Extreme violence and gross human rights abuses, including mass incidents of murder, gang rape and sniper attacks, have sharply increased in Cité Soleil on the outskirts of the Haitian capital, said a UN report published on Friday.
Acts of armed violence targeting schools in Haiti have spiked nine-fold in one year amid rising insecurity and widespread unrest, UNICEF warned on Thursday.
With armed gangs in charge of key transport routes in Haiti, the country could see famine conditions, unless a robust humanitarian aid plan is put in place, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Haiti, Jean-Martin Bauer, has warned.
A community health worker in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, has been describing how she is going door-to-door to raise awareness about cholera prevention.
The Haitian Government joined the UN and humanitarian partners to launch an appeal for $145.6 million in support of the country's emergency cholera response and provide life-saving assistance to 1.4 million living in the most affected areas.
Young people from some of the most vulnerable and violent gang-controlled neighbourhoods of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince have been talking about the power of getting together to share experiences and engage in sporting and entrepreneurial activities.
Amid continuing gang warfare and a vacuum of law and order, Haiti is “on the verge of an abyss” said the UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Thursday, warning that any hope of a sustainable recovery requires “urgent and sustained action” to tackle the root causes of the overlapping crises afflicting the island nation.
Haitians are coming together to tackle the recent outbreak of cholera in the country, says the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in the country. Ulrika Richardson, the most senior UN humanitarian official in Haiti, visited a number of cholera treatment centres in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where she met medical staff treating patients with the disease.
The UN Security Council on Friday unanimously approved a sanctions regime for Haiti, targeting gang leaders and those who finance them, in the hope of easing months of violence and lawlessness which has fuelled a major humanitarian crisis.
An unrelenting series of crises has trapped vulnerable Haitians in a cycle of growing desperation, without access to food, fuel, markets, jobs and public services, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Friday.
