SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Gangs are invading Haiti’s rural central region, suffocating a once peaceful area that served as the country’s food basket but that is now plagued by kidnappings, killings and rapes, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.
Only a handful of powerful gangs operate in Lower Artibonite, a region located north of the Port-au-Prince capital, but they have laid waste to numerous communities with sparse police presence and a lack of basic government institutions, said the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner.
“A climate of fear reigns in Lower Artibonite, where murders, sexual violence, theft, destruction of property and other abuses are committed against the population on an almost daily basis,” the report stated.
More than 1,690 people have been killed and more than 1,118 kidnapped in that region from January 2022 to October 2023, according to the U.N. Gang violence has forced another 22,000 people to flee their homes, more than half of them children, according to the International Organization for Migration.