Aid Without Accountability: The UN’s Troubled Legacy in Haiti

Armed gangs are expanding their control across Haiti, and the government is collapsing, yet one thing remains missing: the blue helmets that once defined foreign intervention in the country. Haiti’s current security crisis is only the latest state of affairs in a history of political instability and foreign intervention. Since the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, the successive governments have struggled to establish stable and democratic institutions. The 2004 violent overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide plunged the country into chaos. In response, the United Nations deployed Haiti’s last major UN peacekeeping mission in 2004, called the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), to support the transitional government.

MINUSTAH initially succeeded in maintaining stability through its displacement programs and election support, but its reputation was tarnished by scandal. Peacekeepers introduced a devastating cholera epidemic that killed over 10,000 Haitians, and mass reports of sexual abuse and exploitation eroded public trust in the mission. By the time it ended in 2017, MINUSTAH had left deep resentment amongst the community and widespread mistrust in international aid. Today, violence is displacing over 1.4 million people and causing increases in gender-based violence, starvation, and human rights violations. However, the UN now hesitates to intervene directly, wary of repeating its mistakes. Now, non-UN missions that are smaller and more underfunded, such as the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS), have been operating without the UN’s full operational and financial backing, even though Haiti continues to face unprecedented violence and institutional collapse. Indeed, the organization’s lack of accountability towards the actions of MINUSTAH and its fear of repeating the same mistakes have created a failure of absence that the MSS must fill without the same network power. MINUSTAH’s legacy was troubled from the start of its stationment, as Haitians objected to the encroachment on their nation’s sovereignty. To its credit, the mission did help in stabilizing the country after the January 2010 earthquake, as well as aid in building up the national police force to nearly 15,000 people. However, they deeply undermined the image of the international community through the propagation of a cholera outbreak. 

In October 2010, a UN base of peacekeepers from Nepal contaminated Haiti’s largest river with waste, which led the government to declare a cholera epidemic. By 2018, over 800,000 cases had been declared, and upwards of 10,000 Haitians had died. In addition, a still-unclear number of UN peacekeepers were said to have engaged in “transactional sex” with hundreds of Haitian women, exchanging food and medication for sexual favours in a demonstration of flagrant exploitation. Not only did one-third of the alleged sexual abuse involve girls under 18, but the MINUSTAH peacekeepers fathered hundreds of children that they left behind once the mission ended. Though the UN prohibits “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex”, none of the women affected knew about the mission’s hotline to report sexual abuse.

In December 2016, the UN issued a formal apology for the cholera outbreak and launched a multi-partner trust fund that focused on the eradication of cholera and material support to Haitians. However, it has not offered a full public apology or a compensation system for the sexual exploitation by MINUSTAH. Although the UN’s brief apology for cholera is a sign of moral acknowledgement, the limited follow-through in terms of compensation and remedial justice, and the lack of accountability for sexual abuse mean that the mission’s legacy of harm remains unaddressed. 

In the present day, displacement and humanitarian need are at record highs; gangs control large parts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city. The UN Security Council gave the MSS permission to assist the Haitian National Police in late 2023, to improve Haiti’s security conditions for general elections to be held by the authorities. However, even though the Security Council supports the MSS, it is not a UN-led mission, and it lacks access to the UN’s powerful logistical, financial, and administrative networks. Further, it has been reported that some UN officials preferred sending in the MSS because their stationment would give the mission “more latitude in conducting offensive police operations” without the UN coming under scrutiny. 

As a result of the MSS not being UN-backed, it has depended completely on voluntary support from individual member states and regional organizations, instead of the assessed budget of a standard UN peacekeeping mission. This has led to numerous funding shortfalls: in 2024, the annual cost of the mission was $600 million USD, though it only received around $400 million USD in “bilateral contributions and a UN-administered trust fund.” This means that the continued procurement of essential equipment and the deployment of promised personnel are precarious at best. Indeed, voluntary-support missions struggle heavily in contexts where trust is already low and institutions are fragile. The MSS’s significant structural limitations and questionable oversight and accountability mean that Haitians are kept waiting, and that Haiti’s intervention lacks any stable coordination or funding.

Between the lack of large-scale UN infrastructure, slowed response times, and reduced resources and coordination, Haitians are wary of the international community’s efforts to help. Interviewed Haitians often state that aid is only useful in short-term needs, that transparent information is lacking, and that aid providers ostracize citizens. The UN’s reluctance to further intervene, where its resources could be of significant help, has effectively starved Haiti of much-needed support during crises like the 2021 earthquake and the ongoing political instability. The UN’s lack of accountability has seen it perceived as an external force that caused harm without consequence, which makes it much harder to rebuild relationships and provide the sustained humanitarian aid that Haitians need. 

The question to ask is whether the UN has backed itself into extreme caution because of the credibility crisis it established. The long-lasting stain MINUSTAH’s actions left on the UN’s image means that any present-day involvement in Haiti is constrained not only by political sensitivities but by the public’s stark memory of harm at the hands of the peacekeepers. The organization’s reluctance to engage too forcefully or lead any major recovery efforts reflects their loss of legitimacy, where they fear that any renewed intervention might risk public backlash.

In essence, the past couple of years have seen the UN’s refusal to take actionable responsibility for MINUSTAH’s actions effectively paralyzing its ability to act decisively, now that Haiti once again faces the overlapping crises of governance, health, and humanitarian violations. In September 2025, the UN Security Council authorized the Kenya-led Gang Suppression Force (GSF), a multinational mission to combat escalating gang violence in Haiti. Though this effort was backed by the UN, it demonstrates how international aid in Haiti remains entrenched in militarized solutions that echo the same peacekeeping tactics which once alienated the population. Although the UN now takes a more indirect role towards humanitarian aid, its withdrawal from direct responsibility has not actually ended intervention; instead, it has only made it less accountable. The cycle of invasiveness without transparency continues, ultimately demonstrating how the UN’s failure to reckon with its past has not only damaged its moral reputation but also given in to a model of aid that prioritizes violence and unaccountability over collaboration.

Edited by Maisie Minnick 

Featured image: “Brazilian U.N. Peacekeeper” by theglobalpanorama is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.