More and more people are going hungry in Haiti, warn aid workers, doctors and missionaries with increasing urgency, as the Caribbean nation struggles to find its way out of political deadlock and an epidemic of deadly gang violence. <\/p>\n
In some areas of the city, there is no more food to buy, and none to bring to market for those whose livelihoods depend on small-scale trading, said the missionary, who requested anonymity for his own safety. \u201cOne by one, items disappear for good. There\u2019s no supply chain, so when flour, sugar, salt, rice etc. run out, they\u2019re out.\u201d <\/p>\n
Following the resignation announcement of Prime Minister Ariel Henry last month, the country\u2019s political leaders have not yet formed a new government, and a long-awaited multinational security mission has stalled amid the confusion. Meanwhile, gangs have cut off Port-au-Prince from the rest of the world, making it \u201cvirtually impossible\u201d for help to reach at least 58,000 children suffering from the most dangerous levels of malnutrition, according to UNICEF. <\/p>\n
The crisis in the capital can be felt across the country, which depends heavily on imports brought through Port-au-Prince. According to the United Nations, nearly 5 million people in Haiti are suffering from acute food insecurity \u2013 defined as when a person\u2019s inability to consume adequate food poses immediate danger to their lives or livelihoods. <\/p>\n
For the past two months, Port-au-Prince has been cut off from the world, its resources dwindling. Roads leading in and out of the city have been blocked by gangs, and the city\u2019s international airport and port have been similarly shuttered. Hospitals have been vandalized, and warehouses and containers storing food and essential supplies across the city have been broken into in recent weeks as the social fabric frays. <\/p>\n
Last month, a key container terminal \u2013 critical to Haiti\u2019s food import supply chain \u2013 was attacked and looted. <\/strong>A UNICEF container carrying essential items for the survival of newborn babies and their mothers \u2013 including resuscitators and other critical supplies, as well as water equipment \u2013 was also broken into, the children\u2019s agency said. <\/p>\n \u201cThousands of children are on the brink, while life-saving supplies are ready to be delivered if violence stops and roads and hospitals are opened. This malnutrition crisis is entirely human-made,\u201d said Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director, in March. <\/p>\n Dr. Ralph Ternier, chief medical officer of medical organization Zanmi Lasante, says he\u2019s seen some of the worst cases of child hunger in his career recently while working at the organization\u2019s medical facility in Mirebalais \u2013 about an hour drive northeast from the capital. <\/p>\n He knows the problem is far worse in Port-au-Prince, but laments that there is no way to reach those children. Ternier compared the capital to another country, explaining that it is nearly impossible for someone like him to enter the area, and that rampant gang attacks and kidnapping means many Port-au-Prince parents cannot find medical care for their kids. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you have a child that is malnourished, and you are in Port-au-Prince, you cannot do much. It\u2019s rare to find a decent hospital to go to because a lot of them have been destroyed,\u201d Ternier says <\/p>\n In Haiti\u2019s rural Lower Artibonite Valley, north of the capital, Hopital Albert Schweitzer is seeing an unprecedented number of acute malnutrition cases, especially among children. <\/p>\n The hospital normally sees seasonal spikes in malnutrition cases, but now, community healthcare workers are seeing malnutrition in much larger numbers, especially among children, during regular clinic visits, he said. <\/p>\n Further fueling fears of hunger in the country, farmers from Artibonite \u2013 known as the breadbasket of Haiti because of its fertile lands and rice fields \u2013 are struggling to grow and sell their crops amid the insecurity. A March 15 analysis by the World Food Programme (WFP) found shrinking food production, with farmers saying they are afraid to go into the fields as bandits steal their crops. <\/p>\n The Artibonite department alone has seen approximately 100 armed attacks over the past two years \u2014 the country\u2019s second-highest number of such violence incidents after Port-au-Prince. <\/p>\n \u201cConflict and hunger are closely linked,\u201d Laure Boudinaud, Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping Officer for WFP in Haiti said. \u201cIn an essentially agricultural country like Haiti, when production zones are abandoned, the population suffers one way or another.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe correlation between abandoned farm fields and the presence of armed groups and violence is clearly evident,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n Humanitarians are racing to fill the gaps in Haiti under difficult conditions. Bauer, the WFP head, said his agency reached about a half million people in the country with food assistance last month. <\/p>\n \u201cWe would like to do more for some of our programs, but overall, we\u2019ve been successful at reaching the people who are in the most need, we\u2019ve been prioritizing, and that\u2019s worked out for us,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n But the WFP won\u2019t be able to continue its feeding programs in Port-au-Prince for long given the current supply chain issues \u2013 the agency only has a few weeks left of food in the city, according to Bauer. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing right now is drawing down on our existing food stocks. These are the stocks we\u2019re distributing to vulnerable neighborhoods and hot meals to displaced people,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cIt will last for a few weeks and we will be down to zero if we don\u2019t reopen the port and get more imports.\u201d <\/p>\n Shortfalls in donor funding are also complicating efforts to help the country\u2019s most vulnerable. The United Nations\u2019 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan has only received 6.5% of its required funding. Current funding for the WFP in Haiti also has a long way to go, according to Bauer. <\/p>\n \u201cBetween now and over the next six months, we require $100 million in order to keep our program going and this is one of the reasons why you\u2019re not seeing larger numbers (of aid recipients reached) \u2013 the funding is not not there,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople have been focusing on other issues right now \u2014 and that\u2019s understandable,\u201d Bauer added. \u201cBut you\u2019re not going to have a Haiti at peace with half of its population not knowing where its next meal is coming from.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More and more people are going hungry in Haiti, warn aid workers, doctors and missionaries…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} \u2018We\u2019re completely cut off from all supplies\u2019 <\/h2>\n
Food stocks heading to \u2018zero\u2019 amid donor funding shortfalls<\/h2>\n