Haiti: Half of population in need of humanitarian aid - OCHA Press Conference | United Nations

“The very ground I was walking on, the very place people were sleeping on at night,” the UN's top humanitarian official said Friday, describing conditions inside overcrowded displacement shelters in Haiti as she warned the country is facing one of the most severe and rapidly deteriorating crises in the Western Hemisphere. Edem Wosornu, Director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Crisis Response Division, said more than half the country's population now in need of assistance and donors having funded just a fraction of last year's appeal. "We only received 27 percent of what we asked for last year," Wosornu said at a press briefing at UN headquarters in New York today (10 Apr), calling on the international community to meet an 880 million dollars appeal for 2026. Wosornu said 6.4 million people - over half of Haiti's population of roughly 11.9 to 12 million - are in need of humanitarian assistance, with 5.7 million acutely food insecure. The humanitarian community is seeking 880 million dollars to reach 4.2 million people, including a hyper-prioritized 680 million dollars plan targeting 3.3 million people. She described Haiti as gripped by a deepening protection crisis driven by gang violence, mass displacement and widespread gender-based violence. Ninety percent of Port-au-Prince is under gang control, she said, leaving residents confined to the remaining ten percent of the city. Wosornu also said 1.45 million people - 12 percent of the population - are currently displaced, with 2,800 people sheltering in a school built for 400 in the Labitrie neighbourhood. She said residents told her directly where she was standing was where they slept at night, describing terrible living conditions. “Vermin, roaches coming out, rashes on skin of children, people showing you things that they said, "In our homes we were fine, and here we are displaced" - the very ground I was walking on, the very place people were sleeping on at night,” Wosornu shared. The Director also said 1,600 schools across the country remain closed due to insecurity, leaving 250,000 children without access to education - a figure she called "a big, huge deal" in a country where schooling is deeply valued. On gender-based violence, she said 8,100 survivors were recorded last year, a 25 percent increase from the prior year, with half of reported cases involving rape and one in six survivors under the age of 18. Wosornu concluded, “Humanitarian assistance alone cannot change the fate of the people of Haiti and the trajectory of Haiti. Political solutions - you know that - improved security, urgent, sustained investment in essential services can create solutions for the people. Haiti's courage undeniable. Our support ever so necessary.”


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