Report to Congress on Options to Counter Destabilization in Haiti, March 2026 edition

The report says a succession of unelected caretaker governments has failed to prevent gangs, including groups designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, from taking over nearly every part of the Haitian state, and that impunity has increased illicit activity and driven migration to the United States. It judges the Multinational Security Support mission, authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 2699 in October 2023 and first deployed in July 2024, to have been flawed and ineffective: funded on a voluntary basis and mostly by the United States at a cost of nearly one billion dollars a year, it supported only 1,000 security forces, mostly police, without a clear mandate to act against the gangs. UN Security Council Resolution 2793, adopted September 30, 2025, authorized the transition to the Gang Suppression Force and created a Standing Group of Partners for strategic direction and oversight. The new force is planned at 5,500 personnel, largely specialized military units with a mandate to act against the gangs; logistics and sustainment run on assessed contributions while salaries and pre-deployment training stay on voluntary funding, including through the UN Trust Fund for Haiti. As chair of the Standing Group of Partners the United States led the concept of operations, secured about 100 million dollars in voluntary contributions, and co-convened with Canada a pledging conference that produced pledges of more than 11,000 forces from 14 countries.

On the Haitian National Police, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has allocated more than 257 million dollars since 2021 across four lines of effort: anti-gang operations, intelligence-led policing, recruitment and training, and countering transnational organized crime. It helped set up a command, control, communication and intelligence center and a centralized drone unit, embeds 11 subject matter experts, and supports a surge program to recruit and train 4,000 new officers by 2027; on January 23, 2026 the police graduated 877 cadets, which the report describes as a 40 percent increase in force size. On weapons, the report notes work with Dominican authorities that led on February 25, 2025 to the second-largest arms seizure in Dominican history and the largest with a confirmed destination of Haiti. On accountability, it records the designation of Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists on May 2, 2025, visa restrictions or sanctions on more than 60 individuals since October 2022, UN listings of seven other gang leaders and enablers, and determinations on July 21 and September 25, 2025 that certain individuals, some with lawful permanent resident status, supported gang leaders connected to Viv Ansanm, whom the Department of Homeland Security is now seeking to remove.