The project was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—At 19, Emmanuel was caring for three siblings when he was forced last year to join Viv Ansanm, a coalition of gangs that controls large swaths of Port-au-Prince. Their father had left Haiti for Brazil to find work, and Emmanuel had been waiting for the promise of a job at a livestock program run by Sakala, a local youth development organization in the capital’s densely populated Cité Soleil neighborhood.

“We lost him because he couldn’t wait any longer,” Daniel Tillias, the co-founder of Sakala, told the New Humanitarian and Foreign Policy, adding that Emmanuel—whose name has been changed for security reasons—has since fled Viv Ansanm and gone into hiding.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—At 19, Emmanuel was caring for three siblings when he was forced last year to join Viv Ansanm, a coalition of gangs that controls large swaths of Port-au-Prince. Their father had left Haiti for Brazil to find work, and Emmanuel had been waiting for the promise of a job at a livestock program run by Sakala, a local youth development organization in the capital’s densely populated Cité Soleil neighborhood.

“We lost him because he couldn’t wait any longer,” Daniel Tillias, the co-founder of Sakala, told the New Humanitarian and Foreign Policy, adding that Emmanuel—whose name has been changed for security reasons—has since fled Viv Ansanm and gone into hiding.

Sakala is among many organizations in Haiti that lost U.S. funding last year and are struggling to continue their programs aimed at tackling the impact of rising gang violence through peace and development initiatives.

Before U.S. President Donald Trump came back to office in January 2025, U.S. funding made up more than 65 percent of humanitarian aid in Haiti, where 6 million people—out of a population of nearly 12 million—are currently in need of assistance.

In January 2025, one of Trump’s executive orders suspended new foreign assistance and set in motion the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The following month, a separate order gutted the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), and by March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the administration was cancelling 83 percent of USAID’s programs worldwide. In Haiti, the freeze halted roughly 80 percent of U.S.-funded programs, according to OCHA, the United Nations’ emergency aid coordination body. Many of these were vital for families to get by and for violence-prevention programming in neighborhoods where armed groups recruit.

Armed groups now control 90 percent of Port-au-Prince and continue to expand in neighboring departments such as Artibonite. Nearly 1.5 million people in Haiti have been internally displaced, food insecurity affects more than half of the population, and insecurity disrupts every aspect of daily life. Like Emmanuel, a rising number of children and young people have been left without access to education or job opportunities, and therefore with no other choice than to join gangs for the survival of their families.

Displaced residents at Club International, a former nightclub in Port-au-Prince now serving as a displacement site, on June 6.

According to UNICEF, the number of children recruited into armed groups tripled in 2025 compared with the previous year, and they now make up half of all Haitian gang members.

While cuts did not create Haiti’s gang recruitment crisis, they gutted the programming designed to keep young people out of the armed groups: job training, income support, education, and community mediation.

“USAID helped manage Haiti’s problems,” said Christine Sainvil, the chief growth officer of Papyrus S.A., a Haitian firm that has helped more than 300 local organizations qualify for the agency’s funding. Its dismantling “has created a level of desperation that pushes people to default to an easy solution.”

For Tillias, recruitment is straightforward: Gangs take in the kids who can’t earn money or find support elsewhere. Sakala’s tuition assistance, tutoring, sports, and small agricultural jobs existed to fill those gaps. Now, Tillias said, “without USAID support, all you have left is the rule of the ganglord.”

A displaced resident hangs laundry at Club International in Port-au-Prince on June 6.

When the freeze came down in January 2025, USAID had roughly $330 million “in outstanding commitments” to ongoing programs in Haiti, according to an analysis of federal spending data by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Only 7.6 percent of USAID’s Haiti spending since late 2023 reached local organizations directly, but it paid salaries and kept programs running in neighborhoods the state had........

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