The International Organization for Migration reported a significant surge in displacement in May 2025 as gang violence expanded into new areas and as the effects of the Artibonite and Centre department attacks drove tens of thousands of additional families from their homes. The cumulative displacement figure of over one million people marked a threshold that had not been seen since the 2010 earthquake, with the comparison made all the more painful by the fact that this displacement was the product of criminal violence rather than a natural disaster.
The May surge was connected to specific security events: the gang attacks on Mirebalais and Saut d’Eau in the Centre department that displaced over 51,000 people, continued violence in the Artibonite that prevented displaced farmers from returning to their land, and new gang offensives in parts of Port-au-Prince that had maintained relative stability. Each episode of displacement added to an already overwhelming caseload for humanitarian organizations trying to provide reception services and basic assistance.
The profile of the displaced population was shifting in ways that concerned protection specialists: an increasing proportion of displacement was from rural and provincial areas rather than exclusively from Port-au-Prince, reflecting the geographic spread of the gang crisis. Communities that had previously served as destinations for people fleeing the capital were now themselves generating displacement, reducing the options available for people with no urban family network to rely on.
IOM and its partners increased reception operations at border crossings in the Artibonite and Centre to support both internally displaced populations and the surge of deportees arriving from the Dominican Republic. The simultaneous demands of internal displacement and deportee reception on the same limited operational capacity illustrated the compounding nature of the crises facing humanitarian organizations in Haiti.