Haiti: Stop the Money Flow to Organized Crime

By Ronald Sanders

Haiti has slipped from the world’s front pages, but its suffering has not eased. Between January and early June 2026, at least 2,310 people were killed, 1,106 injured and 99 kidnapped, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Nearly 700 women and girls were victims of sexual violence, and by May almost 1.47 million people had been driven from their homes. These are not abstractions. They are the daily reality of a country where armed gangs, not the state, increasingly decide who moves, who pays and who survives.

The numbers should trouble the conscience of every government watching from a safe distance. They should also clarify a hard truth that policymakers have been slow to accept: firepower alone will not fix Haiti. The gangs’ money, weapons and trafficking routes must be severed, and the people who finance, supply and shield them must be identified and pursued with the same urgency as the gunmen themselves.

A Governance Crisis, Not Just a Security One

Armed gangs now hold effective control over large stretches of Port-au-Prince, along with key roads, ports, coastal areas and commercial arteries. Their reach extends well beyond intimidation. Gangs control movement, extort businesses, seize goods and impose a shadow authority wherever the Haitian state is too weak or too absent to resist them.

In July, UNODC told the UN Security Council something Haiti’s international partners have been reluctant to say plainly: this is not merely a security crisis. It is a governance crisis, sustained and financed by organized crime. That distinction matters enormously. A security crisis can, in theory, be met with superior force. A governance crisis fueled by criminal networks demands something far more comprehensive — sustained action against extortion, kidnapping, arms and narcotics trafficking, money laundering, corruption and political protection, backed by courts, prosecutors, prisons and police capable of making the law stick.

None of this is an argument against the UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force, which Haiti’s own authorities requested and which people living under gang rule urgently need. But by July, barely 1,000 personnel had been deployed — some 4,500 short of the approved strength. The Force needs the troops, funding, equipment and logistics to do the job it was mandated to do.

Even fully staffed, however, the Force cannot do everything. It can retake a road, a port or a police station. It cannot, on its own, stop new weapons from arriving, trace the laundering of criminal proceeds, or prosecute the financiers and protectors who make gang rule possible. Leave those networks untouched, and gang leaders will simply be replaced, arsenals replenished, and lost ground reclaimed within months.

Why Haiti’s Financial Enforcement Is Failing

This was the case I made as Antigua & Barbuda’s ambassador at the OAS General Assembly in Panama this past June, calling for coordinated hemispheric action to disrupt drug trafficking, illicit financial flows and the cross-border movement of weapons and criminals. We urged governments to identify, sanction and prosecute anyone financing or materially supporting the gangs, whether they operate inside Haiti or well beyond its borders. UNODC’s subsequent assessment only reinforced the urgency of that call.

Haiti’s record on financial enforcement is, frankly, alarming. UNODC reports that the country’s financial intelligence unit received 1,254 suspicious transaction reports between 2019 and 2024. Only 19 were referred to judicial authorities. Not one resulted in a conviction. The UN’s sanctions list for Haiti names just nine individuals and two entities – both gangs. Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union have sanctioned a broader set of political and economic figures, yet the wider financial and logistical networks sustaining the gangs remain largely uninvestigated and unpunished.

Regional bodies have not been silent. The OAS General Assembly has called for intelligence-sharing and customs cooperation to choke off the flow of weapons and money, and has backed SECURE-Haiti alongside closer coordination with the UN and CARICOM. CARICOM, for its part, continues to support the Gang Suppression Force, deliver humanitarian assistance and press political dialogue through its Eminent Persons Group, while CARICOM IMPACS and the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap have strengthened regional cooperation against firearms trafficking.

The trouble is that these efforts remain scattered – divided among security assistance, political dialogue, humanitarian relief and weapons control. No single body yet brings together the financial intelligence officers, customs authorities, coast guards, firearms investigators, anti-narcotics agencies and prosecutors needed to pursue these criminal networks as one interconnected system.

Following the Money Across Borders

What is now required is a practical, standing arrangement joining Haitian authorities, the OAS, CARICOM and UNODC in a coordinated campaign against the transnational criminal networks that sustain the gangs. Its mandate should fuse financial intelligence, customs data, firearms tracing, maritime surveillance, anti-narcotics work and prosecutorial cooperation – mapping financial and commercial links, tracing seized weapons and ammunition, scrutinizing suspicious cargo and maritime movements, building the evidentiary basis for sanctions, supporting joint investigations, and pursuing the freezing and lawful recovery of criminal assets.

Source and transit countries bear a particular responsibility here. The weapons and ammunition fueling Haiti’s gangs are overwhelmingly drawn from external supply chains. Haiti cannot police cargo at foreign ports, trace money through foreign financial centers, or prevent diversion before weapons enter illicit channels. Outbound cargo screening, tighter oversight of shippers, systematic weapons tracing and investigation of diverted legal purchases cannot be left to Haiti to handle alone – this is a shared obligation, not a favor to be granted.

Sanctions, too, must reach further than the men holding the guns. Where the evidence is solid, they should extend to the buyers who purchase weapons, the intermediaries who arrange shipment, those who launder criminal proceeds, and the figures who use political or commercial influence to shield the gangs from consequence. Such measures must remain lawful and precise – targeted at identified persons, businesses and transactions, with proper safeguards and due process intact.

Building Institutions That Outlast the Crisis

External assistance is essential, but it cannot substitute for functioning Haitian institutions. The country’s specialized judicial units for financial crimes must become fully operational. Investigators, prosecutors, judges, prison authorities and anti-corruption bodies need protection, resources and technical support to do their jobs without fear. Financial intelligence must translate into investigations; investigations must translate into cases; and convictions must translate into the recovery of criminal assets. Each link in that chain currently exists in some form – none functions reliably.

The problem, at this point, is not a lack of diagnosis. UNODC has provided it in stark detail. The OAS and CARICOM have recognized major parts of it. What remains conspicuously absent is coordinated execution. Military force can buy Haiti time and space to recover. But if the people who finance, arm, transport and protect the gangs remain untouched, that recovery will prove temporary, and the Haitian people will be made to endure the same brutal cycle all over again.

The international community must act decisively to dismantle the financial architecture propping up Haiti’s gangs. Stopping the violence, in the end, means stopping the money that makes it possible.

Ronald Sanders is Antigua & Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the OAS, and the Chancellor of The University of Guyana