Haiti faces growing threat of famine
HAITI-June 17 (UPI) -- Haiti is one of five countries facing extreme famine and the risk of starvation in the coming months unless urgent humanitarian action is taken.
A joint assessment by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program links Haiti's worsening food security to escalating gang violence and a prolonged economic crisis.
More than 5.7 million people -- about 51% of Haiti's population -- are projected to face acute food insecurity this year, the highest level since 2013. That includes 2.1 million in emergency conditions and more than 8,400 displaced people living in camps who could face catastrophic food shortages in the months ahead.
Armed gangs remain the biggest threat to stability in Haiti.
Since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, gangs have expanded their control, committing widespread looting, arson, sexual violence and indiscriminate killings.
In Port-au-Prince, they now control more than 85% of the capital and have extended their reach into farming areas, public infrastructure and major roads.
Haiti now has a record 1.3 million internally displaced people -- a 24% increase over the past six months. The U.N. report warns that continued violence is likely to drive further civilian displacement.
After six consecutive years of economic decline, Haiti's economy is expected to shrink further in 2025 due to stagnant agricultural production and falling export revenue.
Despite a relatively stable exchange rate since late 2023, the Haitian gourde remains fragile, fueling a surge in food prices. Annual inflation reached 37.5% in February 2025.
Extreme weather events remain a major threat across Latin America and the Caribbean. In Haiti, a stronger-than-average hurricane season is expected, putting already strained food production and livelihoods at greater risk after years of repeated climate shocks.
Cuts to international aid funding are straining critical humanitarian operations. While the United States has designated Haitian armed groups as "terrorist organizations," it has scaled back direct humanitarian assistance in favor of regional efforts led by the Organization of American States and neighboring countries.
The Transitional Presidential Council, which currently leads the country, has failed to regain control or weaken armed groups. Kenya is leading a Multinational Security Support Mission, but the force is operating with fewer personnel than planned, limiting its ability to contain the violence.
The U.N. report highlights worsening hunger in 13 global hotspots. The countries of greatest concern are Sudan, Palestine, South Sudan, Haiti and Mali -- all facing famine or a high risk of famine due to escalating conflict, economic collapse or natural disasters.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the report says Bolivia and Colombia -- along with Haiti -- are facing troubling levels of food insecurity.
In Bolivia, the crisis could worsen amid sustained high inflation, shrinking foreign reserves and a fuel shortage that is disrupting agricultural activity. In Colombia, despite government efforts to maintain peace talks, the U.N. report warns that rising violence in early 2025 led to increased displacement, with food insecurity affecting about 7.8 million people -- roughly 15% of the population -- in the hardest-hit areas.
Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
an hour ago
A woman tried to call her mom in Iran. A robotic voice answered the phone
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- When Ellie, a British-Iranian living in the United Kingdom, tried to call her mother in Tehran, a robotic female voice answered instead. 'Alo? Alo?' the voice said, then asked in English: 'Who is calling?' A few seconds passed. 'I can't heard you,' the voice continued, its English imperfect. 'Who you want to speak with? I'm Alyssia. Do you remember me? I think I don't know who are you.' Ellie, 44, is one of nine Iranians living abroad — including in the U.K and U.S. — who said they have gotten strange, robotic voices when they attempted to call their loved ones in Iran since Israel launched airstrikes on the country a week ago. They told their stories to The Associated Press on the condition they remain anonymous or that only their first names or initials be used out of fear of endangering their families. Five experts with whom the AP shared recordings said it could be low-tech artificial intelligence, a chatbot or a pre-recorded message to which calls from abroad were diverted. It remains unclear who is behind the operation, though four of the experts believed it was likely to be the Iranian government while the fifth saw Israel as more likely. The messages are deeply eerie and disconcerting for Iranians in the diaspora struggling to contact their families as Israel's offensive targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites pounds Tehran and other cities. Iran has retaliated with hundreds of missiles and drones, and the government has imposed a widespread internet blackout it says is to protect the country. That has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world, and their relatives from being able to reach them. 