Haiti’s Vanishing State: How Martissant Became a No-Go Zone
On June 6, 2021, Claude Joseph, then Haiti’s de facto Prime Minister, confidently announced that the national police had « restored traffic » on the vital Martissant-Fontamara road in Port-au-Prince. He proudly claimed that this had been achieved “without firing a single shot.” The statement came during a highly orchestrated visit to the area, flanked by Léon Charles, acting director of the Haitian National Police. Official rhetoric described the operation as a “wireless mode” security intervention—suggesting that order had been restored through the sheer weight of political will, not force.
Yet, beneath this facade of control, there was no evidence of any real operation to dismantle armed groups or reclaim territory. By that time, heavily armed gangs had already established dominance over Martissant, a key southern gateway to the capital. Human rights organizations such as the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) were already reporting mass civilian displacements, targeted killings, and total impunity.
As Michel Forst, former UN special rapporteur on human rights in Haiti, warned in 2021, “Haitian authorities have increasingly substituted words for action—especially in matters of public security.” Martissant stands as a textbook case of such performative governance: a press statement masquerading as policy, and theatrical language replacing political responsibility.
Two years later, this discourse of denial gave way to something perhaps even more troubling: the open admission of state paralysis.
In March 2023, Haiti’s Minister of Justice and Public Security, Emmelie Prophète Milcé, told a local journalist that she “would not take the Martissant road to travel south.” The statement—unusually candid for a sitting minister—sparked public outrage. For the first time, a high-ranking government official had acknowledged what most Haitians already knew: the government had lost control of the corridor, and had no plan to reclaim it.
Although the minister later attempted to walk back her comments, claiming they had been taken out of context, the damage was done. Her words publicly confirmed that Martissant was no longer under state jurisdiction. And more significantly, it revealed a deeper, unspoken truth: that governance in Haiti is no longer defined by territorial authority, but by negotiated survival.
Since 2021, successive governments have clung to symbolic gestures. Education Minister Nesmy Manigat visited the area under heavy escort to reopen a school or two, while former Justice Minister Bertho Dorcé—whose legal career began in Martissant—remained silent during the height of the violence. There has been no comprehensive plan to reclaim the territory. No permanent presence. No political will. The gangs remain, and the state retreats.
This retreat is not merely tactical. It signals the collapse of the Haitian republican promise. More than a security failure, Haiti is undergoing an accelerated disintegration of public authority. By quietly ceding control to armed groups, the state is effectively legitimizing an alternative system of rule—one dictated by the gun, not the constitution.
Martissant is no longer an isolated case. It has become a symbol of Haiti’s fragmentation. A country where the state governs only where it is allowed to, where victims are blamed or ignored, and where impunity is no longer an anomaly but a structural reality.
As long as political elites continue to weaponize chaos in pursuit of short-term gains, any stabilization effort—foreign or domestic—will be fundamentally flawed. Haiti’s real challenge is not merely law enforcement; it is political reconquest. And that requires more than speeches. It demands a state willing and able to govern.
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