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Haiti: the UN renews the anti-gang force for six months. But who controls those who shoot?
1 October 2026 — Haiti (Port-au-Prince, Artibonite)
For a year Haiti has had an international armed force that does not wear the blue helmet. It is called the Gang Suppression Force. The UN Security Council authorised it but does not command it. Its task is to fight the gangs that hold the capital hostage, and it may do so on its own, without the Haitian police. Its mandate was due to expire on 30 September: the day before, the Council renewed it, but only for six months, until 31 March 2027, while the force had asked for two years. The new resolution contains no external oversight mechanism; it does, however, encourage States to grant its soldiers privileges and immunities. This site wrote about it in June, when the force was about to go into action. Here we look at its first year and at a question that remains open: if a soldier of this force kills a civilian, who investigates?
Who is involved
At least five different actors carry weapons in Haiti today, and each answers to a different authority. To understand who controls whom, one must first tell them apart.
The gangs. The strongest is Viv Ansanm (“Living Together”), a coalition of armed groups that controls most of Port-au-Prince. Among its leaders is Jimmy Chérizier, known as “Barbecue”. In May 2025 the United States designated it a terrorist organisation. The gangs live off kidnapping, extortion and control of the roads, and they recruit many children.
The Haitian State. Haiti has had no elected president since 2021, when Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, and since then it has had no elected parliament either. Since 7 February 2026, when the mandate of the Transitional Presidential Council ended, the sole executive authority has been Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who is unelected and backed by the United States. The State fights the gangs with the National Police and with a small army rebuilt only a few years ago.
The task force and Vectus Global. This is where things become less clear. Since March 2025 a special anti-gang “task force”, set up by the Haitian government, has been operating together with an American private military company, Vectus Global. It was founded by Erik Prince, the former soldier who in the 2000s ran Blackwater, the contractor firm behind the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2007; the contractors convicted for that massacre were later pardoned by Donald Trump. In practice Vectus supplies the government with what the Haitian police lack: armed drones, helicopters, snipers, intelligence and communications specialists, with planned personnel of around two hundred people from the United States, Europe and El Salvador. Vectus works for the government in Port-au-Prince, not for the UN: it is not part of the international force and no Security Council resolution authorises it. To export these services to Haiti it needs a licence from the US State Department, and it obtained one.
In August 2025 Prince spoke of a ten-year contract. The details are not public: what is known comes from the press (Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Le Nouvelliste), as pieced together by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, a research centre on organised crime. According to these accounts there are two agreements. The first, for one year, concerns security: instructors, coordination of drone strikes, direct participation in combat, helicopters and boats. The second, for ten years, would entrust Vectus with modernising customs, that is, collecting duties on the border with the Dominican Republic, which before the gangs advanced accounted for more than half of the country's tax revenue. For this part Vectus would be paid a percentage: 20% of the increase in customs revenue in the first three years, then 15%, plus a fixed fee of 3% on import volumes. The Haitian government has never confirmed this second agreement. If these accounts are accurate, a foreign private company is waging war on the gangs on behalf of the State and is also paid with a share of the taxes it helps to collect. Its men are neither Haitian soldiers nor peacekeepers: who judges them if they do wrong depends on Haitian and American law, and so far no one has put that to the test.
The international force (GSF). It was created on 30 September 2025 by resolution 2793, adopted with 12 votes in favour and 3 abstentions: China, Russia and Pakistan. It replaced the Kenyan-led mission, which had never received enough troops or funding; Kenya left the country in April 2026. It may number up to 5,550 people. On 8 July it had 1,083 military personnel and 16 civilians, according to the UN Secretary-General's report, and at the end of September around 1,500, less than a third of its planned strength. Its contingents come from Chad, Jamaica, Mongolia and Sri Lanka. Operations began on 1 June 2026 and full capacity is expected between October and December. The force commander and the special representative are not chosen by the UN but by a “Standing Group of Partners” made up of the United States, Canada, the Bahamas, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica and Kenya. The United States was its main driving force.
The UN. It is present on the ground in two ways, neither of them armed. BINUH is the political office: it follows the transition and documents human rights violations, and almost all the figures in this article come from it. UNSOH is the logistical support office created alongside the force, to which it provides equipment and services. Above it all sits the Security Council, where the United States and Panama draft the resolutions on Haiti.
