The Artibonite department, which had been experiencing increasing gang pressure since 2022, came under sustained gang assault in 2024 as criminal networks expanded their operations significantly into the country’s most important agricultural region. Gang attacks on communities throughout the Artibonite Valley killed hundreds, displaced tens of thousands, and disrupted the food production that the entire country depended on, adding a new geographic dimension to a security crisis that had been centered primarily on Port-au-Prince.
The gangs that moved into the Artibonite in 2024 were different from the localized criminal networks that had previously operated in the department — they were Port-au-Prince-based networks extending their reach along strategic corridors, bringing with them the organizational sophistication, heavy weapons, and political connections that had made them dominant in the capital. Their arrival transformed what had been a manageable local security problem into an extension of the metropolitan crisis.
Farming communities that had survived through previous crises by maintaining relative distance from Port-au-Prince’s gang wars found themselves directly in the path of the expansion. Families who had farmed the same land for generations fled as gang raids destroyed their homes, stole their livestock, and killed neighbors who resisted. The displacement from the Artibonite added to the capital’s already overwhelmed displacement sites and removed producers from the agricultural supply chain at a moment of acute food insecurity.
Food security analysts warned that the Artibonite’s destabilization had severe implications for Haiti’s ability to produce any domestic food, increasing dependence on imports that currency depreciation and supply chain disruptions made increasingly expensive and unreliable. The connection between gang expansion in the Artibonite and worsening hunger across the country was direct and devastating.