Haiti cannot be assessed through mandates, meetings and resolutions alone. The real ledger lies in the protection of populations, persistent impunity, lost territory, closed corridors, paralyzed schools and hospitals, displacement, kidnappings and massacres. Kenscoff is the most recent example of a warning that was known, documented, and never converted into effective, lasting protection
The Security Council already has the vocabulary for a strategic reset. What it lacks is an integrated, results-based framework.
By Philippe de Bard
The Aug. 23–24 massacre in Kenscoff, in the hills above Port-au-Prince, marks the third major attack along the same strategic corridor in less than two years. It exposes the inability of the current security and political architecture to convert international commitments into concrete results. While Haiti benefits from sustained international engagement, the question now is whether that engagement can produce measurable results.
In Beyond the Output Trap: Haiti and the Future of International Stabilization, published by War on the Rocks, I argued that Haiti needs a strategic reset built around measurable results — a distinct requirement from simply adding more coordination. The Security Council’s emergency session on Aug. 28 reinforced the case for this framework.
Recent developments underscore the need for this strategic reset. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) sent a political mission from Sept. 2 to 9; the Organization of American States (OAS) has announced that it will seek the Venice Commission’s opinion on candidate eligibility; and an initial draft Security Council resolution, written by the United States and Panama, now calls for a six-month technical rollover of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), paired with a reassessment once the 5,500 personnel are fully deployed. Taken together, these developments suggest that the current architecture is entering a period of reassessment.
This article makes three main points. First, Kenscoff illustrates the failure to turn documented warnings into effective protection. Second, the electoral calendar is running into a credibility wall, because the conditions required for participation, registration, security and political acceptance are not in place. Third, authorized force levels and mandate renewals are not enough to establish the security architecture’s actual operational capacity.
A strategic reset should therefore begin with a limited set of public benchmarks and sequencing decisions. The UN Security Council has already established most of the diagnosis of a multidimensional crisis: security, sanctions, disarmament, justice, credible elections, humanitarian access, civilian protection, national ownership and accountable governance. What remains is to organize these elements within a framework linking committed resources and outputs to the intended strategic effects, around a small number of publicly verifiable objectives.
For Haiti, the decisive question is therefore not how much activity is deployed, but what actually changes on the ground.
The UN Security Council and the Demand for Results
The Security Council’s emergency session on Aug. 28, 2026, held after the events in Kenscoff, was marked by a broad convergence of diagnoses among delegations. Carlos Ruiz Massieu, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Haiti, stressed the urgency of turning commitments into concrete results. Brazil offered the most operational electoral benchmark: credible assistance requires disaggregated registration data, adequate resources, restored transit routes, and security for voters and polling stations. Panama warned that deploying the force was not an end in itself and questioned the realism of holding elections on the current timeline, including during the first half of 2027. The United States put it bluntly: the force was not created to issue statements from behind the secure walls of its base or to spend funds while Haiti suffers.
These interventions converge on the same finding. The Council already perceives the gap between activities undertaken and effects achieved. What it lacks is an integrated framework linking security, sanctions, justice, elections and governance to measurable results.
This convergence also carries political weight. France called for more intensive implementation of the existing strategy. Yet the shift toward a six-month technical rollover opens the possibility of a review of the current architecture. In late August, Haitian authorities and senior international officials had been discussing a two-year horizon for the force to reduce gangs’ capacity for harm, recover territory and secure key infrastructure. A short technical rollover, if confirmed, would reflect a very different logic: preserve the instrument, avoid a security vacuum and reassess the force’s real capacity to meet its objectives.
This is precisely why Haiti needs a results-based framework. The determining question is what the force, the sanctions regime, the UN political mission and electoral support must produce — and by when — to justify their continuation, redesign or replacement, beyond simply granting the force more time in the abstract.
The Human and Territorial Ledger of Failure
Haiti cannot be assessed through mandates, meetings and resolutions alone. The real ledger lies in the protection of populations, persistent impunity, lost territory, closed corridors, paralyzed schools and hospitals, displacement, kidnappings and massacres. Kenscoff is the most recent example of a warning that was known, documented, and never converted into effective, lasting protection.
The crisis cannot be grasped through institutional language alone. It must be remembered through the names of people and places that testify to the collapse of protection: Vladjimir Legagneur, Pétion Rospide, Monferrier Dorval, Diego Charles, Antoinette Duclaire, Éric Jean Baptiste, Davy Lloyd, Natalie Lloyd, Jude Montis, James Boyard, abducted with his wife and daughter on June 11, 2026 — and La Saline, Bel Air, Nan Tokyo, Village de Dieu, Carrefour-Feuilles, Cité Soleil, Solino, Pont-Sondé, Wharf Jérémie, Mirebalais, Delmas — and now Kenscoff.
