PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A group of around 100 people tried to push through a metal gate in Haiti’s main city as a guard with a baton pushed them away, threatening to hit them. Undeterred, children and adults alike, some of them carrying babies, kept jostling each other trying to get in.
“Let us come in! We’re hungry!” they shouted on a recent afternoon.
They were attempting to enter a temporary shelter in an abandoned school. Inside, workers scooped soup from buckets and poured it into Styrofoam containers filled with rice to give to Haitians who have lost homes due to gang violence.
About 1.4 million Haitians are very close to famine, and over 4 million need food aid, sometimes eating just once a day or nothing at all, aid organizations say.
“Haiti is dealing with a prolonged and widespread hunger,” Jean-Martin Bauer, Haiti director for the United Nations’ World Food Program, told The Associated Press. He mentioned that Croix-des-Bouquets, in the eastern part of Haiti’s capital, “has malnutrition rates similar to any war zone in the world.”
Officials are trying to quickly deliver food, water and medical supplies to temporary shelters and other locations as gang violence is suffocating lives throughout Port-au-Prince and beyond, with many people trapped in their homes.
Only a few aid organizations have managed to resume operations since Feb. 29, when gangs started attacking key institutions, burning police stations, closing the main international airport with gunfire and invading two prisons, releasing over 4,000 inmates.
The violence compelled Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce early Tuesday that he would step down once a transitional council is established, but gangs demanding his removal have continued their attacks in various communities.
Bauer and other officials stated that the gangs are obstructing distribution routes and paralyzing the main port, and that WFP’s warehouse is running out of grains, beans and vegetable oil as it continues to provide meals.
“We have supplies for weeks. I’m saying weeks, not months,” Bauer said. “That has me terrified.”
Inside the temporary shelter at the school, things were a bit more organized, with many people waiting in line for food. More than 3,700 shelter residents are vying for a place to sleep and sharing a hole in the ground for a toilet.
Marie Lourdes Geneus, a 45-year-old street vendor and mother of seven children, said that gangs forced her family out of three different homes before they ended up at the shelter.
“If you look around, there are a lot of desperate people who look like me, who had a life and lost it,” she said. “It’s a horrible life I’m living. I made a lot of effort in life and look where I end up, trying to survive.”
She mentioned that she sometimes goes out to sell beans in order to buy extra food for her children — who sometimes eat only once a day — but ends up being chased by armed men, dropping her goods on the ground as she runs.
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.
He said his house was completely destroyed and robbed, and everything he had was taken. Now, he can't even work.
He sent his two youngest kids to live with relatives in the quieter countryside of Haiti, while the two older ones stay with him at the shelter.
He was able to afford a home before, but now he relies on what people give him to eat. He says this is not a good life.
It's believed that more than 200 gangs are active in Haiti, with nearly two dozen in Port-au-Prince and nearby areas. They now control 80% of the capital and are competing for more territory.
Many people have died in the recent attacks, and over 15,000 have lost their homes.
Due to the situation, aid organizations like Food for the Hungry are unable to operate when their help is needed most.
Boby Sander, the director for the organization in Haiti, said they are unable to move out what they have in their warehouse due to lack of cash. He called the situation catastrophic.
Food for the Hungry runs a program that helps around 25,000 families yearly by giving them money. But ongoing looting and bank attacks have crippled the system.
He said they have not been able to do anything at all since Feb. 29.
One morning, the smell of cooking rice attracted a group of adults and teenage boys to a sidewalk near a building, where aid workers were preparing meals to distribute to shelters in the city.
They asked people entering and leaving the building for a plate of food, explaining they hadn't eaten yet that day. However, their requests went unanswered as the food was meant for the shelter at the school.
Jean Emmanuel Joseph, in charge of food distribution for the Center for Peasant Organization and Community Action, mentioned that they wish they could give more to the people.
At the shelter, some adults and children tried to get back in line for a second serving.
They were told they had already received a plate and to let others get one.
Shelter resident Jethro Antoine, 55, stated that the food is meant only for the residents, but there's little that can be done about outsiders who manage to get in.
He said that if complaints are made, it could lead to becoming an enemy and even end in being killed.
The U.S. Agency for International Development stated that around 5.5 million people in Haiti, nearly half the population, need humanitarian aid. They pledged $25 million in addition to the $33 million announced earlier.
The WFP's Bauer mentioned that 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.
He said that conflict and hunger in Haiti are going hand-in-hand, and he's worried about the future.
