In May, a Florida judge convicted four people of a mysterious crime: helping to recruit and finance a two-man squad. two dozen former Colombian mercenary for the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in his home.
The carnage and political vacuum that followed the gang violence that has since engulfed Haiti. While the creation of a UN security force signals progress, the way out of the Haiti crisis will require more than guns. Long-term peace can only be built on truth, justice, reunification, and state building.
Ironically, despite its relationship with Haiti continuing in violence, Colombia provides such an example. To fix Haiti, look to Colombia—not because its peace is perfect, but because it knows the futility of trying to punish the country in order.
Haiti is inside volatile time between escalation of violence and a new push for international security. Chad has begun deploying troops to a new United Nations-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF). 400 employees they are already in Haiti among Chad’s 1,500-member organized force. Strong, intended to grow to approx 5,500 employeesdesigned to restore basic security and help restore government authority. At the same time, Washington supports the Prime Minister of Haiti Alix Didier Fils-Aimé after deleted of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council has helped the country avoid a leadership vacuum.
Not yet recent tests addressing the Haitian crisis using force alone has shown the limitations of the security response in the first place.
At the same time, social and security conflicts continue to increase. More half of the population faced with food shortages, and close 1.4 million people have fled their homes due to the conflict. At least 1,642 Haitians they have been killed and 745 injured between January and March. Gang members—who control highways, waterways, and large parts of Port-au-Prince—are responsible for 27 percent of those killed and injured. Women and girls are paying a terrible price sexual violence goes up. The recovery test it is whether the government can protect the most vulnerable and replace criminal governance with services, trust and public authority.
Voting alone cannot rebuild political trust. Since the creation of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council in 2024, international actors have pressed the interim authorities to restore an elected government. The first round of the general election—originally scheduled for August 30—has been postponed indefinitely due to security concerns. Arresting them before the UN forces incite the gangs and re-establish the presence of the government throughout the country would be foolish. An early vote could repeat the international community’s past habit of using imperfect elections as an exit strategy rather than as a way to increase citizens’ trust and representation in government. That said, setting false dates for elections only to be postponed has its costs, too, for citizens’ confidence and a collective sense of inclusion in the democratic process.
Making elections is still made more difficult because the problem is not just violence but coercive political control. Viv Ansanm-a gang union established in 2023 through an alliance between the two main gangs of Port-au-Prince, G9 and G-Pep—has given armed groups one more platform to destabilize the government, block efforts to restore public authority, and influence the terms of a political transition.
GSF, supported by the United Nations heir for the International Security Assistance (MSS) mission, it is necessary but not sufficient. Even with the logistical and operational supervision of the United Nations, the GSF will not be able to dismantle the market of insecurity that the gangs have built. Roads, ports, markets, fuel, food, basic services, and physical security have become commodities that are priced, sold and used by armed actors. Families, businesses, and public institutions are forced to negotiate protections from the same groups that produce violence.
A global strategy that focuses only on armed men will leave untouched the financiers, protectors, corrupt officials and business interests that allow gang rule to re-emerge.
Haiti’s justice system is too broken to shoulder this burden alone. In 2025, 82 percent Prisoners in Haitian prisons were still awaiting trial, and the 2024 attacks that freed thousands of prisoners showed how easy it is. insecurity it can destroy the government’s instruments of accountability.
Haiti needs a transitional justice strategy to fill the void left by a dysfunctional judiciary and a weakened state. This should include ad hoc investigative panels, truth-telling councils, community reparations, anti-corruption powers, and specialized judicial units that can rebuild trust while reaching the networks behind the armed regime.
Colombia’s peace process provides an example, though not perfect, of reform for Haiti. To be sure, Colombia conflict— a constellation of guerrillas, fighters, and drug traffickers — differs structurally from Haiti. gang-driven fall. However, both cases highlight the importance of addressing the grip of crime and violence on local economies, politics and society.
It took Colombia more than five decades to learn that victories on the battlefield and depopulation can weaken armed groups but not dismantle the territorial control, illegal economy and coercive power that those groups had entrenched in local communities. In successive waves of depopulation and military pressure, armed actors were weakened or disbanded, only for violence to reorganize through successor groups, dissidents and criminal networks.
More than 31,000 soldiers from the Armed Forces of Colombia (AUC) was deposed between 2003 and 2006, and around 14,000 members from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) laid down its arms after the 2016 peace agreement. Still, Colombia recorded the worst civilian impact from war in a decade in 2025: displacement of individuals. rose by 100 percent, mass displacement by 111 percent, and the closure of armed groups by 99 percent compared to 2024. The spike was driven in large part by the remnants of those former armed groups simply exchanging their “skills” and access to weapons for illegal activities, including drug trafficking and illegal mining, and the incomplete implementation of unfinished social goals.
The question is whether Haiti can build comprehensive plans to deliver justice, economic growth, job creation, and long-term public security—or, perhaps more importantly, whether international donors are willing to support it over the long term. Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement with the FARC provides a partial examplelinking advocacy with truth, justice, reparations, rural reform, and political participation. Through the Special Peace Mandate, accountability was linked to victim participation and recovery barriers, including work on schools, roads, health centers, demining, environmental restoration, and community infrastructure. Peace was thought of as territorial construction.
But this process did not start with the 2016 peace agreement. The Colombian city of Medellín provided an early example of how to do this. Scholars confess that Medellín changed from a “theatre of war” to a “security laboratory” when the national army was followed by targeted internal reconstruction. The rapid decline in killings followed national decisions: the peace accords of 1990, the dissolution of the Medellín Cartel after the death of Pablo Escobar in 1993, Operation Orion in 2002, and the decriminalization of the Cacique Nutibara Camp in 2003. Security gains were only achieved. permanent when the city invested in neighborhoods where armed operatives had dominated daily life.
This process is based on addressing the violence committed against women during these conflicts.
Colombia understood that security would not only mean sending police to contested areas; had to redefine police protection. The Peace Building Police Unit (UNIPEP) initiated programs to prevent and respond to sexual and gender-based violence in the former areas of the FARC coalition. In 2020, UNIPEP led a self-assess gender of the National Police in 16 gender aspects, which was later turned into a gender action plan. It also trained officers in conflict resolution and community dialogue. In Mitú, for example, UNIPEP officials used the tools to support the maloca, the Indigenous community’s home for conflict resolution through customary law.
Colombia’s transitional justice system was shaped by its broader understanding of security beyond military force. The Special Peace Authority became an international reference point for victim-centered accountability, prosecuting former FARC leaders for systematic kidnappings and investigating military crimes, including at least 6,402 the killing of innocent civilians. Still, Colombia also warns against romanticizing transitional justice. Accountability remains politically contested, especially when it involves the military; some military units killed civilians and presented them as fighters, turning body counts into promotional currency and rewards. Justice can redefine security only through political will and local construction.
What comes after have the gangs weakened and the foreign forces finally gone? Colombia’s experience shows that security operations can reopen the road to government, but only justice, public services and legitimate institutions can keep it open. Often, before and after the peace process, local armed groups used their coercive power to build political cooperation and even representation through elections.
Instead of just holding elections—and possibly holding them too soon in areas still controlled by gangs—what is needed, as Colombia shows, is a broader understanding of the violence that results from government collapse and corruption. The GSF, although an important step, starts the process. But without something like the United States Agency for International Development or other donors willing to commit to Haiti’s long-term institutional and economic development, those important steps will not be accomplished, and Haiti’s return to political turmoil and violence will be inevitable.