According to the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), three massacres that the organization describes as the worst atrocities recorded in Haiti since 2018 — occurring between December 2024 and February 2025 in Wharf-Jérémie, Kenscoff and Chateaublond — killed at least 269 people. Human Rights Watch (HRW), citing the RNDDH, reports at least 13 massacres committed in the Ouest, Centre and Artibonite departments between January and the end of September 2025. During the Security Council’s emergency session on Aug. 28, 2026, BINUH (the UN Integrated Office in Haiti) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) added fresh figures to this ledger: more than 1,400 killed and more than 600 injured between April and June 2026; nearly 1.5 million people internally displaced; thousands of incidents of gender-based violence; more than 1,600 schools closed; and a sharp rise in the recruitment and use of children by armed groups.
These facts matter because they keep the debate from becoming abstract. The question is not whether meetings, workshops or coordination exercises took place, whether commitments were announced, forces authorized or calendars published. The question is whether all of this helped protect the population and end impunity.
Kenscoff illustrates this with particular sharpness. The commune, nestled in the hills above Port-au-Prince and adjoining Pétion-Ville, protects what still allows the capital to function — diplomatic compounds, government offices, evacuation routes, supply chains. This warning was made publicly as early as March 2025, on AyiboPost, but never resulted in effective, lasting protection. A first wave of attacks hit Belot and Godet, two localities in the commune of Kenscoff, in January 2025, killing more than 250 people over two months. A second wave, between July 4 and 9, 2026, killed at least 61 people, including 14 children, in Kenscoff and Pétion-Ville. Then came the night of Aug. 23–24: at least 47 killed, including five children, 22 wounded, more than 52 people abducted, homes burned, and civilians executed after seeking refuge in a Protestant church — 22 in the church courtyard and 12 more behind it. The same pattern had already played out in Mirebalais, overrun in March 2025 after incursions documented long in advance.
The repeated attacks on Kenscoff have made this failure impossible to ignore. The dead are not mere footnotes in a stabilization strategy. They are its measure of failure.
The Electoral Process at an Impasse
The electoral process no longer faces a simple administrative delay. The credibility wall now has four dimensions: technical, legal, security and political.
Technical, because registration remains far below target. According to the Provisional Electoral Council’s (CEP) website as of Sept. 13, only 570,641 voters had registered, one month before the deadline, out of a potential electorate of 6.6 million. At this pace, the process would fall well short of the announced target of 3 to 4 million registered voters before the Oct. 13 deadline. Territorial disparities remain sharp: the Ouest and Artibonite regions, which accounted for a large share of voters in previous elections, remain affected by gangs, blocking access to several constituencies and registration centers.
Legal, because the electoral framework keeps producing uncertainty: a shifting decree, candidacy requirements, sanctions, disputes — and a calendar that opens the campaign on Oct. 5, before the final list of eligible candidates is even published on Oct. 14. Added to this is the question of screening candidates linked to criminal networks: the OAS has acknowledged that vetting would fall to Haitian authorities, and that the effect of bilateral sanctions would depend on the criteria those authorities adopt. Compounding this uncertainty is the ambiguity surrounding constitutional amendments contemplated under the Feb. 21, 2026, agreement, with voters potentially asked to cast a first-round ballot under a constitutional framework still subject to change before any runoff. This raises a serious issue of legal stability and certainty: under the Venice Commission’s standards, fundamental elements of electoral law should not normally be amended less than one year before an election.
Security, because the territorial control exercised by gangs, and the resulting restrictions on movement, hinder registration, campaigning and voting itself. The lack of safe and reliable access to the main routes connecting the capital to the rest of the country — particularly those leading north, south, and to Malpasse, a border crossing with the Dominican Republic — as well as to several communes and communal sections, including approximately 28 communes identified by the CEP president on July 21 as affected by insecurity and the absence of effective state authority, poses a direct obstacle to electoral logistics, candidate movement, the deployment of sensitive materials, and voter participation. Compounding this territorial constraint is an aviation-related one: the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) extension of restrictions on U.S. flights to Port-au-Prince through March 2027 does not legally close the airport to all traffic, but it underscores the level of risk and may complicate the potential transport of sensitive electoral materials. The CEP itself had stated that respect for the electoral calendar depended on establishing an acceptable security climate, and that extending registration operations required acceptable conditions of security, accessibility and effectiveness. These constraints therefore turn a security problem into an electoral impasse.
