Haiti Needs One Strategy, Real Funding, and Political Discipline

By Ronald Sanders

Haiti cannot afford to remain the world’s neglected crisis. Yet, far too often, global attention drifts elsewhere while the country’s turmoil deepens, leaving its people to suffer in silence.

The urgent question is simple: how can Haiti break the cycle of violence, political paralysis, and economic collapse?

Recent reporting by the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) – including its Laboderie Massacre – Internal Situation Report and Calls to Return Issued to Citizens by Armed Gangs – and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) report, Addressing Haiti’s Escalating Crisis: From Criminal Governance to Community Fragmentation (September 2025), paint a stark picture: security is fractured, political leadership is stagnant, and gangs wield real power over territory and resources.

A Fragmented Response Is No Strategy at All

Haiti’s security efforts, if they exist as a coherent strategy at all, are disjointed and ineffective. Multiple initiatives – ranging from a prime minister’s task force to scattered drone projects by private contractors, and the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission – operate in isolation.

The Haitian National Police, even with MSS assistance, remain overstretched and inconsistent in their results. Meanwhile, gangs control roads, neighborhoods, and revenue streams, functioning as de facto criminal governments.

Political Paralysis Compounds the Crisis

Politics offers no relief. The Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) has stalled, November 2025 elections are unlikely, and no credible plan exists for governance after the TPC mandate expires in February 2026.

Power struggles among politicians and elites continue while the country slips further into chaos. Every week of inaction strengthens armed groups and weakens the state.

A Single, Integrated Path Forward

A workable solution exists – but only if implemented as a single, comprehensive plan. Haitian authorities must secure critical transport and logistics infrastructure: airports, ports, fuel depots, bridges, and national road corridors.

Without safe movement of people, goods, and services, every other intervention fails. This requires:

• A funded, organized security apparatus, including mobile response teams, clear rules of engagement, and humanitarian corridors accessible to aid agencies.
• Cutting off arms and illicit financing that sustain gang networks, through interdiction at entry points, surveillance of financial organizers, and real-time intelligence.
• Enforcement of U.S. sanctions on gang leaders and enablers, coupled with arrests, prosecutions, and asset seizures. Target the financiers and organizers, not just street-level operatives, to prevent gangs from regenerating.

The Path Forward Exists – But Only as a Unified Package

There is a viable way forward, but it must be implemented as a single, integrated plan – not a patchwork of disconnected initiatives. First, Haitian authorities must secure critical lifelines: airports, ports, fuel depots, bridges, and national road corridors.

Without safe passage for goods, people, and humanitarian aid, all other efforts falter.

Achieving this requires a properly funded, mobile security apparatus with clear rules of engagement and protected humanitarian corridors that aid organizations can actually use. Simultaneously, international partners must sever the financial and logistical arteries feeding gang power.

That means rigorous interdiction at entry points, real-time financial intelligence, and targeted disruption of the “organizer-financier” networks that sustain criminal enterprises.

U.S. sanctions on gang leaders must be matched by actual seizures, arrests, and prosecutions – not just symbolic designations. Justice institutions must prioritize dismantling the architects of violence, not just its foot soldiers.

History shows that unless the logistics and money behind gangs are dismantled, they will regenerate – often stronger than before.

International Coordination is Essential

The UN, Organization of American States (OAS), and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) must operate from a unified strategy encompassing security, humanitarian relief, governance transition, and economic stabilization. The OAS Secretary General’s Haitian-Led Roadmap offers a framework – but what is missing is a single, budgeted operational plan, a unified Security Council mandate, and a funded UN instrument to implement it.

The UN should establish one Haiti Fund – transparent, audited, and tied to measurable results. Financing should come primarily from the United States and France, joined by other nations benefiting historically from Haiti’s labor and markets. This is not charity – it is global responsibility.

Disbursements must be linked to milestones: securing critical corridors, halting extortion, seizing arms and cash tied to criminal networks, reopening schools and health centers in safe zones, and completing steps toward the post-February 2026 transition on schedule.

Political Discipline Must Match International Support

External aid alone will fail without internal discipline. Haitian political and economic actors must focus on one public agenda: restore security along lifelines, stabilize essential services, prosecute gang financiers, and establish a realistic election timeline when conditions allow.

Anything else invites deeper collapse.

Time is Running Out

Haitians have been promised change repeatedly – but their situation has worsened. The next phase must be different: one integrated security design, one transition path, one financing mechanism, and one set of performance measures.

Haitian authorities must demonstrate the capacity to act in their nation’s interest; international partners must support this effort; and the Security Council must stop treating Haiti as an inconvenient intrusion.

Without immediate action, Haiti’s state will contract further, armed groups will expand, and the crisis will spill across the Caribbean and Americas – through migration, insecurity, and human suffering. The time for a unified strategy is now.

Ronald Sanders is Antigua & Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the OAS