GENEVA: More than 700,000 people are now displaced from their homes in Haiti, more than half of whom are children, the United Nations said Wednesday, as gang violence ravages the country.
One of the world’s poorest countries has been plunged into anarchy, with gangs taking over the capital, Port-au-Prince, and the security and health systems collapsing.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration agency said that by early September, some 702,973 people were displaced in the Caribbean country.
“These latest figures show a 22 percent increase in the number of internally displaced people since June, highlighting the worsening humanitarian situation,” the IOM said.
The agency called for greater international attention on the crisis.
“The sharp rise in displacement underscores the urgent need for a sustained humanitarian response,” said Gregoire Goodstein, the IOM’s chief in Haiti.
“We call on the international community to step up its support for Haiti’s displaced populations and the host communities that continue to show remarkable resilience in the face of these challenges.”
The report said around 75 percent of those displaced were now sheltering in the country’s provinces.
The remainder are in Port-au-Prince “where the situation remains precarious and unpredictable,” said the IOM, with people often living in overcrowded sites, with little to no access to basic services.
The agency said 83 percent of displaced people were being hosted by families.
“The strain on resources is immense, with the majority of host households reporting significant difficulties, including food shortages, overwhelmed health care facilities, and a lack of essential supplies on local markets,” it said.
“It is crucial that efforts to restore stability and security across the country continue, alongside humanitarian aid to alleviate the immediate suffering of those affected.”
On Friday, the UN human rights office said more than 3,600 people had been killed this year in “senseless” gang violence in Haiti.
In October 2023, the UN Security Council approved sending a multinational stabilization force, led by Kenya, to assist the Haitian police.
The Security Council on Monday extended its authorization of the multinational policing mission in crime-ravaged Haiti, but without any call to transform it into a UN peacekeeping mission, as floated by Port-au-Prince.

NAIROBI: Rescuers are searching for more than 100 migrants off the coast of Djibouti after smugglers forced them to jump into the sea, the UN migration agency said on Wednesday.
At least 45 bodies have been recovered from Tuesday’s incident, a death toll that makes 2024 the deadliest year on record for sea crossings on the migration route between East Africa and Yemen, the International Organization for Migration said.
Another 154 people have been rescued from the two boats, which left Yemen for Djibouti with a total of 310 passengers, IOM said in a statement.
“Ongoing search and rescue operations are underway by the Djiboutian Coast Guard to locate the missing migrants,” it said.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people leave the Horn of Africa in pursuit of better economic prospects in Gulf nations via the so-called Eastern Route, described by the IOM as one of the world’s busiest and riskiest migration corridors.
Survivors told IOM that they were forced off the two vessels by the boat operators in the open sea off the coast of Obock, a port town in Djibouti.
The survivors included a four-month-old infant whose mother drowned, the agency said.
Many migrants on the Eastern Route end up trapped in violence-wracked Yemen and attempt to return to Djibouti.