OAS urged to do more to help Haiti fight gang violence

The Organization of American States came under pressure Thursday to help quash gang violence in Haiti as a UN-backed mission led by Kenyan police in the troubled Caribbean country struggles with a lack of funds and personnel.

The OAS meeting was held a day after Jimmy Chérizier, a former elite police officer who became one of Haiti’s most powerful gang leaders, pleaded with people from the Delmas 30 neighborhood in the capital, Port-au-Prince, to let armed men through so they could overthrow Haiti’s prime minister and its transitional presidential council.

Gangs that control at least 85% of Haiti’s capital also have seized a significant amount of territory in Haiti’s central region in recent months.

“Every day, these gangs are gaining more territory,” said Patrick Pélissier, Haiti’s minister of justice and public security. Barbara Feinstein, deputy assistant secretary for Caribbean Affairs and Haiti at the department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, attended the meeting after Secretary Mark Rubio demanded that the OAS be more involved in a solution for the Haitian crisis.

Haiti’s defense minister Jean Michel Moïse said that “the army is very small, very embryonic,” adding that the current urban warfare in Haiti is overwhelming them. “They were not prepared for this kind of challenge.” The military currently has some 1,000 members with limited training, he said.

Moïse and Pélissier thanked the OAS and the international community for their support so far but stressed that much more is needed.

“Haiti…needs this solidarity to be translated into concrete actions,” Pélissier said, before adding: “The problem that we have in front of us today is huge.”

He and other Haitian officials noted that the ongoing gang violence is fueled by the smuggling of weapons, many of which come from the U.S.