Haitian families seek shelter in schools as they battle famine

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Majorie Edoi sells food at a stall in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Or so she did until a conflict with armed gangs cut off the city from supplies, paralyzed trade routes and pushed the Caribbean nation to its highest famine level ever.

The 30-year-old mother of three now sells food from one of the many makeshift camps for displaced people that have been set up near schools in the city.

But as goods become increasingly difficult to obtain, her options for caring for her young children become increasingly limited.

“We can’t buy anything. We can’t eat. We can’t drink,” she said. “I wish there was a legitimate government that would provide security, so we could travel around and sell goods, so the children could go to school.”

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an international benchmark for measuring hunger, about five million people in Haiti, almost half the total population, are struggling to feed themselves as a result of the conflict.

Since the assassination of Haiti’s last president in 2021, armed gangs have expanded their power and influence, seizing most of the capital and expanding into nearby farmland. Their land grab has led to looting, arson, mass rape and random killings.

In June, the first contingent of a long-awaited UN-backed force of mostly African troops arrived in Haiti to bolster under-resourced security services, and Kenyan police began patrolling the capital.

For mothers like Edoi and Mirriam Auge, 45, change can’t come fast enough.

“We can’t do anything — there’s no money, no business,” said Auge, who was evicted from her home three months ago. Since then, she’s been sharing a sleeping chair with her two daughters and five others in a makeshift school shelter filled with tents.

“We lost everything in our homes,” she said. “I was crying while everyone was sleeping.”

Unable to work, families rely on food rations and hygiene kits delivered by nongovernmental organizations, whose deliverers brave stray bullets on Port-au-Prince’s ever-shifting front lines.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is a major provider of these meals. Working with farms and kitchens staffed largely by women, the programme helps deliver food from four central kitchens to the camps.

“It’s tricky,” said WFP Haiti Director Jean-Martin Bauer. “There could be a shooting near one of the sites where we’re distributing, so you might have to cancel and leave people without food that day. These are the decisions we have to make.”

WFP has tried to shorten its supply chains by sourcing foods such as sorghum grains and callaloo (a leafy vegetable popular in the Caribbean) from nearby farms rather than risk longer transport by boat or truck through gang-controlled roads and closed ports.

Still, Bauer said, WFP did not have enough food in stock to meet its distribution plan, pointing to a U.N.-wide humanitarian fund for Haiti in 2024 that is more than $500 million short of its target.

Rice import

At a community action center where WFP meals are prepared, workers distribute rice and vegetables into rows of polystyrene containers. These containers are later distributed to a school camp.

The food crisis has been going on for Haiti’s 11 million inhabitants for some time now.

In the 1980s, the policies of a US export program, followed by trade liberalization encouraged by multilateral lenders, led to drastic import tariffs and a glut of US rice on the market. At the same time, local producers of the country’s staples lost their jobs.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere was once a self-sufficient rice producer, but now imports about 80% of its rice from the richest countries.

According to UN agencies, farmers in Artibonite, Haiti’s breadbasket, are currently facing shootings, theft, extortion and crime by armed gangs.

They also report that Madan Sara, the traders who traditionally bring fruits and vegetables from farms to markets across the country, are often abducted and raped.

Rising costs

Rita Losandieu, 53, cares for her two granddaughters, ages 4 and 6, in a small brick house on a dusty hillside. Her daughter works in the neighboring Dominican Republic, which built a wall to prevent migration and deported more than 200,000 Haitians last year.

“To buy something to eat, you need a lot of money. It’s very difficult,” she said. Her two sons do odd jobs to make ends meet.

For many children in Haiti, there are few options for obtaining food. Desperation drives many to join gangs, while girls end up in prostitution.

“If you are displaced or your family has no place to sleep, you may have to join armed groups to meet your needs,” said Jules Roberto, nutrition advisor at Save the Children Haiti.

Rising food prices have also added to the crisis. Fresh fish on the island sold for 60 percent more in March than a year ago, according to Haiti’s statistics agency IHSI, while cooking oil and rice both rose by 50 percent.

“We need a security response force, but we also need a robust humanitarian response,” Bauer said. “Haiti will never know peace as long as half of its citizens are hungry.”