PORT-AU-PRINCE — A team from the central African country of Chad has arrived in Port-au-Prince as the first foreign deployment of the new United Nations-backed gang-suppression force intended to help quell ongoing violence in Haiti.

The arrival was announced in an official statement posted on the force's X account. The U.N. Security Council approved a plan in late September to authorize a 5,550-member force in Haiti.

Jack Christofides, the special representative of the new gang-suppression force, was deployed to Port-au-Prince at the request of the Haitian government. U.N. officials met with Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé to discuss the partnership with the U.N. Support Office in Haiti.

The Support Office is providing the force with living and office space, medical care, rations, water, power, fuel, ground mobility, aviation and other assistance.

The new force will have the power to arrest suspected gang members, an authority that the previous gang-suppression effort did not possess. A Kenya-led multinational force that preceded the current mission operated with about 1,000 personnel out of the 2,500 planned.

Gangs control an estimated 90% of Port-au-Prince and areas of land in Haiti's central region. More than 1.4 million people have been displaced by gang violence in the country, which has a population of nearly 12 million.

From March 1, 2025, to Jan. 15, 2026, more than 5,500 people were reported killed and more than 2,600 were reported injured across Haiti, according to the latest U.N. statistics.