The U.N. Security Council approved a plan in late September to authorize a 5,550-member force, with the goal of assembling 5,500 soldiers from several countries. According to major media reports, the U.N. and its Security Council decided that Haiti, which is largely lawless and controlled by violent criminal gangs, should receive support from an international security force. The mandate was changed again in the fall to apply to a force that would focus on the dominance of criminal groups, called the Gang suppression force (GSF).
Gang violence in Haiti has reached catastrophic levels, with criminal groups controlling an estimated 90% of the capital and swaths of land in the country's central region. More than 5,500 people were reported killed across Haiti and more than 2,600 injured from March 1, 2025 to Jan. 15, 2026, according to the latest U.N. statistics. This violence has displaced more than 1.4 million people in a country of nearly 12 million.
Previous peacekeeping efforts have struggled to restore order, with few soldiers on the ground unable to curb the chaos. The first country to send forces to Haiti was Kenya, but the mission failed and was replaced by a voluntary international security force in 2023. The new gang-suppression force will have expanded powers, including the authority to arrest suspected gang members, which the previous force did not possess. It remains unclear what specific actions the newly arrived Chadian troops will undertake or the timeline for deploying the remaining forces to reach the full 5,500-member target.