Haiti received the first foreign troop contingent tied to a new UN-backed gang-suppression force on Wednesday, according to a statement released by the force. The statement said a team from Chad arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, alongside Jack Christofides, who was deployed as the force’s special representative at the request of the Haitian government.
The statement also described the diplomatic and logistical handoff that preceded the arrival. It said U.N. officials met with Haiti Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé to discuss the partnership with the U.N. Support Office in Haiti, which is set to back the force with key services and infrastructure.
In the statement, the force said the support includes living and office space, medical care, rations, water, power, fuel, ground mobility, aviation and other critical assistance. The statement did not provide additional details about the Chadian team’s role or when other troop contingents would follow.
The force’s broader mandate traces to the United Nations Security Council’s approval of a plan in late September. The plan calls for authorizing a force of 5,550 members designed to reshape a previous multinational effort led by Kenya that the U.N. said remained understaffed and underfunded during its operation.
A central difference cited by the U.N. plan is police-like enforcement authority. The new gang-suppression force is expected to be able to arrest suspected gang members, a power that the prior force did not have.
Haiti’s government and U.N. officials have linked the new deployment to the scale of the violence carried out by armed gangs. Gangs control an estimated 90% of Port-au-Prince and swaths of the country’s central region, and the U.N. reported that from March 1, 2025 through Jan. 15, 2026, more than 5,500 people were killed and more than 2,600 were injured.
The U.N. statistics cited by the statement also say gang violence has displaced more than 1.4 million people in a country of nearly 12 million.