Haiti: WFP concerned over humanitarian situation as hurricane season begins

This article is published in association with United Nations.

As the hurricane season gets underway in the Caribbean, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is sounding the alarm over Haiti’s humanitarian situation. 

With roughly half the population, 5.7 million people, facing some sort of emergency level of hunger, Haiti is one of five countries in the world with catastrophic levels of hunger.  

“Despite all the violence, displacement and collapse”, WFP remains in Haiti, Lola Castro, Regional Director in Latin America and the Caribbean, said during a briefing on Tuesday, having recently returned from the country. 

More than one million people in Haiti are displaced due to ongoing gang violence and insecurity.

As the hostilities are disrupting the food systems and supply chains in the capital Port-au-Prince, WFP is facing a “quite dramatic” situation, Ms. Castro said. 

Displaced population 

Displaced populations, notably in and around Port-au-Prince, are faced with a “very problematic” situation, she said, as hostilities have recently uprooted around 14,000 people from the commune of Kenscoff.  

“Kenscoff is a commune where people used to come and sell their food,” she said, and the same people are now relying on food assistance after their houses were burned and their livelihoods “destroyed.” 

Gender-based violence  

With 6,000 cases of gender-based violence having been reported this year, the situation of women and girls in Port-au-Prince is dramatic, according to Ms. Castro.  

The city is probably “one of the most dangerous places in the world” for women and girls. “We need to provide them support to assure that they become less vulnerable and are not exposed to all this violence,” she said.  

Dwindling aid stocks  

The 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan for Haiti calls for just over $908 million but is only eight per cent funded. Ms. Castro said WFP alone needs $46.4 million over the next six months to sustain its emergency response and address the root causes of hunger and malnutrition. 

The hurricane season began on 1 June and runs through the end of November. She warned that at this moment when half of all Haitians are already going hungry, a single storm could push millions into a humanitarian catastrophe. 

While in past years, WFP had humanitarian stocks ready in the country and could assist between a quarter to half a million people in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, “this year, we start the hurricane season with an empty warehouse,” she said.  

Unless resources are made available, the agency will have no capacity to respond—there are no contingency supplies, no logistical buffer, and no lifeline for the most vulnerable. 

“We cannot forget the people of Haiti,” Ms. Castro said, calling on the humanitarian community to provide urgent support.