Political, finally, because confidence in the electoral authority and the rules of the vote is itself fragile. The CEP has been weakened by documented tensions with the Executive over the contested appointment of Uder Antoine as director-general, then by the recent reshuffling of its executive bureau and the naming of a new president just weeks before the campaign’s official opening on Oct. 5, 2026. Added to this are allegations concerning the irregular use of national identification numbers in party-support lists, the absence of a citizen verification mechanism, and public criticism from former electoral officials over the lack of biometric safeguards in the registration process.
Speaking of credible elections without secure access to the territory, demonstrated security capabilities, logistical guarantees, and sufficient political trust risks treating the timetable as an administrative fiction rather than a genuine democratic process. Under these conditions, the problem is no longer simply about meeting the electoral timetable, but about whether the vote can produce political legitimacy rather than widespread disputes over the results. That is precisely the dilemma a strategic reset must resolve. As I argued in March 2024 in Foreign Policy, “In Haiti, as elsewhere, elections alone are not the answer.”
The GSF: Commitments Are Not Operational Capacity
The fragility of the electoral calendar is not only about the process itself. It also concerns the force meant to secure its implementation: underdeployed for nearly a year, it cannot today guarantee the security conditions a credible vote requires.
This distinction is critical for the force. The GSF’s authorized strength was set at 5,500 uniformed personnel. Nearly a year later, deployment shows a confirmed shortfall: only about 1,000 personnel were deployed as of July. On Sept. 1, the force’s spokesperson, Igor Rugwiza, told Haitian radio that force levels would not reach the 5,500 uniformed personnel originally projected for October, citing logistical constraints, without offering a revised timeline. The OAS summed up the problem in operational terms: the force’s command cannot carry out its mission without the personnel and equipment that were promised.
Public confidence is also conditional. A Chatham House nationwide survey conducted in May 2026 found that support for the GSF exists but is far from overwhelming: 49.5 percent of respondents support the force, while 54.2 percent doubt it can accomplish its mission. This limited support reinforces the case for a rapid reassessment based on visible and verifiable results.
It is precisely this gap that matters. A mandate, a pledge, a signed agreement, an announced contingent or a flag does not constitute operational capacity. Real capacity means equipped, commanded and accountable units able to move, gather intelligence, coordinate with Haitian forces, protect civilians, hold ground once an operation ends, and prevent another episode like Kenscoff. Capacity also encompasses vetting processes and discipline.
The six-month technical rollover under discussion responds first to a capacity problem: it would preserve the force’s legal existence while it remains far from its authorized strength. It would also open a reassessment window, but its scope remains corrective: nothing guarantees it will lead to the results-based criteria advocated here. What the electoral calendar requires, in any case, is a security capacity whose timely availability has not yet been demonstrated.
A Strategy Is Not a List of Instruments
Part of the problem is conceptual. Too many policy discussions confuse instruments with strategy. A strategy is not a mandate, a force-generation meeting, a list of contributing countries, pledges of aid, a sanctions regime, an electoral calendar, technical assistance or a donor conference. All of these elements may be necessary. None of them, alone, defines a strategy.
A strategy is a theory of action: it explains how specific inputs are meant to change conditions on the ground, within a defined timeframe, with clear lines of responsibility. For Haiti, that means answering simple questions: what must be accomplished, by whom, in what sequence, with what resources, by when, and with what consequences if results fail to materialize?
The distinction between inputs, outputs and outcomes is simple. It remains too often forgotten. Inputs enable activities; outputs are their direct products; outcomes measure whether conditions actually changed. Deploying 5,500 uniformed GSF personnel is, at best, an operational output. The outcome is measured by the durable reopening of roads, a decline in kidnappings, the protection of civilians, and the state’s ability to hold territory recovered from armed groups. Opening registration centers, signing a political agreement or holding elections are equally not outcomes if too few citizens register, if electoral conditions prevent inclusive, safe and credible participation, or if the agreement’s provisions go unimplemented.
Haiti’s transition experience should be enough to make the point. Since 2021, several political agreements have been negotiated without being fully implemented, particularly when it came to establishing a mechanism to monitor or oversee government action. An agreement without a verification mechanism remains an untested promise.
A results-based approach is not simply a matter of replacing one set of indicators with another. Words like “stability,” “resilience,” “good governance” or “credible elections” are worth nothing if no one is held accountable for them within a defined timeframe. The real test is the underlying theory of change: do outputs actually produce the political, security and institutional conditions capable of reducing instability?
