Non-essential UN personnel have been evacuated from Port-au-Prince this week as gang violence has further escalated in the capital of Haiti over the past few days.
They were transported by helicopter — 14 people at a time — to the northern city of Cap-Haïtien, where some personnel assigned to the UN Integrated Office in Haiti took humanitarian flights to Panama on Tuesday and Wednesday.
A UN spokesperson said on Tuesday that essential personnel would stay in Port-au-Prince and that humanitarian assistance would continue to be delivered outside the capital. As of Monday, 1,527 out of 1,725 UN staff reportedly remained in the Caribbean nation.
Haiti is at a crossroads. Time is running out for the international community to avoid a complete collapse of security and state authority in Haiti by either making good on its commitments to help the multinational security force operating in the country or transforming it into a UN peacekeeping mission. Otherwise, the country will head to a civil war.
None of the US-sponsored neocolonial interventions in Haiti have been particularly successful, including the Multinational Security and Support mission currently on the ground. Neither this occupation nor a potential UN peacekeeping mission will address the plight of the people — only Haitians can achieve that.