The United Nations migration agency says internal displacement in Haiti, largely caused by gang violence, has tripled over the past year and now exceeds one million people – a record for the Caribbean country.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported on Tuesday that “relentless gang violence” in the capital Port-au-Prince has fueled a nearly doubling of displacement there and the collapse of health care and other services, as well as worsening food insecurity. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world.
“The latest figures reveal that 1,041,000 people, many of them displaced multiple times, are struggling amid a deepening humanitarian crisis,” the Geneva-based agency said. Children make up more than half of the exile population.
The figure marks a three-fold increase in displacement from 315,000 in December 2023, the IOM said.
Agency spokesman Kennedy Okoth told a UN briefing in Geneva that the forced return of some 200,000 people – mostly from the neighboring Dominican Republic – to Haiti over the past year has exacerbated the crisis. Both countries share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
Okoth said the number of resettlement sites in Port-au-Prince increased from 73 to 108 over the past year.
At least 110 people were killed in Haiti’s Cite Soleil slum when a gang leader targeted elderly people he suspected of causing their child’s illness through witchcraft, the National Network for Human Rights said.
The administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden has strongly supported and expanded the temporary status program, which allows some foreign nationals from countries such as El Salvador, Haiti and Venezuela to remain in the United States.
US President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have suggested they will scale back the use of temporary status programs and policies while carrying out mass deportations. US federal regulations would allow early termination of the extension, although this has never been done before.
Asked if the IOM was concerned about possible changes to such US protections, Okoth declined to comment on any specific country.
But he said that “deportation or any forced return to countries that are already facing increasing security and humanitarian challenges is not something that will benefit the group.”
