The UN’s migration agency said Monday that over 40,000 people left their homes in Port-au-Prince in only ten days this month as gang violence erupted in the Haitian capital.
Between November 11 and 20, 40,965 people in Port-au-Prince were displaced, some for the second or third time, in what the International Organisation for Migration called the worst displacement wave in two years.
“The scale of this displacement is unprecedented since we began responding to the humanitarian crisis in 2022,” Gregoire Goodstein, the IOM chief in Haiti, said in a statement.
For the past two weeks, violent battles between “Viv Ansanm” (“Living Together”), a coalition of gangs founded in February with the intention of toppling then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who resigned in April, have been taking place in a number of Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods and the surrounding area.
According to the organisation, more than 700,000 people have been displaced in Haiti overall.
“This crisis is not just a humanitarian challenge. It is a test of our collective responsibility,” Goodstein added.
Political unrest has plagued Haiti for many years, and the most recent security problem has been connected to the existence of armed gangs that are suspected of widespread sexual assault, kidnapping, and murder.
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