A man eats a meal and a child covers his face after both received containers of free food at a shelter for families displaced by gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on March 14, 2024.A crowd of about 100 people tried to shove through a metal gate in Haiti’s capital as a guard with a baton pushed them back, threatening to hit them. Undeterred, children and adults alike, some of them carrying babies, kept elbowing each other trying to enter.
Only a few aid organizations have been able to restart since Feb. 29, when gangs began attacking key institutions, burning police stations, shutting down the main international airport with gunfire and storming two prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.The violence forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce early Tuesday that he would resign once a transitional council is created, but gangs demanding his ouster have continued their attacks in several communities.
She said she occasionally ventures out to sell beans to buy extra food for her children – who sometimes eat only once a day – but ends up being chased by armed men, spilling her goods on the ground as she runs. “Can you believe I had a home?” he said. “I was making ends meet. But now, I’m just depending on what people provide me to eat. This is not a life.”