By Evens Sanon | Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — More than 53,000 people have fled the Haitian capital in less than three weeks, the vast majority to escape relentless gang violence, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday.
More than 60 percent of them are heading to Haiti’s rural southern region, worrying U.N. officials.
“Our humanitarian colleagues have highlighted that these departments do not have sufficient infrastructure and that host communities do not have sufficient resources to cope with the large number of people fleeing Port-au-Prince,” said the spokesperson. word of the UN, Stéphane Dujarric.
The southern region already hosts more than 116,000 Haitians who have left Port-au-Prince, according to the report from the UN International Organization for Migration.
The exodus of some three million residents from the capital began shortly after powerful gangs launched a series of attacks on government institutions in late February. Gunmen burned police stations, opened fire on the main international airport which remains closed and stormed Haiti’s two largest prisons, freeing more than 4,000 inmates.
More than 1,500 people have been killed by March 22 and 17,000 others have been left homeless, according to the UN.
Among the few travelers attempting to head north rather than south from the capital were Marjorie Michelle-Jean, a 42-year-old street vendor, and her two children, aged 4 and 7.
“I want to see them alive,” she says, explaining that stray bullets continue to hit the tin roof of their house. Last week, they tried twice to travel to his hometown of Mirebalais in central Haiti, but were forced to turn back due to roadblocks.
“I will definitely try again,” she said. “It’s absolutely not safe in Port-au-Prince.”
Of the 53,125 people who fled Port-au-Prince between March 8 and 27, nearly 70% had already been forced to abandon their homes and were living with relatives or in overcrowded and unsanitary makeshift shelters across the capital, the UN noted.
More than 90% of Haitians leaving the capital piled onto buses, risking crossing into gang-controlled territory where gang rapes have been reported and gunmen have opened fire on public transportation.
The violence forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce last month that he would resign once a presidential transition council was established. Henry was in Kenya to push for the deployment of a police force from the U.N.-backed East African country when the attacks began, and he remains barred from Haiti.
The transition council, which will be responsible for choosing a new prime minister and a new council of ministers, has not yet been officially created.
Meanwhile, mass migration from Port-au-Prince is expected to continue.
But Gary Dorval, 29, who was among a handful of people participating in a protest Tuesday, said he wanted to stay until a new government was installed: “I want to be part of the change.”
Associated Press journalists Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
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