DISPLACED IN PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI. SEPT 2023. - GILES CLARKE | Getty Images Reportage

Haiti has a long and brutal history of uprisings, chaos and instability. The past two years have been no exception. On July 7th, 2021, then-President Jovenel Moise was assassinated at his home in Port-au-Prince in a targeted political killing. In the two turbulent years since, Haiti's political system has further spiraled into even deeper chaos, resulting in the explosive rise of gang warfare and counter-vigilante violence.

In July 2023, a Kenyan-led multinational police force was proposed by the United Nations, which in turn sparked the more active Port-au-Prince gangs into a brutal race to claim new territory within the city before any overseas deployment arrived.

In October 2023, the United Nations Security Council greenlit the deployment of an armed multinational force with Kenya at the forefront to spearhead the 2024 operation.

September 2023 published on CNN.

A young displaced Haitian mother holds her child inside a former church hall in downtown Port-au-Prince on September 12, 2023. According to UNICEF, one in five children now suffers from acute malnutrition in the downtown suburbs of the Haitian capital.

Above a cemetery near Port-au-Prince airport on September 11, 2023, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. According to UN officials in Haiti, some 3,500 people have died due to the rampant gang violence since June 2022.

Passengers cling onto a bus on the streets of Port au Prince. Following attacks on public transportation, many bus operators are now having to pay a protection fee when driving through the growing number of gang-run neighborhoods. Surging fuel prices have also hit city residents hard as road blockades severely hamper reliable gas deliveries.

Displaced women and children shelter in a school gymnasium after fleeing their homes during gang attacks in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

An anti-government protestor on the streets of Port-Au-Prince. Haiti has a long political and social protest history dates back to the French colonial days in the late 1800s.

The Rex Medina theater in Port-au-Prince. Displaced Haitians at the Rex Medina theater in downtown Port-au-Prince on September 14th, 2023. The former theater was closed after the 2010 earthquake but broken into and reopened again in late August 2023 by a group of residents seeking safety, having been driven out of their homes by gangs seeking to gain territory before the possible Kenyan-led multinational deployment.

Inside a former school in Port-au-Prince, many adults struggle to adjust to displaced life, having been driven out of their homes just days earlier as gangs expand their territory. Unaccompanied women and children comprise most of those displaced in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. According to UN/OCHA, Haitian women are paying a heavy price for this surge of violence. Rape cases increased by 49 percent from January to August 2023, compared to the same period of 2022.

A children’s playground converted into a living shelter in the Tabarre area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

View of a protest from a Haitian National Police vehicle in downtown Port au Prince

Driven out of her home days earlier, a Haitian woman waits for other family members at a WFP-supported settlement that was a former school.

A one-legged displaced man found shelter on the top floor of a church in the Delmas 12 area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on September 14, 2023.

Sheltering in the Delmas 4 Olympique Boxing Gymnasium in Port-au Displaced men, women, and children shelter in a boxing arena in downtown Port-au-Prince after fleeing their homes during the ongoing gang attacks in August and September 2023. Former community centers such as these have been transformed into crude shelters and are often now guarded by vigilante groups created to counter local gangs.

A young woman cooks at a newly created UNICEF and partner-supported displacement camp in a former school in downtown Port-au-Prince.

Inside an abandoned school in the troubled Bel Air area of Port au Prince. The former school was abandoned as gang violence made safe access for students and teachers impossible. In the first six days of February 2024 alone, thirty schools closed due to escalating violence in urban areas, while over 1 in 4 schools has remained closed since the end of 2023

Displaced women and children moved into a school in downtown Port-au-Prince after attacks widen by gangs seeking new territory.

At the Fontaine Hospital in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A local man drops off a gravely ill woman at the UNICEF-supported Fontaine Hospital in Port-au-Prince on September 16th, 2023. The Fontaine Hospital provides free health care in Cite Soleil, which has historically been known as one of the poorest and the most troubled gang areas of Port-au-Prince. The violence over the past 18 months has crippled healthcare services as doctors struggle to reach work, and supplies are often stolen before reaching facilities. According to UN figures, over 3,700 people have been killed by gang fighting since mid-2022 in Haiti, with over 800 of those in the Cite Soleil area alone.

At a makeshift church on the morning of the 5th anniversary of the 2010 earthquake, a group of praying Haitian men and women mourn the loss of friends and relatives five years earlier. The devastating event occurred at 4.53 pm on January 12th, 2010, with the largest quake registering a magnitude 7.0 on the Richter scale resulting in the death of over 260,000 people and tens of thousands more injure

At the UNICEF-supported Fontaine Hospital in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince, doctors treat a young girl admitted after a traffic accident.

Sheltering on the steps of a indoor sports hall in downtown Port-au-Prince.

A family who were driven from their neighborhood, just a week earlier by a violent gang, now take refuge in the abandoned Rex Medina theater in downtown Port-au-Prince.