GENEVA, Switzerland, (AFP) – A UN watchdog called Friday on countries in the Americas to stop forced returns to violence-ravaged Haiti, pointing to statistics showing tens of thousands of Haitians have been deported this year.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said it was “deeply concerned about the collective expulsions of Haitians without proper assessment” of their individual protection needs.

The committee, made up of 18 independent experts, called in a statement on countries in the region “to suspend forced returns and adopt measures to protect Haitians on the move”.

The statement came after the UN earlier this week warned that gang violence in Haiti was spreading at “an alarming rate”, and reiterated a call for an international force to help restore order in the crisis-torn country.

From lynchings and rooftop snipers to rapes, kidnappings and the murder of children, a UN envoy said surging violent crime was inflicting terror on the population.

Despite the horrifying situation, the CERD experts said UN statistics showed that some 36,000 people of Haitian origin had been deported back to Haiti during the first three months of this year alone.

The deportees, the committee pointed out, included pregnant women, newborns, unaccompanied children, victims of trafficking and gender-based violence.

The experts also expressed grave concern that Haitians were “reportedly victims of excessive use of force, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and racial profiling by law enforcement officials of some states” in the Americas region.

The experts, who are tasked with assessing how countries implement an international convention on eliminating racism, raised alarm over alleged rights abuses against Haitian migrants at borders, in migrant detention centres and along perilous migration routes.

Obstacles to allowing Haitians to seek international protection were exposing migrants to “assaults on their life and security, killings, disappearances, acts of sexual and gender-based violence, and trafficking by criminal networks”, the committee warned.

The experts also decried reported increases in hate speech and racist or xenophobic violence against Haitian migrants.

Countries should investigate all “allegations of human rights violations and abuses against persons of Haitian origin on the move”, committee chair Verene Shepherd told reporters.

They should also, she said, “allow migration rules to punish those responsible and to provide rehabilitation and reparations to victims or their families”.