The founding editor of this newspaper was not being facetious when he asked in an article a year ago almost to the day: “Can Haiti be closed down, adopted and restarted by the international community under UN supervision?”

At the time, the United States had just issued a level four travel advisory, hot on the heels of the July 7, 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, advising Americans to leave violence-torn Haiti and to make evacuation plans that “do not rely on US Government assistance”. That’s how bad things were.

A year later, things are exponentially worse in Haiti.

As if to mock a United Nations Security Council resolution Friday calling for all countries to cut off small arms, light weapons and ammunition to anyone there supporting gang violence and criminal activity, 99 people were reported killed in fighting between rival gangs in the infamous Cite Soleil district alone.

Officials in Haiti’s capital reported that as a result of the fighting between the Cite Soleil gangs, Doctors Without Borders had sounded the alarm that thousands of people were trapped in the district without drinking water, food and medical care.

The Associated Press said a year after Moïse’s assassination, gang violence is even worse, and Haiti had gone into a free fall that has seen the economy tumble and many Haitians fleeing the country to escape the turmoil. At the same time, attempts to form a coalition government had faltered, and efforts to hold general elections stalled.

UN officials said that between January and the end of June this year, they had documented 934 killings; 684 injuries and 680 kidnappings across the capital. In addition, over a five-day period, from July 8 to 12, at least 234 more people were killed or injured in gang-related violence in Cite Soleil, the largest of Haiti’s sprawling slums.

The Security Council resolution, importantly, extended the mission known as BINUH, which expired last Friday, until July 15, 2023, allowing the UN to continue “its critical advisory efforts in support of facilitating political dialogue, enhancing the capacity of the Haitian National Police to address gang violence and protecting human rights”.

Having seen so many of these types of resolutions and interventions fail over many years, we have begun to feel a sense of despair for Haiti. After the flurry of international activity following the assassination of President Moise, it seems that everything is back to square one, except worse.

The UN agencies said some gangs were even denying access to drinking water and food in order to control the population, thereby aggravating malnutrition.

The killing of the Haitian leader was only the latest episode in a morbid 218-year Haitian tale of upheavals, turmoil, betrayals, disasters — natural and man-made — and abject failure of governance.

We acknowledge that the refugee crisis sparked by Russia’s war on Ukraine is not the same as the situation in Haiti, but the results are hardly different. It is a question of life and death and Haiti has been suffering far longer.

The Western world has opened its arms and moved with alacrity and breakneck speed to welcome the Ukrainians. We applaud that. Can the same not be done for the Haitians feeling war-like conditions at home?