This is where a strategic reset comes in. Implementation monitoring verifies what was done. A strategic reset asks whether what was done is producing the expected effects — and, when it does not, requires reexamining assumptions, the sequencing of interventions, and whether instruments actually match objectives.
This means working backward from the intended outcome. If the objective is credible elections, resources should target the obstacles standing in the way: territorial insecurity, insufficient registration capacity, geographic exclusion, unverified data, the absence of citizen recourse, and legal uncertainty. An independent audit of the electoral roll and the use of unique national identification numbers (NINU) then becomes a condition of credibility. If the objective is freedom of movement, the benchmark is durable access to national roads, the airport and the ports. Occasional escorted convoys do not establish that. If the objective is ending impunity, the test is the justice system’s capacity to investigate and try cases independently, including when they implicate politically connected actors. The number of trained investigators or institutions created does not establish that.
The force therefore cannot function as an isolated tactical instrument. It must be embedded in a chain linking intelligence, targeted operations, arrests, investigations, prosecutions, sanctions and secure detention. Without this criminal justice chain, security operations may displace armed groups temporarily; they do not produce durable results.
Closed-door meetings and planning exercises can contribute to shaping a strategy. They are not enough to establish its coherence or verify its effects. A strategy requires public indicators, clear Haitian political ownership, accountability among the actors involved, and consequences when objectives are not met. Resources belong to the implementation of a strategy. They must not substitute for one. Likewise, the vocabulary of results must not become a new institutional façade. Without public criteria, identifiable responsibility and independent verification, it would only give new language to old practices.
Haiti Does Not Need Disconnected Renewals
September and October will be decisive months. The Security Council will take up the force’s mandate, the sanctions regime and the Panel of Experts. BINUH’s mandate will come up later, in January 2027. The decisions taken now will shape the political and operational context in which that renewal is debated. These different tracks must not be treated as separate files.
A strategic reset should begin with five decisions.
First, the Security Council should treat the security force, sanctions, the political mission and the electoral process as elements of a single integrated strategy.
Second, the force should be assessed both on its actual operational capacity — units effectively deployed, commanded, equipped and coordinated with Haitian forces — and on the changes it produces for the population: civilians protected, hostages freed, essential corridors and infrastructure reopened and held, territory controlled, and a durable reduction in gangs’ capacity to exert violence, extract resources and govern through coercion.
Third, support for progress on the electoral calendar should depend on verifiable credibility benchmarks covering the four dimensions of the wall described above: technical, with sufficient registration coverage, data disaggregated by commune and polling center, and audited identification systems; legal, with stabilized rules, effective citizen recourse and impartial dispute resolution; security, with effective protection of registration, campaigning, voting and results transmission; and political, with a sufficiently independent and credible CEP, along with a sufficiently broad political agreement on the rules of the vote. International assistance should support and finance these safeguards under the United Nations’ own do-no-harm principle: it should neither prematurely legitimize an unverified stage of the calendar nor increase the risk of exclusion, disputes or violence. Support at each stage of the process should therefore depend on effective verification of these safeguards.
Fourth, security operations should be linked to a complete criminal justice chain: intelligence, arrests, investigations, prosecutions, sanctions and secure detention.
Fifth, Haitian civil society, human rights organizations, journalists, local communities and the diaspora should take part in publicly verifying results. International reporting would then be tested against the results Haitians actually observe, and the demands they raise on protection, mobility, democratic governance, anti-corruption and political participation.
For each of these decisions, a measurable result requires a responsible actor, a deadline and a public verification mechanism. Absent that, it remains a wish.
The risk now is treating the reassessment as a bureaucratic step before another GSF rollover. It should instead allow the Security Council to decide, based on verifiable results and an examination of the obstacles to achieving them, whether the current architecture should be maintained, redesigned or replaced by a next-generation integrated operation. Any such option should specify the changes in governance, accountability and Haitian participation that would allow it to overcome the failures identified.
The choice is not between supporting Haiti and abandoning it. It is between maintaining instruments because they exist and testing them against what Haitians urgently need them to deliver: security, accountability, mobility, credible participation, and a political order less vulnerable to criminal capture. After the August massacre in Kenscoff and the current impasse in the electoral process, the Security Council can no longer renew the existing architecture without demanding that it finally produce these results.
Philippe de Bard is an independant analyst and senior adviser on democratic governance and stabilization. Over the past 25 years, he has worked with the Economic Community of Central African States, the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the United Nations, in Haiti and in numerous fragile, conflict and post-conflict settings, including the Great Lakes region, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Lebanon, Guinea, Kosovo and Madagascar.
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