Home › Political & Historical › Active Conflict Zones
Port-au-Prince
Haiti's capital, where armed gangs control most of the city and a UN-authorized force has begun operations
Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti and home to roughly three million people in its metropolitan area, is the only capital in the Americas largely controlled by armed gangs. The UN says at least 26 gangs, many joined since 2024 in the Viv Ansanm coalition, control up to 90 percent of the city and its surroundings. They extort the roads in and out, have repeatedly shut the international airport, and have driven well over a million Haitians from their homes. In June 2026 a new UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force began operations alongside the Haitian National Police, the latest in a long line of foreign missions sent to restore state control.
The city spreads around a bay at the head of the Gulf of Gonâve, climbing from the flat coastal plain and port into steep hills toward Pétion-Ville and the Massif de la Selle. Dense districts such as Cité Soleil, Martissant and Croix-des-Bouquets, and the old downtown around the site of the National Palace, are gang-held. Gangs control the main roads north to the Artibonite valley and south toward the southern peninsula, cutting the capital off by land. The government of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, sole executive since the Transitional Presidential Council's mandate ended in February 2026, works from a shrinking zone that includes Pétion-Ville. The Gang Suppression Force is authorized at up to 5,550 personnel, supported by a new UN support office.
Founded by the French in 1749, Port-au-Prince became the capital of the world's first Black republic when Haiti won independence in 1804. The 2010 earthquake destroyed much of it and killed between about 100,000 and 316,000 people, by differing estimates. Gangs, long tied to political patrons, expanded after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. A Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission arrived in 2024 but lacked troops and equipment, and UN Security Council Resolution 2793 of September 2025 turned it into the Gang Suppression Force, whose mandate now runs to March 2027. The UN recorded more than 5,600 killings in Haiti in 2024 and more than 2,300 from January to mid-June 2026. On 7 October 2026 Haiti postponed planned elections indefinitely because of the violence.