Protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry erupted across Haiti in early March 2024 as the gang offensive that had paralyzed the capital exposed the total failure of his government to provide the security that was the state’s most basic function. The protests, coming on top of the gang offensive, created a dual crisis — criminal violence and popular rejection — that made Henry’s position completely untenable.
Protesters carried signs calling for Henry to step down and calling on the international community to stop supporting a government that had presided over the worst security collapse in Haitian history. Many explicitly connected Henry’s failure to organize elections — he had missed the February 7, 2024 deadline established in the December 2022 political agreement — to the broader governance crisis that had enabled gang dominance.
Henry’s government had been the subject of protest and challenge since it was formed in July 2021, but the March 2024 protests had a different quality. Previous protests demanded better governance; March 2024 protesters were demanding survival. The gang offensive had stripped away any remaining pretense that the Henry government retained the capacity to govern, and the protests reflected a population’s recognition that the fundamental political arrangements needed to change before any security improvement was possible.
Human Rights Watch characterized Haiti as on the brink of “a total collapse or takeover of the state,” noting that criminal groups had already attacked and looted the main seaport, attacked the international airport, and overrun two major prisons in addition to the sustained offensive across the capital. The warning reflected an assessment that Haiti had passed a threshold beyond which partial or inadequate responses would no longer suffice.