The EU has mobilised €9m in aid to alleviate the ongoing Haiti humanitarian crisis, which has seen 25% of the country’s population facing food emergencies.
The aid will go towards providing food and nutritional support to more than 130,000 Haitians in the most severely affected regions, particularly families and children: more than 5,000 young children currently suffering acute malnutrition will receive lifesaving targeted nutritional support. Concurrently, the EU will lend its support to measures aimed at boosting the overall scope and quality of humanitarian assistance in the region; as well as intensifying its analysis of the Haiti humanitarian crisis and potential solutions.
The EU’s Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Christos Stylianides, said: “For the EU, the humanitarian situation in Haiti is not a forgotten crisis. We are committed to providing vital support to the people hit by the food and nutrition crisis in the country. This assistance comes on top of the €12m allocated in 2018 to address the urgent food and nutrition needs of Haitians.”
Since 1994 the European Commission had deployed €404m to humanitarian measures in Haiti, the Commission’s largest beneficiary in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Commission aims to target its humanitarian assistance primarily towards regions and communities experiencing ‘forgotten crises’, commonly severe and ongoing humanitarian issues whose victims do not receive sufficient international aid from other sources. Haiti’s ability as a nation to respond to recurring emergencies is significantly limited due to the dual factors of its high levels of poverty and its vulnerability to natural disasters, including droughts, earthquakes and hurricanes.
The Haiti humanitarian crisis has deepened in severity in the last few months; and the number of residents affected by food shortages has doubled to 2.6 million since 2018. The number of children under the age of five suffering from acute malnutrition is now well above emergency levels as determined by the World Health Organisation in multiple areas.
