From Haiti Shows Urgent Need For More Humanitarian Access in Hard-to-Reach Areas of Port au Prince

Shot: 17-30 May, 2024

Port au Prince, Haiti

TRT: 3:07

:00-:23

GV’s Road blocks, streets of Port au Prince(drone shots mute)

Attacks involving armed gangs that started in February/March have sparked an escalation in violence and protest. International flights were cancelled following attacks at the airport and ports are similarly inaccessible while internet and phone connectivity, and power outages pose a major challenge. Supply chains for food into the city have been disrupted creating a surge in food insecurity.

Shot: 25May24

Port au Prince

:23-:55(drone shots mute)

GV’s Displaced People living in a school

The violence has forced 362,000 people to flee their homes. Almost half the sites that are sheltering displaced people in Port au Prince are schools. According to UNICEF, 900 schools in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan zone and in the Artibonite department have been closed since July last year due to the insecurity linked to armed group violence, affecting the education of 200,000 students.

Shot: 25May24

Lycée Jean Mary Vincent, Port au Prince

:55-1:31

SOT Heugenie Pierre Charles (Creole)

Heugenie, 70 years old, sold vegetables at a stall on the street until it was destroyed during violence

“Sometimes I’m very hungry, so I ask people a bite when I see them eating. But they humiliate me. I’ve never had to beg, I always managed to run my business. It really hurts. I had my work before, but the gangs forced me out. And now I'm living in this situation that makes me cry.

1:09 // I'm here on this camp for displaced people. I only had a boiler left. Unfortunately, it was stolen. Now I have nothing. It was with this boiler that I made tea and food.”

Shot: 22May24

Port au Prince

1:31-1:52

WFP Plane Unloading

A WFP-chartered cargo plane, transporting medical supplies for partner organizations was the first UN humanitarian cargo flight to land in Port-au-Prince since the beginning of the current crisis.  This development comes approximately two weeks after resumption of United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) passenger flights to the airport in the Haitian capital, which was closed in early March 2024 due to insecurity

Shot: 30May24

Port au Prince

1:52-2:30

SOT Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP Haiti Country Director(English)

“The roads in and out of Port au Prince are controlled by armed groups. The port has been closed for a long time. It was looted and the airport was closed. So effectively, Port au Prince for the past few months has been an island. So it's really important for WFP and other humanitarians to be able to bring supplies into the city, to run essential programs. So the essential services that people rely on, be it healthcare, water and sanitation, food, they require the free movement of goods and people, and right now and right now we just haven't had that. So what we're doing with this flight is reopening that door and ensuring that vital supplies come in to allow these essential services to function.”

Shot: 30May24

Port au Prince

2:30-2:56

WFP Food Distribution in Cite Soleil

Cite Soleil one of the most vulnerable, insecure and hard-to-reach neighborhoods of the capital.

Despite the challenges, over a two-week period in May, 615 metric tons of rice, beans, and vegetable oil were distributed to nearly 93,000 people in Cité Soleil, including breastfeeding mothers and children, who had been cut off from humanitarian assistance due to the fresh wave of violence which began three months ago. It was in Cite Soleil at the end of 2022, that famine was reported for the first time ever in Haiti. According to the March IPC assessment, almost 5 million people – nearly half the population of Haiti - are facing acute food insecurity, including 1.64 million people facing “emergency” (IPC phase 4) levels. This is the highest since the 2010 earthquake.

Shot: 17May24

Cite Soliel

2:56-3:07

WFP Hot Meals

Cooking WFP provided hot meals for 2,232 internally displaced people living in a school.

Shot: 18May25

Lycée Jean Marie Vincent de Carradeux, Port au Prince