Non-international armed conflict in Haiti

Displacement was a systematic and foreseeable consequence of Viv Ansanm’s unlawful attacks on civilians. By the end of 2025, about 1.45 million people, more than half of them children, were internally displaced, and numbers continued to rise. Between late December 2025 and May 2026, attacks in Bas-Artibonite, Kenscoff, and Petite-Rivière de l’Artibonite drove successive waves of flight, with the Jean-Denis offensive alone displacing more than 13,500 people. Attacks on residential areas, obstructed return routes and the economic strangulation of affected communities made displacement protracted rather than temporary for many.

Obstruction of humanitarian access

Viv Ansanm systematically obstructed civilian movement and humanitarian access, controlling all major land and maritime routes into Port-au-Prince, maintaining illegal checkpoints and extorting tolls from commercial and humanitarian transport. The prolonged closure of the main international airport to commercial flights and the blockage of a key national road further impeded relief delivery and the movement of aid workers. Ahead of its March 2026 offensive on Petite-Rivière de l’Artibonite, Gran Grif dug large holes and erected barricades to keep police and humanitarian responders out. With over half the population requiring emergency assistance, such deliberate obstacles might engage the prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare.

Attacks on Humanitarian Personnel

Humanitarian personnel were exposed to lethal violence in the capital. In January 2026, fighting attributable to Viv Ansanm in the Bel Air neighbourhood trapped community health workers inside a humanitarian medical facility for several hours, while a seriously wounded former volunteer died at its gate, unable to receive first aid. The organisation was forced to suspend all activities in the area, with no resumption announced by mid-May, leaving residents without access to healthcare.

Kidnapping served as a systematic instrument of Viv Ansanm’s territorial control, used to generate ransom revenue, punish perceived opponents, and even spread terror among civilians. Kidnappings for ransom resurged in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in early 2026, with victims including a teenage girl and pregnant women. Farmers and residents abducted during attacks in Kenscoff and the Artibonite remained unaccounted for. Victims faced prolonged detention and physical abuse, and saw demands for substantial sums for their safe release. Hostage-taking is prohibited under customary IHL and constitutes a war crime.

Journalists remained exposed to deliberate violence in 2026, extending an established pattern of attacks on media workers. In March, armed men tried to force their way into the home of a prominent radio director, firing shots. The following day, two journalists on reporting duty in downtown Port-au-Prince were kidnapped by a Viv Ansanm member gang and executed that same evening. These events did not occur in isolation: Haiti ranks among the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, with numerous media workers killed in recent years and authorities failing to protect the press.

State security operations, notably explosive drone strikes by a police task force supported by a private military contractor, raised serious concerns regarding proportionality and precautions in attack. Drone operations escalated sharply and killed or injured many people with no apparent gang affiliation, including children. Civilians were struck while assisting the wounded and several children in residential areas were injured. Advance warnings were not accompanied by any concrete measures to help civilians flee, and requests to clarify the command structure and the role of private contractors went unanswered.

Haiti’s education system continued to collapse, with well over a thousand schools closed by armed violence, affecting hundreds of thousands of students and thousands of teachers. In the capital, hundreds of private schools had not reopened since early 2024 and some public schools were left largely empty. In areas under Viv Ansanm control, schools could only function upon payment of taxes, and gangs offered to cover fees in exchange for children’s involvement, turning schools into instruments of recruitment. The coalition also used university buildings for military purposes until police operations retook them, while schools in displacement sites became shelters.

Attacks against Health Facilities

By mid-2026, health infrastructure reached a critical state, with only around one in ten hospital facilities fully operational nationwide. Medical facilities in the capital became battlegrounds during fighting involving Viv Ansanm, trapping health workers and forcing suspensions of services. In Artibonite, Gran Grif fired on a hospital, partially destroying it, and threatened to burn down another. In May 2026, clashes between coalition gangs forced the evacuation of both hospitals serving northern Cité Soleil, including oxygen-dependent newborns and women in labour, leaving the area without any open hospital as hundreds of civilians sheltered inside one compound.

Toussaint Louverture airport remained closed to international commercial aviation as of May 2025, following repeated gunfire on aircraft since late 2024. In April 2026, clashes between Viv Ansanm member gangs reached the airport perimeter, striking the terminal building and halting domestic flights. Gang control over surrounding roads and a key national route further restricted civilian movement and humanitarian access. Travellers were forced to route through distant regional airports at greater cost and delay, with serious consequences for medical evacuation and family reunification.

Attacks against media and communication infrastructure

No new attacks on media buildings were confirmed during the period, yet the destruction of major outlets attributed to Viv Ansanm in 2025 continued to shape Haiti’s media landscape as a lasting assault on the public information environment. Leading news outlets remained displaced, with the country’s oldest newspaper operating solely online since gangs seized its headquarters and carried away its printing press, and historic radio stations forced to relocate. Gang control over most of the capital continued to severely restrict the press’s freedom of movement and field access.

Viv Ansanm extended its attacks to civilian cultural infrastructure. In February 2026, members of a coalition gang occupied, looted and partially burned a historically significant football development centre in Croix-des-Bouquets, a facility with no military function that had produced numerous international players.

Child recruitment by armed groups reached alarming levels in the first half of 2026, with children reportedly making up half of all gang members and verified violations against children among the highest worldwide. Several Viv Ansanm gangs engaged heavily in child trafficking. Children were drawn in through payments, food, drugs, social media, and coercion, sometimes through initiation rites involving physical violence and rape. Younger children served as lookouts while older ones were armed and deployed on front lines. Girls were subjected to sexual slavery as gang members’ partners and increasingly took part in looting and armed clashes. Gangs also killed child members for breaking internal rules.

Viv Ansanm used sexual violence systematically to terrorise, control and subjugate communities, with gang rapes, sometimes by ten or more perpetrators, committed during kidnappings, territorial takeovers, and attempts to control aid. Cases rose sharply over recent years, with some victims killed after being raped, and many survivors were sexually assaulted repeatedly. Victims now span a broad cross section of the population, from young girls to older women. Insecurity, stigma, a lack of shelters and the risk of violence from self-defence groups prevented timely care, suggesting that reported figures significantly understate the true scale of the violence.

The only operational detention facility for children in Port-au-Prince, holding many children arrested during security operations against Viv Ansanm, operated at more than seven times its capacity. Girls were held together with adult women, in breach of the obligation to separate children from adults. Detained children lacked adequate food, water, healthcare, education and rehabilitation, and most spent years without seeing a judge or lawyer, in conditions described as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Despite a protocol recognizing children associated with gangs as victims, judicial authorities continued to prioritize prosecution over rehabilitation.