By Sarah Morland
Aug 26 (Reuters) – A night of terror in Haiti’s hillside town of Kenscoff – which has faced more than a dozen attacks since last year – has shocked the nation even as Haiti prepares to hold its first election in a decade and foreign nations backed by the United Nations promise to lend more effective support.
Sunday’s attack saw at least 47 killed, some close to the police station, though more have been reported kidnapped. Thousands fled their homes to avoid further attacks.
As Haiti awaits the full deployment of a U.N.-backed multinational force — first requested by the government in 2022 — international agencies have compiled data showing the scale of the conflict:
RISING DEATH TOLL
Some 3,050 people were killed in the first half of this year, according to data from the U.N. United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH).
More than 21,000 have now been killed since the start of 2022, and annual tolls have risen each year. So far in 2026, at least 1,733 victims – more than half of those killed – died during security operations. Of these, at least 229 were deemed civilians with no gang affiliations who were hit by stray bullets or drone explosions inside their homes or on the street.
This year’s death toll includes at least 18 children killed during security operations, but there are not to date and reports of investigations being opened into these deaths.
SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND KIDNAPPINGS
BINUH recorded 1,088 victims of sexual violence so far in 2026, with most cases involving the gang rape of women, though at least 80 underage girls and two men were also reported as victims. This is up 13% from the same period of 2025, when BINUH’s reports recorded 1,662 victims throughout the year.
Several attacks took place when a gang kidnapped a group of people in Port-au-Prince shortly after the FIFA World Cup match between Haiti and Scotland.
Ransom kidnappings, meanwhile, rose 47% in the second quarter of this year compared to the first three months, with 81 people kidnapped – including senior government officials, off-duty police officers and business owners, and a growing number of people in Haiti’s agricultural region.
BINUH noted that these numbers are likely underreported due to fear of reprisals, social stigma, lack of trust in authorities and hope that complying will lead to a quicker release. This also results in limited access to medical care.
DISPLACEMENTS AND HUNGER
Around 1.47 million people – some 12% of the population – were internally displaced in makeshift camps or friends’ homes, according to the U.N. migration agency’s latest nationwide count in May, about 40,000 more than at the end of 2025.
On Sunday night, more than 2,600 people were displaced in Kenscoff – including families that had already fled their original homes, the IOM said.
With hundreds of thousands cut off from sources of income, hunger surged. An estimated 5.8 million people now face high levels of food insecurity, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an international benchmark. This was up from around 5.7 million in their prior report.
“The violence continues to suffocate the Haitian economy and limit the transportation of goods and the movement of people, with many of the most vulnerable people forced to join armed groups in order to feed their families,” the IPC said.
ELECTIONS
Haiti has not held elections since 2016, and its last President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021 shortly after postponing a vote. Citing the worsening gang violence, successive governments have continued to put off holding a vote.
Last month, the Provisional Electoral Council announced a new calendar pegging December 13 for a first-round presidential and general election, with a second round and local-level elections on February 21.
However, the vote remains conditional on security being deemed sufficient to organize a free and fair election that can restore faith in institutions long believed to be corrupt.
Armed groups, meanwhile, have largely coalesced behind an alliance known as Viv Ansanm, whose main spokesperson Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier – a former policeman – portrays himself as a revolutionary fighting corrupt elites and early last year declared the alliance a political movement.
(Reporting by Sarah Morland; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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