As 2025 ended and 2026 approached, Haitian civil society organizations, international analysts, and diaspora advocates offered their assessments of what the new year needed to deliver for Haiti’s trajectory to change. The list of requirements was long and interdependent, reflecting the comprehensive nature of a crisis that had been building across multiple dimensions for years and could not be resolved through action in any single area.
On security, the transformation of the MSS into the Gang Suppression Force needed to be resourced and deployed rapidly to meaningful scale. The authorization of 5,550 personnel meant nothing without the funding to deploy, equip, and sustain them. And deployment needed to be accompanied by clear operational plans, human rights safeguards, and accountability mechanisms that maintained the credibility the MSS had carefully built.
On politics, the expiration of the TPC’s mandate in February 2026 needed to be managed in a way that maintained the democratic commitment that justified the transitional arrangement. A credible and resourced electoral calendar, an independent electoral council, and a political framework that maintained accountability while organizing elections were the minimum requirements for a political process that could claim democratic legitimacy.
On humanitarian needs, the catastrophic underfunding of the response — at 21.9 percent of what was needed — had to be addressed. Six million people needing assistance while the international community provided less than a quarter of required funding was not a resource constraint but a political failure that donor governments had the capacity to correct.
None of these requirements could be met in isolation. Security was a precondition for elections; elections required political stability; political stability required adequate humanitarian support for a population otherwise too desperate to engage in democratic processes. Haiti in 2026 needed comprehensive action across all dimensions simultaneously — the integrated approach that every analysis had recommended and that the international community had consistently failed to deliver.