Millions of Haitians are facing famine. U.N. appeals for $253 million to address crisis.
With millions of Haitians potentially facing famine, the United Nations on Wednesday launched an emergency humanitarian appeal seeking $253 million to help the most vulnerable and in need of assistance.
“The situation in Haiti has seriously deteriorated,” Bruno Lemarquis, the U.N humanitarian coordinator for Haiti, told journalists in New York, noting that he knows it will not be easy to raise a quarter of a billion dollars for Haiti. “We are aware of many competing priorities in the world. We’re also aware of the donor fatigue and donor concerns when it comes to Haiti because of the lack of progress over many years. But we have to look at those numbers and think of the affected people. They are in very high numbers.
“This is in the middle of the Caribbean,” he added. “Something needs to be done.”
Lemarquis said 4.6 million Haitians, or 40% of Haiti’s estimated 11 million residents, today are facing a humanitarian crisis. It’s a “stunning number,” he said, that also includes 1.2 million Haitians who are in the highest so called food-insecurity category before famine is declared.
The numbers, he said, are not business as usual — even for Haiti.
“You only find this in a handful of countries in the world,” Lemarquis said. “So in the Caribbean, there is a country where you have ... about 35% of the population” in the two technical hunger classifications before famine.
Adding to the challenges is that 2.1 million Haitian children under 5 are severely malnourished, according to a recent nutrition survey, he added. “Again, a very bad situation with many children affected and the nutrition situation of children between 5 months and 55 months in Haiti has not changed over the past 10 years.”
Lemarquis said that a similar humanitarian response plan was launched last year and was supposed to last two years. But circumstances have become more dire, he said, due to Haiti’s deepening political crisis combined with the socioeconomic crisis that culminated last year with “peyi lok,” or lockdown, in which protests led to the shutdown of schools, businesses and major roads for weeks during three different periods.
The countrywide lockdown, triggered by violent anti-government protests and demands for President Jovenel Moïse’s resignation, led to a series of problems including the months-long closure of schools and businesses and prevented Haitians from accessing social services throughout the country.
“Hospitals ran out of supplies and medicine. The movement of peoples and goods were basically frozen,” Lemarquis said. “This has led to a worsening of the situation that came on top of an already fragile environment... with very high levels of poverty; the country is disaster prone and is always recovering from the last wave of disasters, hurricanes and earthquakes.”
Lemarquis said the quarter of a billion dollars will be targeted at responding to the urgent needs of 2.1 million Haitians in the population. This includes, he said, helping Haiti eliminate diseases with the potential to become epidemics. Haiti, he said, has gone almost 13 months without any reported cases of cholera, which was introduced by U.N. peacekeepers 10 years ago after the country’s devastating earthquake.
“You need three years of no case to declare the disease is eradicated. So we are not done yet,” Lemarquis said. “We are in the last mile and we need support more than ever to make sure the disease is eradicated.”
Lemarquis’ address came on the same day that members of the foreign diplomatic corps in Port-au-Prince attended the swearing in of Moïse’s new government. Acting finance and environment minister Joseph Jouthe was stalled as Moïse’s fifth prime minister in three years and will head a 22-member government.
Moïse, who is ruling by decree and had pledged to mount a unity government to help address the crisis, announced Joseph’s selection in an early morning tweet on Monday. A number of political figures who had been involved in U.N.-led negotiations for a political accord said they had not been consulted on the selection.
The country’s main daily, Le Nouvelliste, quoted the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti as saying that it was informed of Jouthe’s appointment in the press.
On Tuesday, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green was asked about Haiti during his testimony before the House Appropriations Committee on President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2021 budget request for his agency. Among the questions Green was asked: What is the ability of USAID and other organizations to carry out programs in Haiti where the government the president is ruling by decree and the government has lacked legitimacy since March?
“What has USAID been doing to assess the problem and fix the problem? No other country is in a position to take the lead in the Haitian situation,” Rep. David Price, D-N.C., asked. “How do you assess the issues in governance, basic governance — holding timely elections, and other such functions — and what is your assessment of what we or anybody else can do about it?”
Green responded that he had made several visits to Haiti during his tenure and “it was obviously disturbing to see the violence taking place, disrupting the ability of kids to go to school for weeks on end. The ability for small businesses to get the parts necessary to move forward, deeply disturbing.”
“Right now, with the dysfunction in the government it’s the people, it’s the everyday families that are suffering terribly and I think that we’re all deeply worried about a lost generation in Haiti,” he added.
Recalling some of the findings on his trip, Green said he’s also indicated to a number of people the need for a special prosecutor in Haiti to tackle corruption as a way to begin to restore people’s faith in government.
“I think it is very hard for people to have a lot of faith in their government. So we’re looking for the opportunities and ways in which we can play a constructive role in that,” he said. “Haiti is our neighborhood, we’re not going to give up, we refuse to give up. Haiti matters to us. It’s a country of great interest, concern, there are so many linkages, but it is challenging work to say the least.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 1:45 PM.
