Port-au-Prince, Nov 25 (EFE).- An intensification of violence in Haiti has forced some 41,000 people to flee their homes in the capital’s metropolitan area in just 10 days, the largest number since January 2023, the International Organization for Migration reported Monday.
In a press release based on data collected between Nov. 11 and 20, the IOM said that more than 90 % of those displaced were being housed in 23 settlements, 19 of which were created in recent days to accommodate the large number of people fleeing the violence, often for the second or third time, after 21 old sites were emptied and people moved to new sites in search of safety.
“The scale of this displacement is unprecedented since we began responding to the humanitarian crisis in 2022,” said the head of IOM Haiti, Grégoire Goodstein, who assured that his organization was “working tirelessly under extremely challenging conditions to deliver life-saving assistance.”
In all, more than 700,000 people in Haiti – half of them children – have been displaced by the violence, with many living in “dire conditions” with limited or no access to water, food, sanitation, or health services, according to the release.
The latest outbreak of violence began on Nov. 10, when the leader of the Vivre Ensemble (Live Together) gang coalition, ex-police officer Jimmy Cherizier, alias “Barbecue,” announced a response to the ouster of Prime Minister Garry Conille by the Presidential Transitional Council.
A day later, the council swore in Alix Didier Fils-Aimé as the new prime minister, while gangs opened fire on commercial airliners and clashed with units of the Haitian National Police.
Despite the presence of troops from the Multinational Security Assistance Mission, violence in Haiti remains unabated, and according to the United Nations, the death toll so far this year is at least 4,544, while the number of wounded has risen to 2,060. EFE
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