Amidst the fears of es­ca­lat­ing war be­tween the Unit­ed States and Iran, and a pos­si­ble wider con­flict as Ukraine struck an Iran­ian ship in the Caspi­an Sea, ma­jor news sto­ries in our own re­gion have re­ceived lim­it­ed at­ten­tion. In March 2026, Hu­man Rights Watch re­port­ed that drones op­er­at­ed by Hait­ian se­cu­ri­ty forces and pri­vate mil­i­tary con­trac­tors have killed 1,243 peo­ple and in­jured 738 oth­ers be­tween March 2025 and Jan­u­ary 2026.

The death toll as of to­day’s date is like­ly high­er, but I can­not lo­cate any news sources ac­tive­ly track­ing this trag­ic loss of life. While the strikes have been tar­get­ing dan­ger­ous gangs, Hu­man Rights Watch es­ti­mates that 17 of those killed were chil­dren and 43 were adults with no crim­i­nal ties.

Re­searchers J Sul­li­van, J New­berg and R Bunker, of the Small Wars Jour­nal, cov­ered this loss of life as fol­lows:

“1,243 peo­ple have been con­firmed killed by drone strikes at­trib­uted to a Hait­ian state-spon­sored ‘task force’ cre­at­ed by Hait­ian Prime Min­is­ter Al­ix Di­di­er Fils-Aimé. This ‘Task Force’ is part of a con­tract with a new pri­vate mil­i­tary and se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny (PM­SC), Vec­tus Glob­al, led by for­mer Black­wa­ter PM­SC leader Erik Prince. Some of the deaths from drone strikes are in­di­vid­u­als who were not af­fil­i­at­ed with any crim­i­nal armed group, in­clud­ing chil­dren.

“The sit­u­a­tion in Haiti is that of a full-blown crim­i­nal in­sur­gency, as well as a mas­sive hu­man­i­tar­i­an tragedy. Ul­ti­mate­ly, con­tract­ed mer­ce­nar­ies are en­gag­ing in legal­ly ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties to stave off vi­o­lent armed gangs from tak­ing over full con­trol of the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince …

“The use of ex­plo­sive drones has cre­at­ed a new lay­er of fear for Hait­ian cit­i­zens. For ex­am­ple, a drone at­tack oc­curred on 20 Sep­tem­ber, 2025, in the Si­mon Pelé neigh­bour­hood of Port-au-Prince in which 13 peo­ple, in­clud­ing three chil­dren, were killed. Hait­ian res­i­dents told Hu­man Rights Watch that drones “are a con­stant source of ter­ror, leav­ing some afraid to leave their homes.”

Hun­dreds have been re­port­ed in­jured, in­clud­ing ba­bies who lost their legs in the af­ter­math of a Kamikaze drone at­tack in Sep­tem­ber 2025. As hor­ri­ble as the drone strikes were, the gangs who con­trol 90% of Port-au-Prince have com­mit­ted mass killings of their own. Drone strikes are un­for­tu­nate­ly the most ef­fi­cient way for the gov­ern­ment of Haiti to try to re­gain con­trol of the streets from these gangs.

A multi­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mis­sion ap­proved by the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil called the Gang Sup­pres­sion Force has put around 5,500 troops on the ground to help sta­bilise the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti. This force con­sists of per­son­nel from Kenya, Ja­maica and the Ba­hamas, among oth­ers, who are at­tempt­ing to bring or­der to Haiti. It is un­clear, how­ev­er, whether this force has made any ef­fort to curb civil­ian deaths from drone strikes.

The re­al­i­ty of pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­nies bring­ing drone war­fare to the Caribbean is some­thing that re­quires con­tem­pla­tion by pol­i­cy­mak­ers. There is no con­fir­ma­tion of whether or not Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence was used in any step of the Hait­ian drone bomb­ing cam­paign, for in­stance to se­lect tar­gets us­ing fa­cial recog­ni­tion or in any sort of in­for­ma­tion pro­cess­ing. How­ev­er, un­less peace comes to our re­gion, it is in­evitable that Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence will be­come in­volved in the “Kill chain” of com­bat op­er­a­tions tak­ing place in Haiti or in oth­er zones of con­flict.

Re­ports in­di­cate that drug car­tels in Mex­i­co have ac­cess to ad­vanced drones. This rais­es the grim spec­tre of these drones be­ing up­grad­ed with var­i­ous forms of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to be­come more ac­cu­rate and more dead­ly, per­haps to as­sas­si­nate judges and politi­cians who op­pose drug car­tels and or­gan­ised crime.

It may be best for Trinidad and To­ba­go to use its place on the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to be­gin ad­vo­cat­ing for poli­cies that make it il­le­gal to use or de­ploy weaponised Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in the Caribbean or Latin Amer­i­ca. Re­sources should be put in place to in­ter­dict Lethal Au­tonomous Weapons sys­tems (AI drones) be­fore they end up in the wrong hands, and gov­ern­ments should be barred from us­ing them against their own cit­i­zens.

While T&T needs to get prop­er le­gal frame­works in place to gov­ern the pro­posed da­ta cen­tre ex­pan­sion, the rest of the re­gion should be­gin work­ing on le­gal frame­works to pre­vent as­sas­si­na­tions at the hands of killer ro­bots and drones, which, based on cur­rent trends, have a re­al prob­a­bil­i­ty of oc­cur­ring.

Sev­er­al writ­ers, aca­d­e­mics and AI re­searchers have sug­gest­ed that an in­ter­na­tion­al non-pro­lif­er­a­tion treaty, sim­i­lar to the 1968 Nu­clear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty, should be ad­vanced. While the de­ploy­ment of AI-en­hanced weapons such as drones will be much more dif­fi­cult to stop than the cost­ly de­vel­op­ment of a nu­clear bomb, the risk of in­ac­tion in our re­gion could re­sult in fu­ture civ­il un­rest be­ing ac­com­pa­nied by ter­mi­na­tor-style slaugh­ter bots that could make it pos­si­ble for a dic­ta­tor to com­mit geno­cide against a peo­ple or group for far less than the cost of a nu­clear weapons pro­gramme.