UN calls on Haitian authorities to do more to protect civilians

The United Nations is calling on Haitian authorities to do more to protect civilians, days after a brutal attacked by armed gang members left 47 people dead and dozens kidnapped.

Police in Haiti patrolled the streets of Kenscoff on Friday, following a recent gang attack earlier this week in which 47 people were killed and more than 50 kidnapped.

After the violent attack in a once-peaceful farming community nestled in the hills near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s National Police faced mounting criticism over why authorities failed to prevent it.

Speaking at the United Nations in Geneva on Friday, the spokesperson for the Human Rights Office, Marta Hurtado, said that some 150 heavily armed gang members stormed the city, shooting at people.

"The attackers subsequently pursued 50 residents who had sought refuge inside a Protestant church. After forcing them out of the church premises, they executed 22 of them in the church courtyard and 12 others behind the church,” said Hurtado.

Hurtado demanded that authorities ensure the safety of the population and asked for support from the member nations for the Gang Suppression Force, a United Nations-backed multinational security mission deployed to Haiti to aggressively dismantle armed criminals.

The Human Rights Office spokesperson informed that between April 1 and June 30 this year, the organization reported 1,480 people killed in gang-related violence.

Gang violence has also displaced a record of nearly 1.5 million people across Haiti, where more than 3,050 people were reported killed from January to June, according to UN statistics.

Armed men control an estimated 70 percent of Port-au-Prince and swaths of land in Haiti’s central region and beyond, with poverty and hunger deepening as gang violence persists.

At a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday, delegates called for measures to strengthen and enforce the arms embargo on Haiti. They also called for the full deployment of the Gang Suppression Force.