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Gang violence triples number of displaced people in Haiti – UN

Published:Wednesday | January 15, 2025 | 12:14 AM
A masked, armed gang member poses for a photo at the National Cemetery during the Fete Gede festival celebrating Day of the Dead, to honour the Haitian Vodou spirits Baron Samedi and Gede, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 1, 2024.
AP Odelyn Joseph
A masked, armed gang member poses for a photo at the National Cemetery during the Fete Gede festival celebrating Day of the Dead, to honour the Haitian Vodou spirits Baron Samedi and Gede, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 1, 2024.

GENEVA (AP):

The UN migration agency says internal displacement in Haiti, largely caused by gang violence, has tripled over the last year and now surpasses one million people — a record in the Caribbean nation.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported on Tuesday that “relentless gang violence” in the capital, Port-au-Prince, has fuelled a near-doubling of displacement there and a collapse of healthcare and other services, and worsening food insecurity. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world.

“The latest data reveals that 1,041,000 people, many displaced multiple times, are struggling amid an intensifying humanitarian crisis,” the Geneva-based agency said in a statement. Children make up more than half of the displaced population.

The figure marks a three-fold increase in displacement from the 315,000 in December 2023, IOM said.

Agency spokesman Kennedy Okoth told a UN briefing in Geneva that the forced return of around 200,000 people — mostly from neighbouring Dominican Republic — to Haiti over the last year had worsened the crisis. Both countries share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

Okoth said that the number of displacement sites in Port-au-Prince has risen from 73 to 108 over the last year.

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

US President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have suggested that they would scale back the use of the programme and policies that grant temporary status, as they pursue mass deportations. US federal regulations would allow the extensions to be terminated early, although that’s never been done before.

Asked whether IOM had any concerns about possible changes to such US protections, Okoth declined to comment about any specific country.

But he said that “deportation or any forced returns to countries that are already facing mounting security and humanitarian challenges is not something that is going to be beneficial to the group”.