"Emile Charles fled Kenscoff in September when armed men overran his land. Leaving everything he owned behind, the farmer found refuge above Turgeau, one of the few neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince still beyond the gangs' reach. New arrivals to Haiti's capital climb ever-high to claim a few square metres and throw up a makeshift shelter of planks and rusty corrugated iron. To reach his, Charles scrambles up a steep path."
"Glasses perched on his head, he gazes across the hills at scattered shacks. They arrived without warning and burned our crops, he says. We ran for our lives. Those who didn't leave were killed. Two of my brothers were murdered. Emile Charles, who fled his land when it was overrun by armed men Since January 2022, more than 16,000 Haitians have been killed in gang-related violence."
Armed groups have overrun rural areas and surrounding city zones, burning crops, killing civilians and forcing farmers to abandon land. More than 16,000 people have been killed in gang-related violence since January 2022, and over 1.4 million people, nearly half children, have fled their homes since January 2025. Droughts and failed harvests push rural families into overcrowded urban hillsides where makeshift shelters proliferate and infrastructure is overwhelmed. Certain suburbs maintain self-defence brigades and off-duty police to guard roadblocks and checkpoints, sealing neighbourhoods nightly to deter gang incursions amid ongoing insecurity and humanitarian collapse.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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