone strikes degraded gang defensive positions, joint operations between the Haitian police and the Kenya mission were able to enter and begin clearing territory that had been inaccessible for months. The tactical logic of the drone approach was sound in areas where gangs had fortified positions that could not be approached without severe casualties.
However, human rights organizations raised serious concerns about the precision and proportionality of the drone operations. The confirmed deaths of at least 9 children and 20 civilians with no criminal affiliation pointed to targeting failures that violated international humanitarian law standards. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called for independent investigations into specific strikes that appeared to have caused civilian casualties.
The government defended the drone campaign as a necessary response to criminal organizations that operated heavy weapons from dense urban environments and could not be engaged through conventional means without unacceptable police casualties. Critics argued that civilian protection standards applied regardless of the difficulty of the operating environment and that the drone campaign needed to be brought under clearer rules of engagement and oversight.