'I don't know why they're doing this,' said Ellie, whose mother is diabetic, low on insulin and trapped on the outskirts of Tehran. She wants her mother to evacuate the city but cannot communicate that to her. A request for comment sent to the Iranian mission to the U.N. was not immediately answered. Most of the voices speak in English, though at least one spoke Farsi. If the caller tries to talk to it, the voice just continues with its message. A 30-year-old women living in New York, who heard the same message Ellie did, called it 'psychological warfare.' 'Calling your mom and expecting to hear her voice and hearing an AI voice is one of the most scary things I've ever experienced,' she said. 'I can feel it in my body.' And the messages can be bizarre. One woman living in the U.K. desperately called her mom and instead got a voice offering platitudes. 'Thank you for taking the time to listen,' it said, in a recording that she shared with the AP. 'Today, I'd like to share some thoughts with you and share a few things that might resonate in our daily lives. Life is full of unexpected surprises, and these surprises can sometimes bring joy while at other times they challenge us.' Not all Iranians abroad encounter the robotic voice. Some said when they try to call family, the phone just rings and rings. Colin Crowell, a former vice president for Twitter's global policy, said it appeared that Iranian phone companies were diverting the calls to a default message system that does not allow calls to be completed. Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity expert based in the U.S., agreed and said the recordings appeared to be a government measure to thwart hackers, though there was no hard evidence. He said that in the first two days of Israel's campaign, mass voice and text messages were sent to Iranian phones urging the public to gear up for 'emergency conditions.' They aimed to spread panic — similar to mass calls that government opponents made into Iran during the war with Iraq in the 1980s. The voice messages trying to calm people 'fit the pattern of the Iranian government and how in the past it handled emergency situations,' said Rashidi, the director of Texas-based Miaan, a group that reports on digital rights in the Middle East. Mobile phones and landlines ultimately are overseen by Iran's Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. But the country's intelligence services have long been believed to be monitoring conversations. 'It would be hard for anybody else to hack. Of course, it is possible it is Israeli. But I don't think they have an incentive to do this,' said Mehdi Yahyanejad, a tech entrepreneur and internet freedom activist. Marwa Fatafta, Berlin-based policy and advocacy director for digital rights group Access Now, suggested it could be 'a form of psychological warfare by the Israelis.' She said it fits a past pattern by Israel of using extensive direct messaging to Lebanese and Palestinians during campaigns in Gaza and against Hezbollah. The messages, she said, appear aimed at 'tormenting' already anxious Iranians abroad. When contacted with requests for comment, the Israeli military declined and the prime minister's office did not respond. Ellie is one of a lucky few who found a way to reach relatives since the blackout. She knows someone who lives on the Iran-Turkey border and has two phones — one with a Turkish SIM card and one with an Iranian SIM. He calls Ellie's mother with the Iranian phone — since people inside the country are still able to call one another — and presses it to the Turkish phone, where Ellie's on the line. The two are able to speak. 'The last time we spoke to her, we told her about the AI voice that is answering all her calls,' said Ellie. 'She was shocked. She said her phone hasn't rung at all.' Elon Musk said he has activated his satellite internet provider Starlink in Iran, where a small number of people are believed to have the system, even though it is illegal. Authorities are urging the public to turn in neighbors with the devices as part of an ongoing spy hunt. Others have illegal satellite dishes, granting them access to international news. M., a woman in the U.K., has been trying to reach her mother-in-law, who is immobile and lives in Tehran's northeast, which has been pummeled by Israeli bombardment throughout the week. When she last spoke to her family in Iran, they were mulling whether she should evacuate from the city. Then the blackout was imposed, and they lost contact. Since then she has heard through a relative that the woman was in the ICU with respiratory problems. When she calls, she gets the same bizarre message as the woman in the U.K., a lengthy mantra. 'Close your eyes and picture yourself in a place that brings you peace and happiness,' it says. 'Maybe you are walking through a serene forest, listening to the rustle of leaves and birds chirping. Or you're by the seashore, hearing the calming sound of waves crashing on the sand.' The only feeling the message does instill in her, she said, is 'helplessness.'
