By: Max Ackerson
From Angola and Sierra Leone to Iraq, private military companies (PMCs) have long stepped in to fill security gaps by providing close protection, logistics, surveillance, and training where states lacked capacity. In March 2025, Haiti’s transitional government hired Vectus Global, a PMC led by Erik Prince, founder and former CEO of the controversial PMC Blackwater, to support ongoing security operations against armed groups that have seized control of large portions of the country. However, the reported Haiti–Vectus deal extends beyond a simple security arrangement. According to Prince, once the security situation is stabilized, Vectus is tasked with designing and implementing a customs program to collect import duties on goods crossing Haiti’s land border with the Dominican Republic.
Since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti has existed in a state of near anarchy, described by Dominican President Luis Abinader as a “low-intensity civil war.” A July 2025 report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that heavily armed gangs now exercise “near-total control” over Port-au-Prince, overrunning roughly ninety percent of the capital. In the vacuum created by absent public services and overstretched policing, gangs have established parallel governance structures and seized key trade corridors. Attacks on police and customs officials at crossings with the Dominican Republic have surged. As legal commerce stalls, prices for staples such as rice and cooking fuel have skyrocketed, rendering half of the population food insecure and deepening the already severe humanitarian crisis. Over a million Haitians are internally displaced, half of them children.
In response, the United Nations Security Council authorized the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in October 2023 under Resolution 2699. After months of delays, the MSS began deploying Kenyan police units to Port-au-Prince. However, with only a fraction of the intended personnel and unreliable funding, the mission proved ineffective. In September 2025, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2793, transforming the MSS into the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), an envisioned 5,500-strong multilateral police force empowered under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter to take “all necessary measures” to neutralize armed gangs, secure critical infrastructure, and reestablish state authority. Yet even as the U.N. seemingly becomes serious about restoring order in Haiti, the transitional government has chosen a more direct path—turning to Prince and Vectus rather than awaiting the results of yet another experiment in multilateralism.
The Haiti–Vectus agreement reportedly consists of two parallel agreements: a one-year security contract to counter armed groups through joint operations, drone deployment, and training support, and a second ten-year framework aimed at stabilizing Haiti’s revenue collection through the implementation of a modernized customs program along the Dominican border. Reports indicate that the customs contract will be performance-based, with payments equivalent to 20% of customs revenue increases in the first three years and 15% thereafter. This would be in addition to a fixed fee of 3% on import volumes. Prior to gang control of trade networks, Haiti generated over half of its tax revenue from duties on goods crossing the Dominican border.
The customs agreement parallels a deal Prince concluded with the Congolese Finance Ministry in April 2025, under which Vectus advisors will deploy to Katanga to improve tax collection at industrial mining sites and reduce cross-border smuggling of minerals. Sources claim that Congolese losses due to smuggling alone are estimated at $40 million per month. Both agreements reflect a growing reliance on PMCs for revenue collection alongside traditional security contracting.
Since March 2025, Vectus has already deployed roughly 200 Salvadoran contractors who, emulating tactics developed in the war in Ukraine, have trained local police to target gangs with off-the-shelf drones loaded with explosives. In their most high-profile action, Vectus contractors helped repel an August 7 assault on the presidential palace. A U.S. Embassy official in Port-au-Prince noted he had “never seen gunfire of such intensity, even during the Iraqi insurgency in Fallujah in 2004.” Vectus reportedly plans to further expand its footprint in the coming months, deploying hundreds of additional personnel from the U.S., Europe, and El Salvador, among them trained snipers and intelligence and communications specialists supported by helicopters and boats.
As Washington reorients its foreign policy, scaling back foreign aid and signaling a preference against interventionism, fragile states like Haiti are increasingly turning to private contractors to fill the vacuum. As Prince put it, “We are gap-fillers, providing law-enforcement solutions where the lack of government capacity has led to lawlessness.”
From Somalia and Mali to South Sudan, traditional peacekeeping operations, slowed by funding gaps and the need for multilateral consensus, have long struggled to stabilize failing states. By contrast, PMCs offer speed, flexibility, and specialized capabilities, achieving stabilization without bureaucracy or the cultivation of long-term dependency on donor governments. For Haiti, the Vectus deal effectively delegates part of the state’s police and taxation authority via contract. Whether this constitutes a privatization of sovereignty or a pragmatic adaptation to state incapacity, it raises fundamental legal questions about how far a government may outsource inherently sovereign functions without violating the law.
