January 3, 2025
On December 23, the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a damning report on atrocities committed by the Wharf Jérémie gang between December 6 and 11, 2024. The death toll now stands at 207 victims, including 134 men and 73 women, brutally executed in this Port-au-Prince neighborhood. Among the dead were elderly individuals accused of witchcraft and blamed for the death of a gang leader’s child.
The violence targeted residents from five distinct areas of the neighborhood, who were hunted down in their homes and places of worship. Victims were detained in a so-called “training center,” interrogated, and then taken to an execution site, where they were shot or killed with machetes. Their bodies were subsequently burned, dismembered, or dumped into the sea in an attempt to erase all evidence of the crimes.
Maria Isabel Salvador, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Haiti, strongly condemned the atrocities, calling for a thorough investigation and judicial action against the perpetrators. Despite promises from the Haitian Prime Minister to act, impunity remains a major obstacle to justice in this gang-controlled area.
This massacre is part of a broader pattern of widespread violence throughout Haiti. Since the beginning of 2024, BINUH and OHCHR have documented over 5,350 deaths and 2,155 injuries linked to clashes between gangs, self-defense groups, and occasionally even police forces. The UN has called for urgent reforms to strengthen Haiti’s paralyzed state institutions and enforce international sanctions against gangs.
The Wharf Jérémie gang continues to assert its dominance in the capital, maintaining strategic control over Port-au-Prince’s main port. This massacre serves as yet another example of the escalating security and humanitarian crisis gripping the country, leaving the population abandoned and exposed to unprecedented violence.