Criminal market
5.45
Human trafficking
6.50
Human smuggling
6.50
Arms trafficking
5.50
Flora crimes
6.50
Fauna crimes
4.00
Non-renewable resource crimes
6.00
Heroin trade
2.00
Cocaine trade
8.00
Cannabis trade
6.00
Synthetic drug trade
3.50
Criminal actors
6.00
Mafia-style groups
8.00
Criminal networks
6.00
State-embedded actors
7.00
Foreign actors
3.00
Political leadership and governance
2.00
Government transparency and accountability
2.00
International cooperation
3.00
National policies and laws
4.00
Judicial system and detention
3.00
Law enforcement
2.00
Territorial integrity
2.00
Anti-money laundering
3.00
Economic regulatory capacity
2.00
Victim and witness support
1.50
Prevention
3.00
Non-state actors
4.50
Political leadership and governance
2.00
Government transparency and accountability
2.00
International cooperation
3.00
National policies and laws
4.00
Judicial system and detention
3.00
Law enforcement
2.00
Territorial integrity
2.00
Anti-money laundering
3.00
Economic regulatory capacity
2.00
Victim and witness support
1.50
Prevention
3.00
Non-state actors
4.50
Haiti is a source and destination country for human trafficking, a crime that affects a large portion of the population due to the tradition of restavek, whereby poor children (usually from the countryside) are loaned by their parents to so-called rich families to be taken care of, while in practice they are subjected to slavery-like living conditions. Haitian women and children have also been the victims of sexual exploitation by corrupt foreign peacekeepers, representatives of NGOs and other international organizations operating in Haiti.
Human smuggling is very common in the country, mainly because its poor economic and political conditions provide an optimal platform for smugglers. The market is focused mainly on smuggling Haitians to foreign destinations such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, the Unites States, Canada, Brazil and Chile.
Although the United States has an arms embargo on Haiti, illicit firearms continue to flow from there into the country. Haiti's local arms-smuggling market is facilitated by corruption, porous borders and a lack of inspections. It is fostered by political elites who seek to grow their power through armed gangs. Haiti is also a transit country for illegal arms, particularly those going to Jamaica.
Haiti’s flora-crimes market is focused largely on the destruction and trafficking of trees for the production of charcoal, the main source of energy in the country. A combination of socio-economic conditions, natural disasters and lack of government control have had a negative effect on the country’s forests. Haiti is the second-largest exporter of wildlife to the United States, after Mexico, which suggests that this is a relatively valuable market. The most prominent illegal activity related to non-renewable resources is fuel smuggling, mainly from the Dominican Republic, due to severe shortages caused by Venezuela’s suspension of its PetroCaribe aid programme in Haiti.
Haiti is a key transit country for cocaine because of its numerous uncontrolled points of entry and its internal instability. Criminal organizations transport the drug to Haiti via sea or air, then store it locally before shipping it in small vessels to Puerto Rico, Miami, Europe or Canada, or transporting it by land to the Dominican Republic. Haiti is both a transit and source country for cannabis. Local producers supply the domestic market, which is small because most of the population does not have the resources to buy drugs. While heroin is sometimes transported alongside larger cocaine shipments, the heroin market is very limited in the country. There is also evidence of some minor trafficking of synthetic drugs through the country.
Haiti’s most prominent criminal groups are mafia-style gangs, which overshadow all other illicit networks. Given the almost complete absence of state power in many places across Haiti, these highly institutionalized gangs have stepped in to fill the void and provide some degree of order in the communities in which they operate.They have significant territorial control and deep connections with government officials at all levels – so much so that the Haitian authorities seem to rely on them to control civil unrest, particularly as the country has not had a military force since 1995. These mafia-style groups carry guns openly, confront the police and fight each other for territorial control. They are behind most organized-crime activities in the country, including drug and arms trafficking, racketeering, extortion, kidnappings, armed robberies and assaults. They draw power from their alliances with government officials, and state-embedded criminal actors provide them with weapons and other kinds of support as a way of trying to control electoral zones.
Foreign actors also operate across Haiti, particularly in the cocaine-trafficking and human-smuggling markets. However, they do not exert a significant impact on the country as its instability and socio-economic situation makes it unattractive to most transnational-crime groups.
Haiti is the poorest and most unequal country of the Americas. As such, it is a very fragile state. Government institutions are extremely weak and electoral results are routinely called into question. The authorities fail to see organized crime as a rule-of-law issue and do nothing to tackle it. Politicians allow criminal groups to operate freely and collaborate actively with them. The state’s failure to meet people’s most basic needs has opened the door for criminal groups to fill the void by providing services such as garbage collection, road maintenance and water distribution. They also enforce evictions and even collect payments for building permits.
Collusion between the authorities and criminal groups has resulted in Haiti being assessed as one of the most corrupt countries in the Americas, despite the existence of laws and institutions that, on paper, are meant to tackle and punish the issue. The signing of a number of international treaties and conventions related to the fight against organized crime, trafficking and corruption does not seem to have had much impact.
Haiti’s heavy dependence on international cooperation has proven challenging. Relations with international agencies have been difficult due to distrust and cases of sexual abuse at the hands of foreign organizations operating in the country.
A lack of independence coupled with the absence of a functioning oversight mechanism, inadequate resources, and poor coordination and training make Haiti’s judiciary extremely weak. The country is home to one of the most overcrowded and under-resourced penitentiary systems in the world. A lack of fresh water, food and adequate sanitation has resulted in widespread malnutrition and infectious diseases among inmates. Since Haiti dismantled its military in 1995, the country’s law-enforcement function has been left largely in the hands of the police, who were aided between 2004 and 2017 by the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, a force of several thousand. As is the case with its other institutions, the Haitian police force is under-resourced. It is overwhelmed by the power of local gangs and lacks the capacity to carry out investigations. Haiti’s porous borders and weak controls are exploited by trans-border criminal networks involved in drug and weapons smuggling, document fraud, and human smuggling and trafficking.
While Haiti is not yet a major financial centre for money laundering and terrorism financing, its inadequate controls, weak judiciary and lack of political interest put it at high risk of becoming one. As the poorest country in the Americas, it also has the lowest human-development index, with at least a third of the population relying on remittances to survive. Its outdated legal framework, the few protections it offers to investors, the small number of people who pay taxes, and the limited services provided by the state make doing business in Haiti extremely difficult.
The protection of victims and witnesses is almost non-existent in Haiti, aside from some programmes run by civil society. An environment of fear exists throughout the lower levels of society. Even though Haiti passed a new anti-trafficking law in 2014, aimed at guaranteeing support and protection for victims and witnesses, it has not yet been implemented due to the deficiencies of the judiciary. There have been some small-scale public-awareness campaigns to tackle drug use, but their effectiveness is yet to be measured. Haiti's lack of resources generally limits civil-society participation, but a number of human-rights organizations attempt to carry out programmes aimed at reducing violence across the country. The absence of resources also affects media outlets, with the vast majority of Haitians not able to access the internet or afford a newspaper. Media outlets struggling to finance their independent reporting are often the targets of threats and violence, the risk of which increased further amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent years, multiple journalists have either been killed or have disappeared in Haiti.
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The criminal markets score is represented by the pyramid base size and the criminal actors score is represented by the pyramid height, on a scale ranging from 1 to 10. The resilience score is represented by the panel height, which can be identified by the side of the panel.
This report was funded in part by a grant from the United States Department of State.
ENACT is funded by the European Union and implemented by the Institute for Security Studies and INTERPOL, in affiliation with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
The opinions, findings and conclusions stated herein are those of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of State.