Facts
In August the force's Sri Lankan soldiers were the first to operate outside the capital, in the Artibonite region. Its operational record is still limited: on 21 June, for example, the force detained 14 suspected gang members, and 13 were released for lack of evidence.
On 28 September a Sri Lankan unit attacked the illegal checkpoints of a gang, Kokorat San Ras, in the Artibonite and killed three of its members without suffering losses, according to the Reuters and AP news agencies. A few hours later the soldiers returned to their base in Gonaïves. In retaliation the gang attacked residents: at least eleven people were killed and homes burned, according to the local mayor. The episode shows another limit of a force that is still too small: it can strike, but it cannot stay to protect the people who live there.
No one asked for it to be shut down. The Haitian government requested its renewal, and on 26 September 32 member States of the Organization of American States did the same in a joint statement. The force itself presented a plan running to September 2028 and asked to be extended until then. The first round of presidential and legislative elections, together with a constitutional referendum, is set for 13 December 2026.
Meanwhile the violence has not stopped. Between April and June 2026 the UN office in Haiti (BINUH) counted 1,408 people killed and 656 injured. More than half of the victims were harmed by gangs, which in the same period committed 796 acts of sexual violence, almost all of them gang rapes. Around 40% of the victims, by contrast, fell during security force operations: 584 people were killed, 33 of whom, including seven children, had no links to the gangs. In the same quarter explosive drone strikes killed or injured nine civilians, six of them children. Nearly one and a half million people are displaced.
Those drones are not used by the international force but by the government's task force with Vectus Global. Human Rights Watch counted 141 drone operations between March 2025 and January 2026, with 1,243 dead, including 17 children. The authorities have opened no investigation into the victims of these operations, the UN writes in its August report.
The renewal
On 29 September the Security Council adopted resolution 2829 with the same vote as a year ago: 12 in favour, none against, and abstentions by China, Russia and Pakistan. The force remains authorised until 31 March 2027, as the UN support office announced. According to the Caribbean National Weekly, the Secretary-General will have to report every six months on progress against the set benchmarks, and the text reaffirms that operations must respect international law, including human rights. According to the AP news agency, the resolution also expresses “grave concern” about the forced recruitment of children by the gangs.
For the question this article asks, one novelty matters most, reported by China's Xinhua news agency and by the Caribbean National Weekly: the Council takes note of a 27 July agreement on the force's legal status and encourages States to grant its members the necessary privileges and immunities. At the time of publication we were unable to consult the full text of resolution 2829. A power the force already had since 2025, and which can be read in resolution 2793, is instead confirmed, according to Xinhua: to adopt, on an exceptional basis and to save lives, “urgent temporary measures” to help the police maintain order, including arrest and detention. The 2025 resolution required these measures to be limited, proportionate and reported to the Council, and children who are apprehended not to be detained with adults.
US Ambassador Mike Waltz, who sponsored the text with Panama, defended the project before the Council: “We're trying to do something genuinely different” from the missions that came before it, Al Jazeera reports. The Haitian government called it “an important step forward”, according to the AP news agency. China and Russia, Al Jazeera and the Caribbean National Weekly report, said they were sceptical about the mission's effectiveness, and China recalled that the crisis is also one of governance, not only of security. The sources consulted do not explain why the renewal was for six months rather than two years.
The oversight gap
On paper the rules exist, and they are detailed. In paragraph 18, resolution 2793 asks the States taking part in the force to establish a “robust compliance mechanism” to “prevent, investigate, address and publicly report” human rights violations, including sexual exploitation. It also asks for an oversight mechanism, dedicated child and women protection advisers, safe complaint channels, timely investigations, accountability for perpetrators and the repatriation of units when there is credible evidence of abuse. The problem lies in who has to do it: it is not the UN that checks, but the very States that send the soldiers. And the resolution requires violations to be made public, yet a year on we have found neither any public trace of this mechanism nor a single report on its work. Security Council Report, which follows the Council's work, also reports criticism that the force lacks adequate oversight and accountability mechanisms.
The case of Sri Lanka shows why the question matters. It is now the largest contingent, with 900 soldiers and 189 paramilitary police. In 2007 more than a hundred Sri Lankan peacekeepers were repatriated from Haiti after credible allegations of sexual exploitation of children, and there is no record of anyone ever being prosecuted. According to a PassBlue investigation of 8 September, the selection of soldiers for the new force relied partly on information supplied by the Sri Lankan authorities themselves and on self-declarations; the US embassy rejected at least one candidate. The previous mission had also faced four allegations of sexual exploitation that were later substantiated, three of them involving child victims, as seven US senators recalled in June when they asked their government what independent accountability mechanisms exist.
