Haiti: Harrowing needs must be met with long-term engagement
The crisis is extending beyond traditional centres of insecurity. Families across both urban and rural communities continue to flee attacks, often multiple times and with increasingly limited options for safety.“Haiti’s displacement crisis is entering an even more alarming phase,” said Gregoire Goodstein, IOM Chief of Mission in Haiti.In May alone, renewed attacks in the densely populated Cité Soleil district – the capital’s largest slum – displaced more than 18,000 people within days. The surge pushed the number of internally displaced people in Port-au-Prince above 300,000 for the first time on record.Mr. Goodstein described the experience of one woman who fled Port-au-Prince after her community came under gang attack: “To reach safety, her family waded through the sea up to their necks, then crawled through farm fields covered in mud and waste to avoid being seen by the gangs,” he said.Most of those fleeing the uptick in violence have sought shelter in overcrowded spontaneous sites or moved in with host families already struggling to meet their own needs.Safe areas under pressureThe spread of insecurity has increasingly blurred the distinction between areas of conflict and areas of refuge.Just weeks before the violence in Cité Soleil, armed attacks in Haiti’s South-East Department displaced more than 5,000 people. The region had previously been considered a safer destination for people escaping unrest elsewhere in the country.Humanitarian agencies say this shift reflects a worrying trend: communities that once absorbed displaced families are now becoming displacement hotspots themselves.At the same time, the crisis has been compounded by continued forced returns. Since the beginning of 2026, more than 110,000 Haitians have been returned to the country, including women, children and other vulnerable groups. Many arrive with few resources and limited support, returning to areas already affected by insecurity or struggling to absorb additional population pressures.Among returnees are particularly vulnerable groups, including unaccompanied children, pregnant women and postpartum women, many of whom face difficult and unsafe conditions upon arrival.
