PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CMC) — President Jovenel Moïse has pardoned 415 prisoners in a bid to reduce overcrowding at prisons across the country as a senior United Nations official said that the French-speaking Caribbean Community (Caricom) country had experienced an overall increase in gang-related and criminal activity during the first six months of the year.

Meanwhile, Helen Meagher La Lime, the special representative of the secretary general of the United Nations, in her report noted that Haiti experienced an overall increase in criminality and gang-related activity in the first months of 2020, even as the protests of 2019, which had increased insecurity, largely abated.

Her report, which is presented every 120 days, provides an update on the implementation of the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and on the activities undertaken by the United Nations to support the Haitian Government in the context of the new coronavirus pandemic.

It said that the phenomenon was particularly striking in Port-au-Prince (West Department) and in the Artibonite Department, with regular spikes of gang-related incidents reported in Cité Soleil, Croix-des-Bouquets, Martissant, and Village de Dieu over the first two months of 2020, as gangs tried to expand their respective areas of control...

“Amid the public outcry over the increased incidence of abductions, the Haitian National Police launched large-scale police operations, employing improved intelligence and targeting strategies to reverse the kidnapping trend.

Gang violence peaked in the second half of April, however, with a series of inter-gang clashes and confrontations with the police in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods of Bicentenaire, Grand Ravine, Martissant, and Village de Dieu as gang members began to oppose police deterrence measures put in place to impede their ability to carry out abductions,” the report added.