The United Nations is reiterating concerns that Haiti will face severe problems during the 2025 Atlantic Hurricane season, amid severe funding shortfalls, contingency stocks are at their lowest levels ever.
United Nations spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said that the humanitarian country team in the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country is sounding the alarm on the need for enhanced preparedness for the hurricane season which ends on November 30.
“Despite forecasts indicating an above-average season, Haiti begins this hurricane season with no pre-positioned food supplies and no available funding to launch a rapid response,” Dujarric said.
He said that this comes as 5.7 million people in the country face severe food insecurity and more than 230,000 displaced human beings are living in makeshift shelters, ”and those, as we have been telling you, are highly exposed to extreme weather.
“Our colleagues also remind us that Haiti is one of only five countries worldwide with people in famine-like conditions,” he said, adding that with support from national and international partners, “our humanitarian partners have pre-positioned some limited stocks of hygiene kits, tarpaulins, trauma supplies and nutrition support, and plan to deliver anticipatory cash transfers to vulnerable households.
“However, additional funding for relief efforts is urgently needed,” Dujarric said, noting that Haiti’s Humanitarian Response Plan remains only eight per cent funded, with just US$75 million received of the US$908 million required for this year.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has been leading missions with UN agencies and other stakeholders “to see how aid operations can be resumed in areas of high need following the May 26 suspension of operations due to insecurity.
“Missions have been carried out in a number of areas in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince zone with further deployments planned along Route Nationale 1, which connects the capital to the north of the country. These efforts aim to secure safety guarantees and enable the safe resumption of humanitarian operations in those zones,” Dujarric said.
Earlier this month, World Food Programme (WFP) sounded the alarm over Haiti’s humanitarian situation.
Regional Director in Latin America and the Caribbean Lola Castro, who recently returned from the country. warned that at this time when half of all Haitians are already going hungry, a single storm could push millions into a humanitarian catastrophe.
While in past years, WFP had humanitarian stocks ready in the country and could assist between a quarter to half a million people in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, “this year, we start the hurricane season with an empty warehouse,” she said.
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20, CMC
CMC/gh/ir/2025