Human Rights Watch reports that sexual violence has become yet another escalating and "horrific" tool of the gangs that keep spreading their power in Haiti. Some 4,000 women and girls have reported being raped by gang members just this year,

Since January, nearly five thousand civilian deaths have occurred as a result of relentless gang warfare in Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital city, and its immediate environs. The country itself has slid into a catastrophic humanitarian emergency,