The Of­fice for the Co­or­di­na­tion of Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Af­fairs says the de­liv­ery of hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to peo­ple in Port-Au-Prince con­tin­ues, de­spite the tense and volatile sit­u­a­tion in the cap­i­tal of the French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) said that from March 8-14, near­ly 17,000 peo­ple have left the cap­i­tal.

The deputy spokesper­son for the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Farhan Haq, said more than of those peo­ple are head­ing to­wards the Grand Sud de­part­ments.

“Our col­leagues tell us that this re­gion al­ready hosts more than 116,000 peo­ple who have fled the met­ro­pol­i­tan area of Port-au-Prince in re­cent months,” he added.

His state­ment comes as at least 10 peo­ple were re­port­ed to have died in a wealthy sub­urb of the cap­i­tal on Mon­day, amid re­ports of loot­ing, and thefts of elec­tric­i­ty equip­ment as law­less­ness spread to af­flu­ent ar­eas and gangs tight­ened their grip on the city. The EDH elec­tric­i­ty ser­vice said sev­er­al sta­tions had been at­tacked and that ca­bles, bat­ter­ies and doc­u­ments were stolen.

Me­dia re­ports said that the bod­ies, some of which had bul­let wounds, were dis­cov­ered in the streets of up­scale Petion-Ville on the out­skirts of Port-au-Prince.

There were al­so re­ports of gun­fire and loot­ing on Mon­day in the near­by area of Laboule.

Haq said last Sat­ur­day, the Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF) re­port­ed that one of its con­tain­ers was loot­ed at Port-au-Prince’s main port.

He said the con­tain­er held es­sen­tial items for ma­ter­nal, neona­tal and child sur­vival. These in­clud­ed re­sus­ci­ta­tors as well as crit­i­cal sup­plies for ear­ly child­hood de­vel­op­ment and ed­u­ca­tion and wa­ter equip­ment.

“Our col­leagues from UNICEF con­demned the loot­ing and em­pha­sized that de­priv­ing chil­dren of vi­tal health sup­plies amidst a col­laps­ing health­care sys­tem is a vi­o­la­tion of their rights,” he said, adding “with more than 300 con­tain­ers be­long­ing to UN agen­cies and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions (NGOs) in Port-au-Prince, dis­cus­sions con­tin­ue with port and state au­thor­i­ties to se­cure them”.

He said that since ear­ly March, the World Food Pro­gramme (WFP) has de­liv­ered 115,000 hot meals to peo­ple dis­placed in the cap­i­tal.

“On the health front, the Hôpi­tal Uni­ver­si­taire la Paix, the on­ly pub­lic hos­pi­tal in Port-au-Prince with the ca­pac­i­ty to treat trau­ma, con­tin­ues to op­er­ate with sup­port from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) and the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion. The hos­pi­tal has ac­ti­vat­ed its mass ca­su­al­ty plan to in­crease its ca­pac­i­ty to re­ceive more pa­tients,” Haq said.

The IOM in a new sur­vey says that, in ad­di­tion to cre­at­ing dis­place­ment with­in the cap­i­tal area, at­tacks and in­se­cu­ri­ty are push­ing more and more peo­ple to leave the cap­i­tal to find refuge in provinces, tak­ing the risk of pass­ing through gangs-con­trolled routes.

Ear­li­er this month, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent and CARI­COM chair­man, Dr. Ir­faan Ali, told re­porters that an agree­ment had been reached that would al­low for Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ariel Hen­ry, who is strand­ed in Puer­to Ri­co, to step down and for a tran­si­tion­al gov­er­nance arrange­ment “which paves the way for a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er, con­ti­nu­ity of gov­er­nance and ac­tion plan for near term se­cu­ri­ty and the road to free and fair elec­tions”..

Ali said that it was al­so agreed that there would be the cre­ation of a tran­si­tion­al pres­i­den­tial coun­cil com­prised of sev­en vot­ing mem­bers and two vot­ing ob­servers.

A U.S. State De­part­ment spokesper­son said the coun­cil’s mem­ber­ship could be fi­nal­ized “very soon,” and that an up­date could come lat­er this week.

But lo­cal me­dia is re­port­ing that the Catholic Church here would not par­tic­i­pate in the coun­cil, in or­der to main­tain a “moral dis­tance,” al­though it was quot­ed as say­ing that it hoped all sec­tors would seek a res­o­lu­tion to the cri­sis.

The Pope calls for sup­port for a peace­ful tran­si­tion

Last Sun­day, Pope Fran­cis called for the restora­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al or­der in Haiti.

“I in­vite all the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tors to aban­don any per­son­al in­ter­est and to en­gage in a spir­it of sol­i­dar­i­ty in the pur­suit of the com­mon good, sup­port­ing a peace­ful tran­si­tion to a coun­try that, with the help of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, may be equipped with sol­id in­sti­tu­tions ca­pa­ble of restor­ing or­der and tran­quil­li­ty among its cit­i­zens,” he added.

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, Mar 19, CMC – 

CMC/af/ir/2024