Port-au-Prince (EFE).- Haiti, whose general situation continues to deteriorate, is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, warned the NGO Plan International on Thursday.
Because of this crisis, “the dangers facing children at this time, especially girls, are unimaginable and worsen every day,” said Daphne de Bordes, interim country director of Plan International, in a statement.
Humanitarian needs are now greater than at any time since the devastating 2010 earthquake, said the NGO, which expressed its concern “over the devastating impact of food shortages, because hunger has devastating consequences for children and adolescents De Bordes said.
“Lack of access to nutritious food creates a risk of delayed growth, which affects their development and limits their ability to learn,” he said.
In its statement, the NGO collected testimonies from girls that “reflect the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, where the situation is increasingly critical, especially after the sharp spike in violence recently registered that left 70 dead in just a few days.” in April, in clashes between rival gangs in Cité Soleil, in Port-au-Prince.
One of the girls mentioned in the note is 12-year-old Chedeline, for whom studying has become almost impossible.
“When I’m hungry I can’t study,” he said. “This morning I have not eaten anything; the rest of the day I hope to eat some rice,” she added.
Meanwhile, for 13-year-old Belladine, who lives with her father, Jean, in the Southeast department, the fear of violence from gangs is a reality that affects her daily life.
“The gangs prevent my family and other families in the neighborhood from eating well. I feel a stomach ache, but then I look for something to occupy my mind, like studying, to forget about hunger,” she recounted.
Belladine explained that she usually eats twice a day, but there are days when she doesn’t eat at all.
The World Food Program (WFP) has warned that close to 5 million people in Haiti – almost half the population – currently suffer from acute food insecurity.
In this sense, Plan International asked the international community this Thursday to urgently increase funding to deal with the escalation of the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, where almost 90% of the population lives below the poverty line and a third in situation of extreme poverty.
The UN Humanitarian Response Plan for Haiti calls for $720 million by 2023, double the amount requested in 2022, due to the deteriorating humanitarian crisis.
The socioeconomic and political crisis has intensified in recent months in Haiti, which is suffering from a spiral of violence and the reappearance of cholera, which has already caused nearly 600 deaths in the country since last October.
All of this led the Haitian Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, to request the dispatch of a foreign force last year, a request that has yet to receive a concrete response.