UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Friday to expand the arms embargo in Haiti to all types of weapons and ammunition, expressing grave concern at the extremely high levels of gang violence and criminal activities in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

The resolution authorizes the 193 U.N. member nations to take “appropriate steps to prevent the illicit trafficking and diversion of arms and related materiel in Haiti.” U.N. experts have said increasingly sophisticated weapons that end up in the hands of gang members and criminals are being trafficked from the U.S., especially from Florida.

The resolution also extends a travel ban and asset freeze on individuals on the U.N. sanctions blacklist for a year. In late September, the council committee monitoring sanctions on Haiti added two people to the list, which included five gang leaders.

One was Elan Luckson, leader of the Gran Grif gang, which killed at least 115 people in the town of Pont-Sondé in the Artibonite region next to the capital in early October in one of the biggest massacres in Haiti in recent history. The other was Victor Prophane, a former member of the Haitian parliament accused of being involved in arms trafficking.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    6·
    17 days ago

    I’m fairly confident that virtually all the arms being moved are smuggled, not legally exported, so I’m skeptical that an embargo is going to do much.

    https://apnews.com/article/haiti-weapons-gangs-us-trafficking-f06bfb0a7d3b46a1e14ebd7bea95fd71

    Increasingly sophisticated weapons are being trafficked into Haiti mainly from the United States and especially from Florida amid worsening lawlessness in the impoverished Caribbean nation, according to a U.N. report released Friday.

    “Popular handguns selling for $400-$500 at federally licensed firearms outlets or private gun shows in the U.S. can be resold for as much as $10,000 in Haiti,” the report said. “Higher-powered rifles such as AK47s, AR15s and Galils are typically in higher demand from gangs, commanding correspondingly higher prices.”

    That’s a pretty potent incentive to smuggle.

    When you consider that one of the things that Haitian gangs are smuggling is drugs into the US, I figure that the US is probably already exerting a fair bit of effort to tamp down on smuggling.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_Haiti

    Throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s, leading members of the Haitian military, intelligence and police were involved in the illegal drug trade in Haiti, assisting Colombian drug traffickers smuggling drugs into the United States.[3] Corruption in Haiti remains extremely high, and suspicions of continued drug-related corruption remain.

    So you move a load of drugs into the US, take weapons back to Haiti, make a profit in both directions.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/13/americas/haiti-mss-unodc-guns-drugs-intl-latam/index.html

    In a city cut off from the world, guns and drugs keep flowing