UN officials confirmed by late 2023 that criminal gangs controlled an estimated 80 percent of Port-au-Prince and its metropolitan area, a figure that represented a dramatic expansion from the 60 percent estimated just a year earlier. The territorial consolidation of gang networks across the capital had accelerated through 2023 as criminal organizations exploited the governance vacuum, the weakened police force, and the political paralysis that prevented any coordinated state response.
The expansion was not random but strategic. Gangs targeted neighborhoods adjacent to territory they already controlled, allowing them to expand their perimeters with manageable military effort. They seized control of road networks connecting neighborhoods to create contiguous territorial blocks. They moved into areas near ports, markets, and distribution infrastructure to maximize economic extraction. Each new neighborhood brought more extortion revenue, more recruits, and more strategic leverage over the city as a whole.
Communities that fell under gang control experienced the now-familiar sequence: extortion demands, restrictions on movement, imposition of gang authority over everyday activities, displacement of resistant households, and the replacement of state services with criminal governance. Schools closed, health facilities shut down, markets ceased to function normally. The criminal takeover of a neighborhood was not just a security event but a complete reorganization of community life under criminal authority.
The 80 percent figure had implications far beyond Port-au-Prince. As the capital — home to a third of Haiti’s population and the center of its economy, government, and international connections — came increasingly under gang control, the ability of any government to function, any economy to operate, or any international engagement to be sustained was directly compromised. The gangs were not just controlling neighborhoods; they were controlling Haiti.