Chad has announced it will deploy 1,500 soldiers to Haiti as part of a United Nations-backed multinational force tasked with combating the powerful armed gangs that have brought the Caribbean nation to the brink of collapse. President Mahamat Idriss Déby made the announcement in an official message to parliament on 20 April, doubling Chad's original pledge of 750 troops. "The state will contribute to this force with two battalions of 750 personnel each, for a total of 1,500 men," Déby said.
The first Chadian soldiers — around 50 military engineers, electricians, plumbers and carpenters sent to help establish bases — arrived in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince on 1 April. The broader deployment will feed into the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), a multinational security mission created in late 2025 by a UN Security Council resolution to conduct direct operations against Haiti's armed gangs. The force aims to reach 5,500 security personnel by October, meaning Chad's contingent will account for roughly a quarter of the total. The mission is expected to last 12 months and will involve direct urban combat against gang networks.
To prepare for that demanding environment, Chadian troops have undergone specialised training in the capital N'Djamena under the supervision of the country's external operations coordination body, known as Cecopex. Déby noted that Chad has a long tradition of overseas military engagement, citing past interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire and Mali, as well as operations against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has been engulfed by gang violence for years. Gangs now control nearly all of Port-au-Prince and have steadily expanded their reach into surrounding areas over the past year, subjecting the population to killings, mass rape and kidnappings. The GSF replaces an earlier multinational mission that was led by Kenya.
The scale of Chad's commitment — a landlocked Central African nation of around 18 million people contributing a quarter of an entire international force deployed thousands of kilometres away — underscores both the severity of Haiti's crisis and the growing role that African militaries are playing in global peacekeeping and stabilisation efforts. Whether the mission can suppress gang control without addressing the deeper political and economic roots of Haiti's instability remains an open question, one that analysts and international observers have already raised.