2023 was, by almost every measurable indicator, the worst year Haiti had experienced in its modern history. Record homicides. Record kidnappings. The last elected officials gone. The Bwa Kale and Zam Pale movements adding vigilante and retaliatory violence to the already catastrophic gang conflict. The Artibonite Valley under gang threat. The airport temporarily closed. A cholera outbreak persisting. Nearly half the population food insecure. A government with no democratic legitimacy ruling by decree.
The year’s few positive developments were mostly international and preliminary: the UN Security Council’s authorization of a Kenyan-led security mission in October, the parliamentary approval of the deployment by Kenya’s parliament in November, the sentencing of an assassination perpetrator in US courts, and the CARICOM-led Kingston process that at least kept political dialogue alive. None of these developments had produced meaningful change on the ground by year’s end.
The human cost of 2023 — 4,789 documented homicides, 2,490 kidnappings, millions facing hunger, hundreds of thousands displaced — was staggering in its scale and in its contrast to the almost complete absence of accountability for those responsible. Gang leaders whose networks had killed hundreds of people continued to hold press conferences. Political figures with alleged gang connections continued to operate freely. The judicial system that might have provided accountability had essentially ceased to function.
Heading into 2024, the most concrete hope for change was the anticipated deployment of the Kenyan-led security mission, still months away. Whether that mission would prove different from the international security interventions of the past — better resourced, better designed, better supported, and more genuinely accountable to Haitian communities — was the critical question whose answer would define Haiti’s trajectory in the year ahead.