By Jacqueline Charles
The Trump administration gave its strongest signal yet Monday on its thinking in regard to Haiti as the country spirals deeper into gang-fueled chaos and its capital stands on the precipice of being fully under gang control.
“America cannot continue shouldering such a significant financial burden,” said Dorothy Camille Shea, interim chargé d’affaires at the United States’ mission at the United Nations.
Shea called on others in the international community to increase support for the response to Haiti’s rapidly deteriorating situation, which is triggering one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the hemisphere at a moment when Washington is cutting back on foreign assistance. Her appeal and comments on where the United States stands after the previous administration pumped more than $600 million to support the U.N.-authorized Multinational Security Support mission, led by Kenya, comes amid growing uncertainty over the force’s future and widespread agreement that Port-au-Prince is at imminent risk of being overtaken by criminal gangs.
Without Washington championing Haiti’s cause, the country faces a difficult road ahead while being squeezed by its closest neighbor the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with it, and brutal gangs that over the weekend vowed to killed hostages in their control.
More than 1,700 people have been killed this year— 1,086 in February and March, according to the U.N. — in violence fueled by criminal groups trying to expand their territorial control and overthrow the government. At the same time, the violence has forced the closure of hundreds of schools and left only 40% of health facilities in the capital working.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ special representative in Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador, told the Security Council that the escalating armed attacks are affecting the few remaining areas in the capital not under gang control and sowing panic as new cities outside of the western region also fall to the gangs.
“Stepping up international support for Haiti is more critical than ever, particularly through increased funding and operational capacity for the Multinational Security Support Mission,” Salvador said.
“Haiti has reached a pivotal moment…. We are approaching a point of no return. As gang violence continues to spread to new areas of the country, Haitians experience growing levels of vulnerability and increasing skepticism about the ability of the state to respond to their needs,” she added. “Without timely, decisive and concrete international assistance, the security situation in Haiti may not change….Haiti could face total chaos and any delay in your support could be a direct cause of such stark deterioration.”
Earlier this year, Guterres nixed deploying a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission to Haiti, saying there is no peace to keep in the current chaos. Instead, he endorsed maintaining the current Kenya mission with the U.N. picking up some of the costs but the funding still coming from voluntary contributions from foreign governments.
But during Monday’s update on the situation in Haiti, diplomats acknowledged that nothing has happened despite the urgency of the situation and concerns about the escalating violence, which has led to growing hunger, more displacements and a staggering increase in sexual violence against women and girls.
Between January and October of last year, nine Haitian organizations provided assistance to more than 3,000 women and girls who survived sexual violence, activist Pascale Solages told the council as she provided some of the graphic details of their ordeal: Guerda, 16, who was raped by a gang member and contracted HIV and became pregnant in a country where abortion is criminalized; a mother who was raped by six men in front of her three children, and Nadine, who was unable to get over her attack and tried to take her own life.
“Haiti is much more than a country in crisis,” Solages said. “It is a country in full blown conflict with a state that is absent and that has no ability to to provide for people’s needs.”
The government is trying, said Ericq Pierre, Haiti’s new ambassador to the United Nations. A South Florida resident and the country’s one-time representative to the Inter-American Development Bank, Pierre said the transitional government is spending more money on the police and army, and judicial initiatives have been launched “to restore trust in public institutions” like tackling violent crimes and corruption.
The government is also spending more on humanitarian assistance, Pierre said, such as providing tarps and hot meals to many of the more than 1 million who have been internally displaced.
He added that Haitians are dying by the thousands at the hands of armed gangs who are part of transnational criminal networks involved in the trafficking of drugs and arms.
In addition to the ongoing gang attacks, there are a number of critical expenses that need funding, sources tell the Miami Herald. They include the salaries of the roughly 1,000 members of the international force, and a $200 million payment to the contractor operating its base of operations. The contract was extended until September by the Biden administration, and operator must be notified months in advance if payment will be forthcoming for the next six months.
The time for condemnation is over, Denmark’s representative, Christina Markus Lassen, said. “Haiti is running out of time. Armed gangs continue to expand their arsenals and territory,” she said, echoing the calls of several other representatives for greater involvement.
What that involvement would look or how it would be funded remain in question. The voluntary contributions to the U.N. trust fund for the Kenya-led remains at $110 million, which the East African nation’s national security minister, Monica Juma, made clear isn’t enough.
“What the mission needs is to be fully deployed, quickly enabled; an urgent expansion... is therefore essential in order to deliver the intended impact and meet the legitimate high expectations of the Haitian people,” she said speaking by video to the room. “In Kenya today, a total of 261 officers remain on standby for deployment, but are unable to get to theater because of a lack of equipment and logistic support.”
Nearly a year into its deployment, the force remains at less than 40% at its stated goal of 2,500 security personnel, Juma said.
The most stinging rebuke came from China, which accused the U.S of abandoning Haiti at a dire moment after helping set up its ruling transitional presidential council, now mired in controversy and credibility issues.
“The U.S. has always been the de facto leader on security matters in Haiti,” China’s deputy representative, Geng Shuang, said, highlighting the current administration’s minimal contribution to the mission since coming into office in January and its recent imposition of a 10% tariff on Haiti, “a nation on the edge of collapse.”
Critics have noted that China, which is a significant financial contributor to the U.N., doesn’t want to pay for a peacekeeping mission. Along with Russia, another vocal critic of the U.S., Beijing has not contributed to the trust fund for the mission.
Geng said Washington is trying to pass the buck on Haiti, using “member states as little more than an ATM machine.”
“The U.S is a major source of interference in Haiti’s development,” Beijing’s ambassador said. “While it claims to support the Haitian people, it has significantly cut foreign aid and continue deporting Haitian immigrants on the national priorities precisely when Haiti is in dire need of support,”
This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 2:11 PM.
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.
