UNITED NATIONS: Gang violence is surging in Haiti despite the deployment of a multinational force to prop up the struggling Caribbean country’s police, a top United Nations official warned Tuesday.
“The security situation remains extremely fragile, with renewed peaks of acute violence,” Maria Isabel Salvador, the UN secretary-general’s special representative to Haiti, told the Security Council.
Her update comes just weeks after 115 civilians were killed and dozens injured in a gang attack in the central town of Port Sonde.
Salvador cited that “horrific and brutal” event, and mentioned a series of other attacks in the capital Port-au-Prince, as well as sexual violence of “unheard-of brutality” against women and girls.
And with over 700,000 internally displaced persons, a 22 percent increase over the past three months, “the humanitarian situation is even more dire,” she said.
“Haitians continue to suffer across the country as criminal gang activities escalate and expand beyond Port-au-Prince, spreading terror and fear, overwhelming the national security apparatus,” she said.
She voiced concern about Haiti’s political process, saying that “despite initial advances, which I reported in July, is now facing significant challenges, turning hope into deep concern.”
The violence comes despite the presence of a UN-backed multinational mission to support the overwhelmed Haitian police, which began deploying during the summer.
In a recent report, UN chief Antonio Guterres noted that Haitian police, supported by the Kenya-led mission, “launched large-scale anti-gang operations” in several districts of the capital, “but still face challenges to sustain control over these areas due to the lack of personnel and other resources.”
The mission, whose mandate was recently extended by one year, currently has some 430 police and military personnel, mainly Kenyans, and 600 additional Kenyans are expected soon, but the mission is still “cruelly” underfunded and undersupplied, complained Salvador.
The UN is particularly concerned about children, who represent half of the displaced population and who fall prey to gangs.
UNICEF chief Catherine Russell estimated that children make up 30 to 50 percent of members of armed groups.
“They are used as informants, cooks, sex slaves, and forced to commit armed violence themselves,” Russell said.
Guterres lamented that children affiliated with gangs can become victims of mob justice.
He reported a 10-year-old boy who was shot dead and his body burned by a vigilante group in the capital Port-au-Prince in July after he was accused of being a gang informant.
Violence still rising in Haiti despite support mission: UN
https://arab.news/625sa
Violence still rising in Haiti despite support mission: UN
UN chief says 37,000 West Bank Palestinians displaced in 2025; warns Gaza war threatens two-state solution
- ‘We enter 2026 with the clock ticking louder than ever. Will the year ahead bend towards peace or slip into the abyss of despair?” asks Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
- Illegal settlement expansions, demolitions, displacements and evictions in the West Bank are accelerating, he says
NEW YORK CITY: More than 37,000 Palestinians were displaced in the occupied West Bank during 2025, a year in which there were also record-high levels of violence committed by Israeli settlers, UN secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday.
The situation on the ground was rapidly eroding the prospects for a two-state solution, he warned.
“We enter 2026 with the clock ticking louder than ever,” Guterres told the opening session of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
“Will the year ahead bend towards peace or slip into the abyss of despair?”
Illegal settlement expansions, demolitions, displacements and evictions in the West Bank were accelerating, said Guterres, who described the Israeli actions as destabilizing in nature and unlawful under international law.
“The recently published tender by Israel for 3,401 housing units in the E1 area (of the West Bank), alongside continued demolitions, is profoundly alarming,” he added.
“If carried forward, it would sever the northern and southern West Bank, undermine territorial contiguity, and strike a severe blow to the viability of a two-state solution.”
Turning to the situation in Gaza, Guterres said Palestinians there continued to endure “grave suffering.” More than 500 have been killed since the truce between Israel and Hamas in October, he noted.
“I urge all parties to implement the (ceasefire) agreement in full, exercise maximum restraint, and comply with international law and UN resolutions,” he said.
He called for the rapid and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid at scale, including through the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which Israel reopened on Monday.
Guterres criticized Israeli authorities for the continued suspension of international non-governmental organizations that provide aid, which he said “defies humanitarian principles, undermines fragile progress, and worsens the suffering of civilians.”
Regarding the future of Gaza, he said any sustainable solution must include governance of the territory and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by a unified and internationally recognized Palestinian government.
“Gaza is and must remain an integral part of a Palestinian state,” Guterres added.
He also reaffirmed his support for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and condemned recent Israeli legislation and other actions he said impeded the ability of the agency to operate, including moves to demolish its Sheikh Jarrah compound in occupied East Jerusalem.
“Let me be clear: UNRWA premises are United Nations premises,” he said. “They are inviolable and immune from any form of interference.”
Guterres described public threats against UNRWA staff as “utterly abhorrent,” and said Israel was obliged under international law to respect the privileges and immunities of the UN.
He also reiterated that an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory was essential.
“There is only one viable route (to peace): the two-state solution, in line with international law and relevant United Nations resolutions,” he said, as he called on the international community to act “with clarity, unity and determination” on the issue.
