More than 50,000 fled Haitian capital violence last month, UN says
More than 50,000 people fled the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince over the course of just three weeks last month, the United Nations said Tuesday. Due to gang violence, 53,125 people left the city between March 8 and March 27, according to the U.N.’s International Organizations for Migration, or IOM. That figure is on top of the 116,000 people who have already been displaced in Haiti in recent months. The majority of those fleeing cited violence and insecurity as the reason, according to the IOM report. Most of those who left the capital went south, the IOM said, which could mean trouble in the future since those provinces aren’t prepared to host large numbers of displaced people. The mass displacement of Haitians from Port-au-Prince is a result of the instability that has rocked the country for months as gangs fight police for control of the Caribbean nation’s capital. Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned on March 11 to give way to a governing transitional council, which has still not been formed. U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Türk decried the human rights crisis in Haiti in a video message to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday. "The scale of human rights abuses is unprecedented in modern Haitian history," Türk said. He pointed to the increase in killings and kidnappings, as well as widespread sexual violence. In the first three months of 2024, gang violence in Haiti has killed more than 1,500 people, the U.N. Human Rights Office said last week. "The escalation of violence has had a devastating impact on the population. All human rights are impacted," Türk said in his video message. Some information in this report came from Reuters. The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports. Subscribe
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