U.N. special representative warns Haiti is nearing a 'point of no return,' urges immediate international security and humanitarian support

Maria Isabel Salvador, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary‑General for Haiti and head of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), told the U.N. Security Council on April 14 that Haiti is approaching “a point of no return” and urged member states to provide immediate operational and financial support to stabilize the country.

“The scale and duration of this violence overwhelmed the Haitian National Police,” Salvador said in a briefing, and she warned that “without timely decisive and concrete international assistance the security situation in Haiti may not change.”

Salvador told the council that coordinated attacks by criminal groups have expanded territorial control and undermined state authority in and around Port‑au‑Prince and in the West Center and Artibonite departments. She said gangs targeted the Kenskov road (described in the briefing as the last road out of Port‑au‑Prince not fully under gang control), advanced into Delmas, downtown Port‑au‑Prince and Pétion‑Ville, and that gangs most recently seized “Mirmale.” During one such attack, Salvador said, more than 500 inmates were freed, marking the fifth prison break in under a year.

She gave recent casualty and displacement figures: “In…