The UN has only one tool of its own, and it is indirect. It is called the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy: it bars the UN from supporting non-UN forces that commit grave violations, and the resolution applies it to all the support the support office gives to the force, the police and the Haitian army. According to the Secretary-General's July report, at the end of May the office presented the force's leadership with an initial risk assessment and the measures to mitigate those risks. It is a serious tool, but it has a limit: it allows the UN to suspend its own support, not to investigate a killing or punish whoever committed it. In other words, the Council can decide whether to keep providing fuel and logistics, but it has no tool of its own to judge the force it has authorised to fight.
The renewal does not change this picture; if anything, it makes it more visible. Immunities for the soldiers of a foreign force are normal practice: they usually mean that they are tried not by the courts of the country where they operate but by those of the country that sent them. That is exactly why control by the sending States becomes the only safeguard. Under resolution 2829 the force keeps its powers, including arrest and detention, and receives more legal protection; it does not, however, receive an external body to check how it uses them.
Legal reading
The first question is which law applies. Most human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, regard operations against gangs as law enforcement. In that case international human rights law applies, which allows lethal force only when it is strictly unavoidable to protect life. A force created to “neutralize” the gangs, with an offensive mandate, pushes instead towards the rules of war, that is, humanitarian law, which allow combatants to be targeted even when they are not an immediate threat. The text of resolution 2793 does not settle the question. It authorises the force to use “all necessary measures”, the formula by which the Council authorises the use of armed force, but it never mentions humanitarian law: it cites only human rights, and with the caveat “as applicable”. The rules of engagement, that is, when one may shoot, are drafted by the force's special representative, its commander and the Haitian government, and they are not public. This ambiguity is not a detail: whether a killing is lawful or not depends on it.
The second question is accountability. When a force is authorised by the Security Council but is not a UN operation, it is the States that sent the soldiers who answer for a violation, and it is up to them to try them. Haiti's history shows how easily this chain of accountability breaks down. In 2007 there was the abuse of children. In 2010 peacekeepers brought cholera into the country, which killed more than 9,000 people; only in December 2016 did Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon apologise to Haitians, and the UN acknowledged that it had played “a role” without, however, accepting full legal responsibility. The Council itself knows this: in paragraph 19, resolution 2793 asks the force's States to manage waste and wastewater to prevent water-borne diseases. For the gangs the rule is the same: murder, rape and the recruitment of children are crimes under international law, and the Haitian State is obliged to prosecute them.
Implications — symmetry test
There must be only one standard. It applies to the gangs, responsible for most of the victims. It applies to the Haitian police, to whom the UN attributes 14 executions or attempted executions in the same quarter. It applies to the drone task force and to the private company working with it, whose victims no one investigates. And it applies to the international force, whose operational record is still limited today, but which is expected to triple by the end of the year and which can arrest and detain. The six-month renewal at least provides a close deadline: in March the Council will have to vote again, and it will be able to ask how the force has used its powers.
This site's judgement is that the renewal measures something broader than Haiti. It is a new model: the Council authorises the force, does not command it, and delegates oversight to those who exercise it. If it works without credible oversight, it becomes a precedent for other crises. Haitians are demanding security and they have a right to it. But security for which no one is accountable does not restore the rule of law: it replaces it.
Sources: UN Security Council, resolution S/RES/2793 (30/9/2025), paras. 1-5, 12, 17-19 · UNSOH, statement on resolution 2829 (29/9/2026) · UN Secretary-General, report S/2026/574 (14/7/2026) · BINUH, quarterly human rights report April-June 2026 (25/8/2026) · UN News (25/8/2026) · Security Council Report, September 2026 forecast and What's In Blue (September 2025) · Human Rights Watch (10/3/2026) · Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (8/9/2025) · Al Jazeera (15/8/2025; 29/9/2026) · Reuters (29/9/2026) · AP (30/9/2026) · Xinhua (30/9/2026) · Caribbean National Weekly (30/9/2026) · PassBlue (8/9/2026) · Sen. Tim Kaine, statement (5/6/2026) · Organization of American States, joint statement (26/9/2026) · Haitian Times (22/7/2026) · CSIS (February 2026) · US Department of State (2/5/2025) · VOA (1/12/2016)