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Haiti Humanitarian Needs Overview Summary, Revision for 2020 (February 2020)

Países
Haití
Fuentes
OCHA
Fecha de publicación

The 2020 Haiti Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) analysis found that 4.6 million Haitians will require urgent support in 2020, more than 40 per cent of the population. This represents and 80 per cent increase from last year.

The highest needs stem from the food insecurity crisis; the 4.1 million people in in acute need of food assistance (IPC 3 and 4) makes up the bulk of the total number of people in need.

The economic crisis and insecurity have also made access to healthcare and education increasingly difficult, in a context where access to basic services had already been dire due to the structural weakness of state institutions and drastic reductions in investment in the public sector.

The nutritional status of Haitian children deteriorated during 2019. The analysis confirmed poor access to safe drinking water, sanitation and basic hygiene products, as well as the lack of access to water increasing the risks of waterborne diseases and malnutrition.

The increase in vulnerability, together with insufficient or lacking protection services, has further exacerbated the pre-existing protection risks, including of gang recruitment, physical abuse, trafficking and/or sexual exploitation for children and adolescents. An uptick in genderbased violence and rape incidents was observed last year while prevention and response systems and services were repeatedly interrupted.

The crisis has led Haitians to leave the country, including through irregular ways, which exposes them to additional protection risks such as human trafficking. The situation on the HaitianDominican border, where an average of 9,000 to 10,000 deportees and voluntary returnees have been registered per month since 2015, is also disconcerting, as most of the migrants arrive without resources or documentation, some of them sick or injured and highly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Haiti is the most vulnerable in the Latin America and Caribbean region and the 14th most vulnerable in the world1 . Although there was no major sudden-onset emergency in Haiti in 2019, residual humanitarian needs – particularly shelter - persisted following natural disasters from previous years. Emergency preparedness and response capacity of humanitarian actors and national authorities at all levels, as well as the resilience of the most vulnerable communities, require significant strengthening.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit https://www.unocha.org/.