Haiti conflict drives thousands toward famine

PORT-AU-PRINCE – A gang-fueled social and political crisis in Haiti has swollen the ranks of those suffering severe hunger in recent months, with an estimated 5.4 million Haitians having run out of food and gone a day or more without eating.

Of those, at least 6,000 residents of the Caribbean island nation now suffer catastrophe levels of hunger, according to data released on Monday by global hunger watchdog Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC.

Catastrophe or famine-level hunger is defined as having almost no food despite using all coping strategies, leading to starvation, destitution and death.

Those experiencing severe hunger are up from just under 5 million estimated late March. The figure is set to surpass 5.5 million by next June, or about half of Haiti’s population of over 11 million, IPC said.

In a report, the IPC blamed escalating violence in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince for causing “serious difficulties in supplying basic foodstuffs to the regions, limiting households’ physical and financial access to food.”

The IPC also cited a high inflation rate as an aggravating factor, when food spending accounts for up to 70% of household budgets.

The hunger stalking Haitians has worsened dramatically since 2014, with close to half the population suffering severe food insecurity. U.S. aid group Mercy Corps estimated this was just 2% a decade ago.

The IPC’s catastrophe warning is the beginning of Phase 5 or the top end of a scale used by U.N. agencies and aid groups to determine food insecurity, which can escalate to a declaration of famine in a region.

For famine to be declared, at least 20% of the population must be suffering extreme food shortages, with one in three children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.

Some 18% of Haiti’s population is currently estimated to be facing emergency-level or Phase 4 hunger.

Many of the worst affected are living in makeshift camps hosting some of the over 700,000 people displaced by the ongoing conflict. Many fled without belongings and now have no means of earning money to feed their families.

“The gangs forced us out. I lost my parents – my mother and father. The gangs burned them alive in the house, and now we can’t go back,” Port-au-Prince camp resident Rose Petit-Homme told Reuters.

On Sunday, the operator of the capital’s main port extended a closure it announced last week through Friday, a measure which is expected to worsen shortages and raise prices further.

Also on Monday, the United Nations Security Council renewed its mandate for a Kenyan-led international security force to help Haitian police fight gangs. A year into the mission, few troops have been deployed and funding remains scarce.

Haiti’s interim government has requested the force be converted into a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission, but the move was opposed by China and Russia, which both hold veto powers.