U.N. appeals for Haiti aid; humanitarian chief says suffering, pain unlike any she’s seen
As the international community’s chief humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, Ulrika Richardson has spent 30 years in the United Nations systems, working in some of the most conflict-torn regions around the globe.
But what Richardson has seen during her two years in Haiti as the deputy representative of U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, she says, almost leaves her without words.
“I’ve seen things here that I’ve never seen in my life,” Richardson told journalists on Wednesday, a day after the U.N. and Haitian government launched a new $674 million humanitarian response plan to help 3.6 million Haitians this year. “It is the pain that a lot of women, children, men across the population are facing and subjected to; the suffering …I would say is daunting, it’s appalling.”
Along with the growing risk of being kidnapped or killed, Haitians are increasingly growing hungry while more and more children are at risk of dying of malnutrition. In gang-controlled neighborhoods, women and girls are being subjected to brutal rapes. Murders and kidnappings are on the rise, as are also the number of people being forced to flee their homes and neighborhoods in the capital and Artibonite region.
“It’s absolutely disastrous for so many people in Haiti,” Richardson said.
On Wednesday, Richardson appealed for more help from the international community. The request comes as the U.N. continues to call for the rapid deployment of a Multinational Security Support mission to help the Haitian police put down violent gangs and as the Caribbean nation’s prime minister, Ariel Henry, flew to Kenya in hopes of moving the request along.
Nearly five months after the U.N. Security Council approved the armed mission, the deployment of 1,000 Kenya police officers who are supposed to served as its backbone remains blocked by legal hurdles.
Last year, Haiti had more than 8,000 cases of killings, lynchings or rape, including group rapes of women and young girls. Because of the years of instability, lack of investment and the decreasing economic activity, the country has spiraled into a multifaceted crisis, Richardson said.
“Humanitarian assistance is not the solution. It is the needed action right now, in order to save lives, decrease suffering, and also increase the protection and service to those that have been affected,” she said Wednesday in Port-au-Prince. “We need to invest in the root causes.”
The $674 million request is less than the $720 million the U.N. requested for Haiti last year, of which the agency was able to raise only 34%. Richardson said while the situation remains urgent and an increasing number of Haitians are in need of assistance, the humanitarian community decided this year to try to be “much more targeted.”
She recognizes that
Haiti is not the only crisis around the globe.
“You can never compare one crisis with another. A human life is a human life,” she said, adding that in Haiti, however, “too many human lives are... lost.”
In January, the country saw its most violent month in two years after 1,100 people were killed, injured or kidnapped. At the same time, about 1,000 schools failed to open due to the violence.
Of the 5.5 million Haitians
who are in need of humanitarian assistance in the country, 3 million are children, Richardson said. They also account for nearly 55% of the more than 314,000 Haitians who are internally displaced and forced to live on the streets, in public plazas and elsewhere after warring gangs forced them to flee their homes.
Over 60% of the internally displaced were forced onto the streets just last year, the agency said.
“This is a call for increased solidarity,” RIchardson said. “Haiti needs it. It’s going through one of the most critical moments in its recent history.”