3 hours ago
As the UN turns 80, its crucial humanitarian aid work faces a clouded future
KAKUMA, Kenya -- At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007. 'We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,' the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the U.N. World Food Program and U.N. refugee agency help support more than 300,000 refugees. Her family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from dozens of conflict-hit east African countries. A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, 'U.N. agencies have supported my children's education — we get food and water and even medicine,' as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other basics. This year, those cash transfers — and many other U.N. aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of lives. As the U.N. marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national defense. Some U.N. agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some U.N. agencies. Such pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the U.N. and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago. 'It's the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the U.N. in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,' said Jan Egeland, a former U.N. humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. 'And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.' U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of U.N. agencies to find ways to cut 20% of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out aid. Humanitarian workers often face dangers and go where many others don't — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver water. The U.N. says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen's Houthi rebels, who have detained dozens of U.N. and other aid workers. Proponents say U.N. aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other troubles. Critics insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often U.N.-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in sight. In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the U.N.'s refugee and migration agencies, the U.S. has represented at least 40% of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in U.S. foreign assistance have hit hard. Each U.N. agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending. 'It's too brutal what has happened,' said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. 'However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.' With the U.N. Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of U.N. activity. That's dimming now. Aside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their work. UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in 1948. Israel claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off U.N. aid in Gaza to profit from it, while U.N. officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy. 'UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,' said Issa Haj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. UNRWA covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife's heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work nonetheless. Ibtisam Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: 'If it wasn't for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.' Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks. 'This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,' said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. 'It's a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40%. So obviously that's an equation that doesn't come together easily.' Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 staff. One question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the upswing. The United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Some private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution sites. No private-sector donor or well-heeled country — China and oil-rich Gulf states are often mentioned by aid groups — have filled the significant gaps from shrinking U.S. and other Western spending. The future of U.N. aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries. 'We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the U.N. to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,' said Achim Steiner, administrator of the U.N. Development Program.
Boston Globe
3 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Diplomatic breakthrough elusive as Israel-Iran war stretches into second week
'Iran is ready to consider diplomacy if aggression ceases and the aggressor is held accountable for its committed crimes,' he told reporters. No date was set for the next round of talks. Advertisement Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's military operation in Iran would continue 'for as long as it takes' to eliminate what he called the existential threat of Iran's nuclear program and arsenal of ballistic missiles. Israel's top general echoed the warning, saying the Israeli military was ready 'for a prolonged campaign.' But Netanyahu's goal could be out of reach without U.S. help. Iran's underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility is considered to be out of reach to all but America's 'bunker-buster' bombs. Trump said he would put off deciding whether to join Israel's air campaign against Iran for up to two weeks. The war between Israel and Iran erupted June 13, with Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group. Advertisement Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli army estimates. Most have been shot down by Israel's multitiered air defenses, but at least 24 people in Israel have been killed and hundreds wounded. Worries rise over the perils of attacking Iran's nuclear reactors Addressing an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned against attacks on Iran's nuclear reactors, particularly its only commercial nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr. 'I want to make it absolutely and completely clear: In case of an attack on the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a direct hit would result in a very high release of radioactivity to the environment,' said Rafael Grossi, chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog. 'This is the nuclear site in Iran where the consequences could be most serious.' Israel has not targeted Iran's nuclear reactors, instead focusing its strikes on the main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, centrifuge workshops near Tehran, laboratories in Isfahan and the country's Arak heavy water reactor southwest of the capital. Grossi has warned repeatedly that such sites should not be military targets. After initially reporting no visible damage from Israel's Thursday strikes on the Arak heavy water reactor, the IAEA on Friday said it had assessed 'key buildings at the facility were damaged,' including the distillation unit. The reactor was not operational and contained no nuclear material, so the damage posed no risk of contamination, the watchdog said. Iran previously agreed to limit its uranium enrichment and allow international inspectors access to its nuclear sites under a 2015 deal with the U.S., France, China, Russia, Britain and Germany in exchange for sanctions relief. But after Trump pulled the U.S. unilaterally out of the deal during his first term, Iran began enriching uranium up to 60% — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90% — and restricting access to its nuclear facilities. Advertisement Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but it is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich uranium up to 60%. Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with a nuclear weapons program but has never acknowledged it. Israel says 'difficult days' ahead Israel said its warplanes hit dozens of military targets across Iran on Friday, including missile-manufacturing facilities, while an Iranian missile hit Israel's northern city of Haifa, sending plumes of smoke billowing over the Mediterranean port and wounding at least 31 people. Iranian state media reported explosions from Israeli strikes in an industrial area of Rasht, along the coast of the Caspian Sea. Israel's military had warned Iranians to evacuate the area around Rasht's Industrial City, southwest of the city's downtown. But with Iran's internet shut off — now for more than 48 hours — it's unclear how many people could see the message. The Israeli military believes it has destroyed most of Iran's ballistic missile launchers, contributing to the steady decline in Iranian attacks. But several of the roughly three dozen missiles that Israel said Iran fired on Friday slipped through the country's aerial defense system, setting off air-raid sirens across the country and sending shrapnel flying into a residential area in the southern city of Beersheba, a frequent target of Iranian missiles where a hospital was hit Thursday. Advertisement
