Port au Prince. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has warned that Haiti is getting closer to famine every day.
“Haitians are on the brink of collapse: one in two people are starving today. Increasing hunger is worsening the country’s security crisis. We must act urgently now: waiting to respond to this situation in its full extent is not an option,” he said Director of the WFP, Jean-Martin Bauer.
He pointed out that as violence, inflation and crop failures worsen, food insecurity also increases.
Between August 2023 and February 2024, the cost of the food basket rose by 22 percent, making food unaffordable for millions of Haitians, Bauer is quoted by the newspaper Le Nouvelliste.
People are now forced to resort to desperate coping strategies to survive, such as buying on credit and indebtedness, selling animals, seeds and other assets.
According to the newspaper, 4.97 million people are affected by acute food insecurity and 1.64 million are already in acute distress.
Violence and unrest are making it difficult to deliver food and other humanitarian aid.
In the first two weeks of March, over 100,000 hot meals were served to more than 23,000 people in 16 different IDP locations.