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Children in a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince
Photo: CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP
Even a year after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti is still struggling.
Fighting by rival gangs is threatening 1.5 million people, the aid organization Doctors Without Borders said recently.
Again and again people are killed, kidnapped or go missing.
Against this background, the UN Security Council has unanimously called on all member states to ban arms sales to armed gangs in the country.
The transport of small-caliber weapons and ammunition to non-state actors must be banned, according to the resolution passed on Friday by Mexico and the United States.
China had called for a full embargo, but was not able to enforce it.
The resolution provides for the possibility of imposing individual sanctions on gang leaders within 90 days of the application of the resolution.
Chinese UN ambassador Zhan Jun called the decision a warning to the gangs in Haiti and a "step in the right direction".
Beijing has taken an increasingly aggressive stance on Haiti in recent years.
According to Western diplomats, this is because Haiti is one of the few countries in the world to recognize Taiwan, which China considers part of its own territory, as an independent state.
Beijing denies any such connection.
The Security Council also extended the mandate for the UN special mission Binuh in Haiti on Friday.
But according to several Haitians spoken to by the AFP news agency, the United Nations can do little to improve the situation.
The Binuh mission failed, said law student Fleurant Duceppe in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The Haitian people must take their destiny into their own hands.
Assassinated president, earthquakes and high prices
The violence in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, is being carried out primarily in socially disadvantaged regions.
In the densely populated poor district of Cité Soleil, two enemy gangs are fighting each other, and the poorly equipped police do not intervene.
This exacerbates the dramatic supply bottlenecks for the population.
The Caribbean state of Haiti has been suffering from poverty, violence, political crises and natural disasters for years.
The assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 and a severe earthquake the following month that killed 2,200 have further exacerbated the country's problems.
Currently, the population is also struggling with a sharp rise in food prices and fuel shortages.
joe/AFP
