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UN appeals for help for displaced people in Haiti
2025-04-16 08:01:30 / BOTA
The director-general of the UN migration agency has called on the international community to provide assistance to more than a million people uprooted by gang violence in Haiti.
"This is one of the most complex and urgent crises in the world, with implications for regional and international stability," said the head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Amy Pope, at the end of her visit to the country, according to a press release issued by her services.
Over a million citizens have been forcibly displaced in Haiti, a number that has tripled in a year. Gang violence, particularly in the capital Port-au-Prince, has forced tens of thousands of families to flee, many of them repeatedly.
"At the same time, almost 200,000 Haitians have been deported in the last year from countries in the region," the IOM stressed in its statement.
In the US, Donald Trump's administration is seeking to revoke the legal status of more than half a million immigrants protected from deportation, including thousands of Haitians - a move that was blocked by the courts on Monday.
On the ground, IOM manages around fifty internally displaced persons camps, including many “in areas affected by violence,” according to its statement.
Ms. Pope recounts what she heard in meetings with families in the capital, Port-au-Prince. “My mother told me that she had been forced to leave her neighborhood three times in two months. “She lives under a tarp with her children, with nowhere to go,” she said.
"Haitians need support – and they need it now. The cost of inaction will be paid not only in human lives, but also in the form of instability that will affect us all," warned the IOM Director-General.
At least 1,518 people were killed and 572 others injured in the first three months of the year due to gang violence, law enforcement operations and the actions of citizen groups that have self-proclaimed and in some cases created paramilitary organizations, according to UN data.
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