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Overview:
Residents cautiously returned to Delmas 30 and the Carrefour Aéroport area after the withdrawal of the Viv Ansanm gang coalition, only to find their neighborhoods devastated. Burned homes, looted belongings, destroyed infrastructure and bullet-scarred walls reflected six months of unchecked violence. Survivors like Jésula Cilus and Gesner Lebrun, left with nothing, voiced despair and uncertainty about returning, while cleanup efforts remain insufficient. With over 1.3 million people displaced and more than 3,000 killed in 2025 alone, the crisis highlights Haiti’s ongoing collapse and the limits of international and national security promises.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Residents returning to Port-au-Prince’s Delmas 30 neighborhood in the last week of August stepped into what looked like a war zone: human remains, charred homes gutted by fire, walls scarred with bullet holes and streets littered with debris. Six months after the Viv Ansanm gang coalition seized the neighborhood, survivors walked cautiously through the ruins — some searching for what little could be salvaged, others stunned by the scale of devastation and loss.
“I can’t explain what I saw; I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream,” said Jésula Cilus, who came back on Aug. 28 to witness the aftermath. “I saw everything I owned, my house burned down. Everything I had built during my youth working in factories is gone.”
Cilus, the mother of two women, has lived in Delmas 30 for decades. She once sold peanut butter bread in a small corridor attached to her home with a single room, topped by a rental unit. But on the night of Feb. 25, when gangs launched their final assault and took Delmas 30 hostage, her life was upended.
Her return followed a video posted Aug. 27 by Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, the ‘Viv Ansanm’ coalition leader, announcing that his men would withdraw from Delmas 12, 18 and 30, as well as Solino, Nazon, Poupelard and the airport areas, to allow displaced residents to return. The statement came after protests by displaced people demanding the right to reclaim their homes. But instead of joy, despair awaited them.
“They burned everything, they stole everything. The bandits left us nothing. They tell us to come back, but there is no roof to sleep under,” said one resident looking at an empty lot where the house once stood.
“I saw everything I owned; my house burned down. Everything I had built during my youth working in factories is gone.”
Jésula Cilus, a peanut butter bread vendor in Delmas 30
The nightmare began on Feb. 25, when the Viv Ansanm gang coalition stormed Delmas 30 at dawn, torching homes and killing residents in the streets. Hundreds fled that day, swelling the ranks of the 1.3 million Haitians now displaced across the country.
Authorities promised protection and relief. Despite leadership changes, repeated promises of security and even a UN-backed multinational force, gangs have only tightened their grip. They have overrun nearly 90 percent of Port-au-Prince and its neighborhoods, and killing more than 3,000 people in the first half of 2025 alone.
Picking through ruins, little left to find
Like Cilus, many residents cautiously returned to Delmas 30 and the nearby Carrefour Aéroport area on Aug. 28. In half a year, the gangs had ravaged the neighborhood entirely. Weeds reclaimed the streets. Metal roofing was stripped away, walls torn down, houses set ablaze. Belongings were looted or burned. Churches, schools and shops were ransacked, leaving the neighborhood resembling a battlefield.
Graffiti bearing the names of gang leaders Chérizier, Johnson “Izo” André and others still covers the few walls standing. Human remains and abandoned belongings litter the streets. Improvised barricades evoke the obstacles that once blocked armored police vehicles.
A woman in her sixties, walking toward Solino — another gang-ravaged neighborhood — carried a donated black bucket as she searched for what was left.
“Even the clothes I’m wearing were donated to me. I had two houses, and my children had several others in Solino — all of them were burned, the area completely destroyed,” she said.
She explained how she sought refuge in Delmas 19 after Solino fell, only for gangs to take that neighborhood as well.
“Today, I’m returning to Solino for a second time to see if I can get into my area, Ti Chéri (creole for sweetheart),” she said.
Some residents balanced sheets of metal on their heads, others carried burnt bed frames or salvaged chairs and stoves. A few clutched nothing but a single photograph. Almost every house had been punctured with holes, allowing gangs to move undetected from one to the next without using the streets. Armed with machetes, propane tanks and hammers, they reduced homes to ashes.
Gesner Lebrun’s beauty studio, like his upper-floor home, was looted.
“When I return, it looks as if a cyclone has passed through; there’s nowhere left to take shelter from the sun,” he said. “It’s almost the same as Jan. 12 [2010 earthquake], but back then it was more bearable, because I hadn’t had to flee my home.”
Despite some attempts at clearing debris, most say living here again is impossible.
“I want to return, but how can I sleep in the state the gangs left my house?” Lebrun asked. “If it rains, where will I take shelter? I haven’t found any of my personal belongings, not even a single spoon to eat with.”
Like Lebrun, many others want to return, but cannot see how it will be possible. The residents blame the Haitian authorities for their inability to protect residents and their livelihoods.
Following the gang’s withdrawal announcement, city hall workers began cleaning streets in Delmas 30 and Carrefour Aéroport. But beyond sweeping debris, little has been done to make the neighborhoods livable. Electrical cables were ripped out, roofs stripped, and many homes must be rebuilt from scratch.
“Calls are multiplying for the authorities to take responsibility,” one resident said.
A return fraught with danger amid stalled solutions
Observers warn that encouraging residents to return without restored security could expose them to more massacres. Haiti National Police ( PNH) urged civilians via their Facebook page not to go back without instructions.
Velina Charlier, a Vodou priestess and member of the political organization ‘Nou Pap Dòmi’, said that the gangs’ withdrawal was a strategy to use civilians as shields.
“For people to throw themselves at us so we can continue massacring them? To serve as human shields when the police come to arrest us?” she wrote on her X account.
“If it rains, where will I take shelter? I haven’t found any of my personal belongings, not even a single spoon to eat with.”
Gesner Lebrun, manager of a beauty studio in Delmas 30
Human rights leaders echoed her concerns. Pierre Espérance of National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) and Samuel Madistin of the Je Klere Foundation (FJKL) warned on local radio, Magik 9, that residents returning prematurely risk new massacres.
“People cannot return home without the presence of public security forces,” Espérance said. “It is the authorities who must create the conditions for their return, not the gangs.”
And for Madistin, such a return cannot happen in a disorderly way; it must be organized. “It is up to the State to give the signal, so citizens can be assured they will not fall back into the same conditions of insecurity,” he added.
As Haitians weigh returning to destroyed neighborhoods, the issue of how to deal with the powerful gang members has reached the United Nations. During a Security Council session on Aug. 28, the United States and Panama presented a draft resolution to establish a ‘Gang Suppression Force’ and create a UN Support Office to provide logistical backing.
“We urge Council members: join us – join us in responding to the call from the Haitian government, as we forge a new path towards peace and security, and establish the UN Support Office to properly and sustainably resource this effort,” said Ambassador Dorothy Shea, acting U.S. Representative at the UN.
“The next international force must be resourced to hold territory, secure infrastructure, and complement the Haitian National Police,” Shea added.
As for Cilus, with nothing left but the ashes where her house once stood, she wondered what future remained.
“I am old now and I can’t work anymore. Today I sleep at other people’s houses,” she said. “I cannot yet say that I won’t go back. You know what it’s like to sleep at other people’s homes; no one can ever feel comfortable in such conditions.”