Haitian women’s rights organizations and UN monitoring bodies documented 2023 as the worst year on record for gender-based violence in Haiti, with sexual violence by gang networks continuing to escalate and reaching new levels of systematic brutality in communities under criminal control. The UN reported that sexual and gender-based violence, including rape, had increased in the first half of the year, and that gangs were continuing to use sexual violence to punish communities, spread fear, and subjugate populations.
The scale of sexual violence documented in 2023 was shocking even against the backdrop of previous years’ alarming figures. Women and girls in gang-controlled areas lived with the constant threat of sexual assault as a tool of gang governance. Survivors who managed to reach services described organized campaigns of sexual violence during gang raids and occupations that were clearly coordinated rather than opportunistic.
Services for survivors were catastrophically inadequate. Medical facilities that provided emergency contraception, treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and physical injury care for rape survivors were scarce, understaffed, and inaccessible in many gang-controlled areas. Psychosocial support services for trauma survivors were even more limited. The legal pathway to justice was essentially nonexistent — courts were barely functioning, prosecutors were under threat, and gang members who committed sexual violence faced no legal consequences.
Women’s organizations called for specific emergency funding for GBV services in Haiti, arguing that the scale of sexual violence as a weapon of conflict required a response commensurate with its severity. They demanded that international actors treating Haiti’s crisis as primarily a political and security problem recognize the gendered dimensions of the violence and ensure that women’s protection and support were integral to any response rather than afterthoughts.