The Viv Ansanm gang coalition launched a massive coordinated offensive across Port-au-Prince on February 29, 2024, as Prime Minister Ariel Henry was traveling to Kenya to finalize agreements for the deployment of the UN-authorized security mission. The timing appeared deliberate — with Haiti’s de facto leader out of the country, the gangs moved to demonstrate that the state had lost control entirely and to force Henry’s resignation before any international security force could arrive to shore up his government.
Jimmy Chérizier explicitly stated the objective: capturing the Haitian cabinet and police chief, overthrowing Henry’s government. The gang coalition attacked police stations, government buildings, and critical infrastructure across the capital simultaneously, overwhelming security forces whose capacity had been eroded by years of attrition. Four police officers were killed in a shooting outside a police station in the opening hours of the offensive.
The scale and coordination of the offensive was unprecedented. Gang networks that had previously operated in defined territories now moved across the city in coordinated columns, attacking targets that previous operations had avoided. The Viv Ansanm coalition had transformed from a collection of neighborhood gangs into something approaching a political-military force with citywide operational reach.
Haitian communities that had experienced years of localized gang violence now faced the prospect of a city-wide gang takeover. Activists described “three days of terror” in which gangs paraded through Port-au-Prince with their weapons openly, the police were nowhere to be found, and residents locked themselves in their homes hoping the violence would not reach their streets. It was the most dramatic demonstration yet of how completely the Haitian state had lost its capacity to protect its citizens.