Some 13,000 Haitian migrants were forcibly returned home by neighboring countries in March, despite a worsening humanitarian and security crisis, the UN’s migration agency said on Thursday. 

Since the end of February, powerful Haitian gangs have teamed up to launch a coordinated offensive across the Caribbean nation, attacking police stations, prisons and the airport, and forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. The returned migrants represent a 46 percent increase on the previous month, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Of those, nearly 3,000 received humanitarian assistance on their return home. 

“For most Haitians, the prospect of regular migration remains an insurmountable hurdle, leaving irregular migration as their only semblance of hope,” the IOM said. It can take more than a year for Haitians to obtain a passport, preventing them from accessing “existing avenues for regular migration, such as humanitarian visas and programs”. In the “turmoil engulfing Haiti” an increasing number of people are expressing suicidal tendencies, “which once was a taboo topic but is now becoming more commonly disclosed”, the IOM said.

The IOM said Haiti has more than 360,000 internally displaced people, including “many multiple times over”. The country had a population of 11.6 million people in 2022, according to United Nations figures. But the nation has been ravaged in recent decades by poverty, natural disasters and political instability. 

A transitional presidential council has yet to be fully established, delaying the arrival of a multinational force to help Haiti’s overwhelmed police restore order. It is also affecting the ability of NGOs to provide aid to the stricken population.

“Humanitarian staff, including our own, are facing unparalleled security challenges, balancing the imperative to assist others with the stark realities of personal risk and displacement,” said Philippe Branchat, head of IOM in Haiti. The UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, on Thursday allocated $12 million in emergency funds for Haiti. 

“Unending gang violence has displaced 50,000 people, pushed five million into acute hunger and weakened an already fragile health system,” Griffiths wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “These funds will enable aid partners to reach the hardest-hit.” In Geneva on Thursday, the UN’s human rights commission adopted a resolution imploring its members “to continue to support the measures taken and efforts made by the government of Haiti to combat armed gang violence and the illicit sale, importation and circulation of firearms and to ensure respect for human rights in Haiti”.

Source: Kuwait Times

BDST: 1038 HRS, APR 06, 2024
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