The United Nations reported on September 27, 2024 that at least 3,661 people had been killed in Haiti in just the first six months of the year, including 100 children, in ongoing gang violence that showed little sign of abating despite the deployment of the Kenyan security mission and the formation of the new transitional government. The figure — more than 600 killings per month — represented one of the highest rates of lethal violence in the Western Hemisphere.
The deaths were concentrated in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding metropolitan area, where gang territorial conflict continued despite the political changes of the preceding months. The Kenyan mission’s initial deployment had produced some localized security improvements, but the overall scale of the challenge far exceeded the mission’s current capacity to address. Communities continued to experience gang raids, kidnappings, and sexual violence at alarming rates.
By year’s end, the UN Human Rights Commissioner reported that criminal groups had killed at least 5,601 people and kidnapped nearly 1,500 in 2024 — figures that exceeded even the catastrophic 2023 toll and confirmed that the year was the deadliest in Haiti’s documented modern history. The gap between the violence being documented and the accountability being delivered remained as vast as ever.
The 100 children killed in the first half of the year represented a particularly devastating dimension of the toll. Children caught in crossfire, targeted in gang raids on their communities, and killed in the course of sexual violence and other attacks against families represented the most innocent victims of a crisis driven entirely by adult failures of governance, criminal organization, and international response.