Haiti: Brazil’s World Cup opponent faces chaos in the country

Regardless of the result, Haiti’s participation in the World Cup, the country’s first since 1974, can already be considered a victory, as the Caribbean nation faces one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world.

Since the assassination of then-president Jovenel Moïse in 2021, Haiti has experienced a wave of power vacuum and rampant violence, with gangs dominating much of the country.

A March report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights found that at least 5,519 people were murdered in Haiti and another 2,608 were injured between March 1, 2025 and January 15, 2026, extremely high rates for a nation of just 12 million inhabitants.

The document reported that, according to the displacement assessment carried out by the International Organization for Migration, in September 2025 Haiti had more than 1.4 million internally displaced people, an increase of 36% since November 2024.

Recently, Chad began action to combat gangs in Haiti, after a security mission led by Kenya that operated in the Caribbean country from June 2024 failed to achieve great results.

This instability is reflected in football. According to a recent article on the website The Conversation, the majority of athletes representing the Caribbean country at the World Cup come from the Haitian diaspora: of the 26 players called up, only ten were born in Haiti and only one, Woodensky Pierre, plays for a Haitian club.

Twelve draftees were born in France to Haitian parents, one in Canada, one in Switzerland and two in the United States.

Due to the violence, Haiti was forced to play its home matches in the Qualifiers outside the country, in Aruba, Barbados and Curaçao.

In March 2024, the country’s main stadium, Stade Sylvio Cator, in Port-au-Prince, was taken over by gangs.

Before that, in 2021, the team’s training center, Rancho Croix-des-Bouquets, had been abandoned after being taken over by members of the 400 Mawozo gang, the largest in the country.