GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Haiti’s gang violence crisis has left at least 5,700 people dead or wounded this year while more than 1,000 women and girls have been raped, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said Friday.

The figures, compiled by the UN mission in Haiti up to September 11, also include 230 kidnappings, though Turk said “the real figures are likely much higher”.

Addressing the UN Human Rights Council, Turk warned that gangs continue to expand despite the deployment of an international security force intended to help Haitian authorities restore order.

“Despite some success in containing their activity in parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, gangs continue to adapt and expand, re-emerging in new areas and constantly rearming,” he said.

Turk said the deployed Gang Suppression Force remained significantly understrength. The mission is intended to reach 5,500 personnel but currently has about 1,500 so far.

“The force remains far below the strength needed,” Turk said.

At the same time, he said, the UN had “serious concerns about the unnecessary and disproportionate use of force” by Haiti’s national law enforcement and self-defence groups.

“Since the beginning of the year, more than half of all casualties occurred in the context of security operations, with hundreds of people struck by stray bullets and explosive drones,” he said.

Turk said that “so-called self-defence groups” had killed or injured some 280 people so far this year.

– ‘Head of the snake’ –
William O’Neill, Turk’s designated expert on human rights in Haiti, told reporters that the situation was “dire but not hopeless”.

He said if a full-strength Gang Suppression Force had the right capacities — intelligence, night vision, helicopters — it could be highly effective against the gangs, where power resides in a few hands.

He said it was no secret who the gang leaders are and where they are, so if a team could swoop in and arrest the leadership, “most likely the gang collapses”.

The gangs understand power, “and if you’re more powerful than they are — game over”, said lawyer O’Neill, who helped establish the Haitian National Police in 1995.

Capturing a group of top leaders “to cut the head of the snake” would be “absolutely a game-changer”, he told the UN correspondents’ association.

Through arms embargoes and sanctions, “if you can cut off and strangle their access to financing and weaponry, it becomes much easier than to do anything kinetic”, he added.

Of guns recovered from gangs, an “overwhelming number” could be traced back to gun shops in “10 to 12 zip codes in Florida”, and he said that the United States “needs to do much more”.

O’Neill said the gangs had no underpinning ideology and were based on “pure criminality”, while about half of their members were minors.

“The gangs have no popular support; it’s zero. The population hates them, and with good reason,” he said.