Majorie Edoi sells food from a stall in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince – or used to until a conflict with armed gangs cut off the city’s suppliers, paralyzed trade routes and pushed the Caribbean country to the highest levels of hunger on record .
The 30-year-old mother of three now sells food in one of the many makeshift camps for displaced people set up in schools across the city.
But with the difficulty of obtaining assets, opportunities to support their children are rapidly diminishing.
“We can’t buy anything. We can’t eat. We can’t drink,” she said. “I wish there was a legitimate government that would establish security so that we can move around and sell goods, so that children can go to school.”
About five million people in Haiti, nearly half its population, struggle to feed themselves due to violence, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an international benchmark used to assess hunger.
Since the assassination of Haiti’s last president, Jovenel Moise, in 2021, armed gangs have expanded their power and influence, taking control of most of the capital and expanding into nearby farmland. The land grab resulted in looting, arson, mass rape and indiscriminate killings.
In June, the first contingent of a long-delayed United Nations-backed force made up mostly of African police arrived in Haiti to bolster its under-resourced security services, and Kenyan police began patrolling Port-au-Prince. Residents responded with cautious optimism, although it remains unclear when the bulk of the force will arrive.
For mothers like Edoi and Mirriam Auge, 45, change cannot come quickly enough.
Unable to work, families rely on food rations and hygiene kits brought by non-governmental organizations, whose delivery drivers face stray bullets along Port-au-Prince’s shifting battle lines.
“It’s complicated,” said Jean-Martin Bauer, director of the World Food Program (WFP) for Haiti. “There may be a shooting near one of the locations where we distribute, so we may have to cancel and leave people without food that day. These are the calls we need to make.”
WFP sought to shorten its supply chains by sourcing foods such as sorghum and callaloo, a leafy green popular in the Caribbean, from nearby farms rather than risking longer transport by boat or truck across gang-controlled roads and closed ports.
However, Bauer said, WFP does not have enough food in stock to meet its distribution plan. He pointed to a 2024 United Nations humanitarian fund for Haiti that is more than $500 million below target.
The food crisis has been affecting Haiti’s 11 million inhabitants for a long time.
In the 1980s, policies under a US export program, followed by trade liberalization encouraged by global creditors, saw import tariffs reduced and US rice flood the market, while local producers of the staple of the country were expelled from their jobs.
Once a self-sufficient rice producer, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere now imports 80% of its rice from the richest.
Today, farmers in Artibonite, Haiti’s breadbasket, face shootings, robberies, extortion and gang extortion, UN agencies say.
They also reported that traders known as Madan Sara, who traditionally bring fruits and vegetables from farms to markets across the country, are frequently kidnapped and raped.
For many children in Haiti, there are few options for obtaining food. Desperation leads many to join gangs, while girls end up trapped in prostitution.
“If you are displaced or your family has nowhere to sleep, you may need to join armed groups just to cover your needs,” said Jules Roberto, food counselor at Save the Children Haiti.
Rising food prices also fueled the crisis. Fresh fish in the island nation sold for 60 percent more in March than a year ago, according to Haiti’s IHSI statistics agency, while cooking oil and rice rose 50 percent.
“We need a security response force, but we also need a robust humanitarian response,” Bauer said. “Haiti will never be at peace as long as half of its citizens are starving.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
