The Of­fice for the Co­or­di­na­tion of Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Af­fairs in Haiti (OCHA) says gang ac­tiv­i­ties in the French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try, con­tin­ue to fu­el vi­o­lence, dis­place fam­i­lies and dis­rupt much-need­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an op­er­a­tions across mul­ti­ple parts of the coun­try.

Stéphane Du­jar­ric, the spokesman for the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, An­to­nio Guter­res, told the dai­ly news brief­ing on Tues­day that the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) not­ed that as of four days ago, more than 200,000 men, women and chil­dren were liv­ing in spon­ta­neous dis­place­ment sites across the coun­try.

He said that these sites have near­ly dou­bled be­tween March and April from 119 to 228 and that the IOM says this is large­ly due to the fact that more peo­ple have been forced to flee fol­low­ing at­tacks in the Cen­tre De­part­ment.

“Al­so im­por­tant to note that more than 90 per cent of the peo­ple who have sought refuge at spon­ta­neous sites are con­cen­trat­ed in the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince,” Du­jar­ric said, adding that in the com­mune of Ken­scoff in the Ouest De­part­ment, armed at­tacks last week dis­placed near­ly 1,000 peo­ple, with half of them find­ing shel­ter with fam­i­lies, while oth­ers moved to three new­ly es­tab­lished sites.

He said po­lice ve­hi­cles were set on fire and mul­ti­ple se­cu­ri­ty in­ci­dents re­sult­ing in ca­su­al­ties were re­port­ed.

“That is what lo­cal part­ners are telling us. The on­go­ing in­se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­ues to im­pact hu­man­i­tar­i­an op­er­a­tions,” Du­jar­ric said, adding that be­tween 21 March and 25 April, a hu­man­i­tar­i­an part­ner has record­ed 15 in­ci­dents af­fect­ing NGOs (non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions), in­clud­ing trucks be­ing blocked, sup­plies burned, cross­fire in­ci­dents, and at­tacks against NGO ve­hi­cles that were clear­ly la­belled as such.

Du­jar­ric said ac­cess to crit­i­cal roads re­mains ex­treme­ly lim­it­ed, forc­ing the re­liance on cost­ly air trans­port.

“OCHA is work­ing with all par­ties to sus­tain ac­cess for re­lief sup­plies and per­son­nel move­ments in­to the af­fect­ed ar­eas. They are al­so co­or­di­nat­ing with its part­ners to strength­en ef­forts for an ef­fec­tive, tar­get­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­sponse, as se­cu­ri­ty con­di­tions al­low, and, of course, as mon­ey al­lows it,” Du­jar­ric added.

UNIT­ED NA­TIONS, Apr 29, CMC

CMC/af/ir/2025