In October 2023, the UN Security Council voted to “authorize the deployment of a multinational security support, headed by Kenya” in Haiti. In addition to one thousand Kenyan police officers, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Belize, Suriname, Antigua and Barbuda, Guatemala, Peru, Senegal, Rwanda, Italy, Spain, and Mongolia promised armed contingents. Former prime minister Ariel Henry — who served as the de facto, and therefore unelected, acting president — had previously urged the international community to act “in the name of women and girls raped every day, in the name of an entire people victim of the barbarity of gangs.”

According to the National Network of Human Rights Defense (RNDDH), between November 2018 and March 2024, gangs were responsible for the murder of over fifteen hundred people and the rape of more than one hundred sixty girls and women, as well as dozens of disappearances and the internal displacement of more than half a million people. At the beginning of this period, these armed groups acted in isolation and in competition with one another. However, in August 2020, nine of them federated under the leadership of former police officer Jimmy Chérizier, also known as Barbecue.

In January 2024, Chérizier consolidated the rest of the gangs in the capital to launch what they called a “revolution.” First, they took control of the area around the international airport to prevent Henry from returning to Haiti after his trip to Kenya. Over the following months, they bulldozed police stations and prisons and burned down public hospitals, universities, and libraries, killing a few hundred people in the process. To replace Henry’s government, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) facilitated the establishment of a seven-man Presidential Council, with the majority of its members representing the Parti Haitien Tèt Kale (PHTK), which has been in power since 2011.