Port-au-Prince, Haiti : working and living in chaos?

The conference will be held at MSF headquarters, 34 avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris. The conference will be broadcast live in English on this page and in French here. For anyone outside MSF, registration is required to attend the conference in person. You will find the registration form below. 

The Crash team is pleased to invite you to a conference-round table on Thursday February 6 at 6:30pm, with researchers Romain Le Cour Grandmaison and Arnaud Dandoy, and Sarah Chateau (MSF).    

Year after year, the situation in Haiti is described with the same words: “dramatic”, “worsening”, again and again. The grip of gangs on Port-au-Prince is now almost complete. In these areas, massive kidnappings, extortion, sexual violence, attacks, and violent confrontations with the police and citizen self-defense groups—often resulting in atrocities on both sides—are daily occurrences. Insecurity, which has become the norm, permeates every aspect of social life.

Against all odds, MSF has managed to maintain its operations in the Tabarre neighborhood and the Cité Soleil slum over the years, despite widespread turmoil and violence. This has been possible thanks to extensive networking and negotiations with various stakeholders, including gangs. Working with gangs and treating their wounded has earned MSF a degree of goodwill from them, but the greatest dangers we face today come from elsewhere. In November 2024, for instance, the grave incidents—execution of patients and threats against staff—that led to the suspension of MSF’s activities were perpetrated by police brigades and self-defense groups.

While MSF’s activities are resuming with caution, this conference will attempt to shed light on some facets of this context. After describing the recurring problems faced by MSF projects in this “ecosystem of violence”, we'll look at the actors involved - armed groups, police, self-defence brigades - their logic and motivations, the way they operate, their violent practices, how they evolve, and the possible circulation between them. 

Romain Le Cour Grandmaison is director of the Haiti program at the non-governmental organization Global Initiative (GI-TOC). He also holds a doctorate in political science from the Université Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. 

Arnaud Dandoy is co-director of the Center for Research and Exchange on Security and Justice (CRESEJ), and currently in charge of research and knowledge management at Avocats sans frontières. He holds a doctorate in criminology from the University of Kent, UK. 

Sarah Chateau is MSF's program manager for Haiti.