5.94 Million Haitians Face Acute Hunger as Gangs Block Roads and Aid

Nearly six million Haitians, or 5.94 million people, face acute food insecurity, a report released Wednesday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification found. The analysis, produced by a multi-partner U.N. initiative, placed almost two million of those people in emergency conditions. Haiti has a population of nearly 12 million.

The Food and Agriculture Organization described Haiti's figure as "one of the highest levels in the world today" and noted that more than half the country's population struggles to eat each day. The report projects severe hunger will reach 6.35 million people by mid-2027. The count of Haitians facing severe hunger has grown by nearly 250,000 since the initiative's April report.

"The numbers are really, really alarming in comparison with other years," said Maxime Ngalula, country director for Action Against Hunger in Haiti. He spoke by phone.

Gang activity is a direct driver of the shortage. Armed groups are fighting Haiti's National Police and a U.N.-backed suppression force. In the country's central region, fighting has pushed farmers off their land. Roadblocks on routes leading to Port-au-Prince keep goods from moving, and Ngalula said securing passage can take "one, two, three days." Families sometimes walk up to nine miles to reach a food distribution site. His group distributes cash, rice and beans, but people displaced by violence move between makeshift shelters, and Ngalula said the strategy now is to follow them.

High food and fuel prices and an extreme El Niño phenomenon also weigh on food security. The report traced the shift from 2014, when 2% of Haiti's population was food insecure, to Hurricane Matthew's destruction of crops in 2016 and a later surge in gang violence.

The World Food Program said it requires $78 million to sustain operations in Haiti through March, and the report called for humanitarian assistance to be scaled up. The document appeared amid fighting that spiked after four Salvadoran aviation technicians went missing in an Oct. 18 attack in Port-au-Prince; El Salvador has since deployed more than 1,000 soldiers. "We fear that this armed conflict will claim even more victims and displace even more people in the coming days, particularly with the arrival of additional international security forces," said Davina Hayles, head of mission in Haiti for Doctors Without Borders.