PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 17 Mar: A crowd of about 100 people tried to shove through a metal gate in Haiti\u2019s capital as a guard with a baton pushed them back, threatening to hit them. Undeterred, children and adults alike, some of them carrying babies, kept elbowing each other trying to enter.
\n\u201cLet us in! We\u2019re hungry!\u201d they shouted on a recent afternoon.
\nThey were trying to get into a makeshift shelter in an abandoned school. Inside, workers dipped ladles into buckets filled with soup that they poured into Styrofoam containers stuffed with rice to distribute to Haitians who have lost homes to gang violence.
\nAbout 1.4 million Haitians are on the verge of famine, and more than 4 million require food aid, sometimes eating only once a day or nothing at all, aid groups say.
\n\u201cHaiti is facing a protractive and mass hunger,\u201d Jean-Martin Bauer, Haiti director for the United Nations\u2019 World Food Program, told The Associated Press. He noted that Croix-des-Bouquets, in the eastern part of Haiti\u2019s capital, \u201chas malnutrition rates comparable with any war zone in the world.\u201d
\nOfficials are trying to rush food, water and medical supplies to makeshift shelters and other places as gang violence suffocates lives across Port-au-Prince and beyond, with many trapped in their homes.
\nOnly a few aid organizations have been able to restart since Feb. 29, when gangs began attacking key institutions, burning police stations, shutting down the main international airport with gunfire and storming two prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.
\nThe violence forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce early Tuesday that he would resign once a transitional council is created, but gangs demanding his ouster have continued their attacks in several communities.
\nBauer and other officials said that the gangs are blocking distribution routes and paralyzing the main port, and that WFP\u2019s warehouse is running out of grains, beans and vegetable oil as it continues to deliver meals.
\n\u201cWe have supplies for weeks. I\u2019m saying weeks, not months,\u201d Bauer said. \u201cThat has me terrified.\u201d
\nInside the makeshift shelter at the school, things were a bit more orderly, with scores of people standing in line for food. More than 3,700 shelter residents compete for a place to sleep and share a hole in the ground for a toilet.
\nMarie Lourdes Geneus, a 45-year-old street vendor and mother of seven children, said that gangs chased her family out of three different homes before they ended up at the shelter.
\n\u201cIf you look around, there are a lot of desperate people who look like me, who had a life and lost it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a horrible life I\u2019m living. I made a lot of effort in life and look where I end up, trying to survive.\u201d
\nShe said she occasionally ventures out to sell beans to buy extra food for her children \u2014 who sometimes eat only once a day \u2014 but ends up being chased by armed men, spilling her goods on the ground as she runs. AP<\/p>\n
Erigeunes Jeffrand, 54, said that he used to make a living selling up to four wheelbarrow-loads of sugar cane a day, but that gangs recently chased him and his four children out of their neighborhood.
\n\u201cMy home was completely destroyed and robbed,\u201d he said. \u201cThey took everything I have. And now, they\u2019re not even letting me work.\u201d
\nHe sent his two youngest children to live with relatives in Haiti\u2019s more quiet countryside, while the two eldest live with him at the shelter.
\n\u201cCan you believe I had a home?\u201d he said. \u201cI was making ends meet. But now, I\u2019m just depending on what people provide me to eat. This is not a life.\u201d
\nMore than 200 gangs are believed to operate in Haiti, with nearly two dozen concentrated in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. They now control 80% of the capital and are vying for more territory.
\nScores of people have died in the most recent attacks, and more than 15,000 have been left homeless.
\nThe situation has prevented aid groups like Food for the Hungry from operating at a time when their help is needed the most.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re stuck, with no cash and no capacity to move out what we have in our warehouse,\u201d said Boby Sander, the organization\u2019s Haiti director. \u201cIt\u2019s catastrophic.\u201d
\nFood for the Hungry operates a cash-based program that helps about 25,000 families a year by sending them money, but he said that the ongoing looting and attacks on banks have crippled the system.
\n\u201cSince Feb. 29, we have not been able to do anything at all,\u201d he said.
\nOn a recent morning, the fragrance of cooking rice drew a group of adults and teenage boys to a sidewalk near a building where aid workers prepared meals to distribute to shelters elsewhere in the city.
\n\u201cCan you help me get a plate of food? We haven\u2019t had anything to eat today yet,\u201d they asked people going in and out of the building. But their pleas went unanswered. The food was destined for the shelter at the school.
\n\u201cWe know it\u2019s not a lot,\u201d said Jean Emmanuel Joseph, who oversees food distribution for the Center for Peasant Organization and Community Action. \u201cIt\u2019s too bad we don\u2019t have the possibility to give them more.\u201d
\nAt the shelter, some adults and children tried to get back in line for a second serving. AP<\/p>\n
\u201cYou already had a plate,\u201d they were told. \u201cLet others get one.\u201d
\nShelter resident Jethro Antoine, 55, said the food is meant only for residents, but there\u2019s little that can be done about outsiders who squeeze in.
\n\u201cIf you go and complain about it, you\u2019re going to become the enemy, you might even be killed for that,\u201d he said.
\nThe U.S. Agency for International Development said that around 5.5 million people in Haiti \u2014 nearly half the population \u2014 need humanitarian aid, and pledged $25 million in addition to the $33 million announced earlier this week.
\nThe WFP\u2019s Bauer said the humanitarian appeal for Haiti this year is less than 3% funded, with the U.N. agency needing $95 million in the next six months.
\n\u201cConflict and hunger in Haiti are moving hand-in-hand,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m frightened about where we\u2019re going.\u201d AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 17 Mar: A crowd of about 100 people tried to shove through a metal gate in Haiti\u2019s capital as a guard with a baton pushed them back, threatening to hit them. Undeterred, children and adults alike, some of them carrying babies, kept elbowing each other trying to enter. \u201cLet us in! We\u2019re hungry!\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-237225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}