International law prohibits mercenaries under the 1989 U.N. International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, which narrowly defines a mercenary as someone specially recruited to fight in an armed conflict, who directly participates in hostilities, acts primarily for private gain, and is neither a national of one of the parties to the conflict nor a member of a party’s armed forces. Haiti is not a party to the Convention (the U.S., China, Russia, and most of the EU are also not parties), and in any event, the definition applies only in situations of armed conflict. Under international law, Haiti’s gang crisis is treated as internal criminal violence. Further, Vectus personnel operate under Haitian governmental authority, providing law-enforcement and training support to the Haitian National Police. On these facts, Vectus’s conduct aligns with modern PMCs acting under state direction and contractual oversight—a form of lawful delegation rather than unlawful mercenaryism.
Regulation of PMCs occurs primarily through “soft law” frameworks. The Montreux Document (2008), a nonbinding joint initiative of Switzerland and the Red Cross, clarifies that contracting, territorial, and home states share concurrent obligations to ensure that PMSCs respect international humanitarian and human rights law, particularly regarding the use of force. The International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers supplements this regime, creating audit and grievance mechanisms to ensure compliance through industry self-regulation, though it has no formal enforcement mechanisms. Under these frameworks, legality depends on state control and accountability. So long as Haiti maintains effective operational control and oversight, properly regulated PMCs like Vectus may serve as lawful extensions of state authority.
However, the most striking element of the Haiti–Vectus deal is not the security coordination but the customs administration component. Under public-law theory, the power to tax cannot be transferred, but the administration of revenue collection may be lawfully outsourced. Private firms, namely banking institutions and consulting practices, have long been hired to modernize customs collection, inspection, reporting, and valuation systems in developing nations like Bolivia, Mozambique, and Uganda. What is novel here is that a PMC, rather than a financial or consulting contractor, is being retained to design and administer the modernized customs program.
The outsourcing of revenue collection is not without historical precedent within Haiti itself. During the 1915–1934 American occupation, U.S. officials gained complete control of Haitian finances, administering customs under a receivership that diverted revenue to foreign creditors. Less intrusive, the Vectus design and administration agreement allows Haiti to maintain final control, retaining legal ownership of revenues, setting tariff rates, and overseeing disbursement. The contract’s reported performance-based compensation structure further aligns Vectus’s interests with the Haitian government’s goal of reigniting critical cross-border trade and revenue collection.
Importantly, delegating enforcement and revenue collection to private actors does not dilute a state’s responsibility under international human rights law. The Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts provide that conduct by PMCs empowered to exercise governmental authority remains attributable to the state. Accordingly, Haiti bears direct responsibility for the actions of Vectus personnel operating under its direction and control, and its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights extend to all operations involving the use of force, detention, and due process. These obligations are especially critical considering recent developments on the ground in Port-au-Prince.
Earlier this month, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights cautioned that Haiti’s drone strikes were “likely unlawful,” killing at least 559 people to date, including 11 children. His concern was echoed by Gedeon Jean, head of Haiti’s Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research, who argued that “[r]esorting to [PMCs] cannot be seen as a solution to insecurity in Haiti,” since “[t]he use of [PMCs] has often resulted in human rights violations.” These warnings underscore that the core challenge for PMCs is not legality in principle but implementation in practice. The durability of the Haiti–Vectus framework and future arrangements will depend on unified command, transparent reporting, and accessible grievance mechanisms that provide remedies for alleged rights violations while preserving operational effectiveness.
Haiti’s Vectus Global contract is a turning point in how fragile, failing states confront instability. By contracting with Vectus to restore both internal security and revenue collection, the Haitian government is experimenting with a model of pragmatic sovereignty—one that seeks to rebuild state capacity through delegation rather than dependency. The legality of similar arrangements will depend not on the rhetoric surrounding the “privatization of sovereignty” but on clear command structures, transparent oversight, and enforceable accountability. If those safeguards hold, the Haiti–Vectus framework could serve as an exemplar for the next generation of stabilization efforts, where PMCs serve as a vital tool in rebuilding state capacity.
