By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations has been forced to move to move humanitarian aid and workers across Haiti by air and ship because gang violence has become so bad in the capital Port-au-Prince, an aid official said on Tuesday.
The move comes as aid agencies struggle to tackle a deeepening food crisis there.
More than 50 people have been killed in clashes between gangs since Friday, a local mayor said, part of a surge of such violence in the Caribbean nation. [L1N2YS1NA]
The World Food Programme (WFP) said its deliveries have been caught in cross-fire and it has put in place methods to bypass the gangs and keep deliveries moving.
“This violence has had impact on markets, on trade, on livelihoods and it has cut off the city from the rest of Haiti,” Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP country director in Haiti, told a journalists by video link.
Food inflation is at around 52%, partly due to the impact of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on prices.
More than 1 million people in the capital are already food insecure and deliveries of homegrown supplies such as bananas, cannot get there by road because the trucks are at risk of getting shot at or held up along the way, Bauer said.
WFP has set up a ferry service that takes food aid imported into Port-au-Prince to other parts of the country and is also using short flights for its workers. It has already shipped 2000 tonnes of assistance that way, Bauer said.
Like other Caribbean islands, Haiti was heavily dependent on imported food even before the current crisis.
Bauer said the conditions were likely to add to the number of migrants that have taken to the sea on vessels bound for the United States in recent months.
“I expect what we are seeing will contribute to additional migration,” he said.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Miami; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
