United Nations: More than a million displaced in Haiti as gang violence escalates

The UN migration agency says internal displacement in Haiti, largely caused by gang violence, has tripled over the past year and now exceeds 1 million people — a record number for the Caribbean nation.

The International Organization for Migration reported on Tuesday that “persistent gang violence” in the capital, Port-au-Prince, has led to a doubling of displacement there and the collapse of health care and other services, as well as worsening the situation. Food insecurity. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world.

The Geneva-based organization said in a statement, “The latest data reveal that 1,41,000 people, many of whom have been displaced several times, are struggling amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.” Children constitute more than half of the displaced population.

The International Organization for Migration said this figure represents a three-fold increase in the number of displaced people compared to 315,000 in December 2023.

The forced return of about 200,000 people – most of them from the neighboring Dominican Republic – to Haiti over the past year has exacerbated the crisis, agency spokesman Kennedy Okoth said at a UN press conference in Geneva. The two countries share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

Okoth said the number of displacement sites in Port-au-Prince rose from 73 to 108 over the past year.

Watch | At least 110 people were killed by a gang in Haiti, a rights group says:

A rights group says a gang in Haiti committed massacres that killed at least 110 people

At least 110 people were killed in Haiti’s Cité Soleil slum when a gang leader targeted elderly people on suspicion of making his child sick through witchcraft, the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights said.

The outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden has strongly supported and expanded the temporary status program, which allows some foreign nationals from countries such as El Salvador, Haiti and Venezuela to remain in the United States.

US President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance have suggested they will scale back the use of the program and policies granting temporary status as they pursue mass deportations. US federal regulations will allow the extension to be terminated early, although that has not happened before.

Asked whether the IOM had any concerns about potential changes to these US protections, Okoth declined to comment on any specific country.

But he said that “deportation or any forced return to countries already facing increasing security and humanitarian challenges would not be beneficial to the group.”