New report: A record 4.7 million Haitians face acute hunger

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A record 4.7 million people in Haiti are facing acute hunger, including 19,000 in catastrophic famine conditions for the first time, all in a slum controlled by gangs in the capital, according to a report released Friday.

The United Nations World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization said unrelenting crises have trapped Haitians “in a cycle of growing desperation, without access to food, fuel, markets, jobs and public services, bringing the country to a standstill.”

The Cite Soleil district of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where violence has increased as armed gangs vie for control, is facing the most urgent need for humanitarian assistance, they said.

The report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is a global partnership of 15 UN agencies and international humanitarian groups, paints a grim picture of escalating hunger in Latin the Western Hemisphere's poorest country,

The partnership uses five categories of food security, from Phase 1 in which people have enough to eat to Phase 5 in which households have an extreme lack of food and face famine, starvation, death and destitution. The 19,000 people in Cite Soleil are now in the latter group, the report said.

According to the analysis, a record 4.7 million Haitians are in the three worst categories — 2.9 million in “crisis” Phase 3 characterised by gaps in food consumption and acute malnutrition, 1.8 million in “emergency” Phase 4 in which there are large gaps in food consumption, very high acute malnutrition and excess deaths, and 19,000 in “famine” Phase 5.

The report said food security has also continued to deteriorate in Haiti's rural areas, with several dropping from the “crisis” phase into the “emergency” phase.

The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said food insecurity has increased over the past three years and 65% of Haitians “are in high levels of food insecurity with 5% of them in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.”

Haiti has been gripped by inflation and political gridlock that have exacerbated protests and brought society to the breaking point.

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