Nearly half of Haiti going hungry as gang violence wrecks hunger

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization report shows that nearly half of the population is going hungry because of the gang violence in the country, which has left half of the population going hungry.

Jean-Martin Bauer, Haiti director of the WFP, said these are the worst conditions on record. Food insecurity in Haiti is going downhill and Haiti is in a hunger crisis. The UN organisation estimates that 4.9 million people in the country are affected by acute hunger, and Haitians are finding it increasingly difficult to buy enough food since Jovenel Mo se was assassinated in July 2021 and the island nation has sunk into violence.

As armed groups take over control of much of the country, the economy has collapsed, inflation has gone up to 49.3% and gang leaders have restricted access to food and water. A lack of rain has reduced crop yields. Since the WFP published its last report in September 2022, inflation has made food more costly and has contributed to 200,000 more Haitians going hungry.

It is critical that life-saving food assistance keeps reaching the most vulnerable Haitians and resilience and safety-net initiatives continue to be prioritized so we can address the root causes of hunger, said Bauer.

Violence is expected to deteriorate as the country s overlapping crises continue. Haitian rights group RNDDH estimates that gangs, not state security forces, now control all of the capital, Port-au- Prince, and more than half of the country.

Rape and sexual violence are also being used to terrorise, said Pascale Solages, co-founder of the Haitian feminist group N g s Mawon, at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights earlier this month. She said that her organisation has received more than 650 cases of rape in just part of the capital since May.

Another UN report released on Tuesday said 531 people have been shot dead and 277 kidnapped by gangs since January. Gangs are extending their control in the Artibonite Department, a vast central Haitian state where much of the country's rice is grown. Turf wars in the country's breadbasket will probably cause hunger.

The UN is calling for the deployment of an international specialised support force to restore order to Haiti, and the US president, Joe Biden, is expected to lobby his Canadian counterpart, Justin Trudeau, to lead it in talks in Ottawa this week.

The WFP highlighted some positive news: the famine-like conditions it recorded for 20,000 people in the sprawling gang-run slum of Cit Soleil have been eradicated, while the number of people going hungry has gone up. The organisation warned that it is unlikely that it will be able to deliver such gains unless it receives financial support.

The WFP has reached 850,000 Haitians this year and hopes to reach 2.5 million by the end of 2023, but the organisation is underfunded and needs $125 m 102 m over the next six months from donors.

We are very concerned that the cost of inaction would be a source of grief for the local population. The lack of assistance in Haiti would only contribute to the problems that the country is facing in terms of security and stability, said Bauer.