Haiti violence: UN says more than 40,000 flee Port-au-Prince violence in 10 days

Police stop people at a checkpoint in Petion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 19, 2024. [AFP]

More than 40,000 people fled their homes in Port-au-Prince over just ten days this month as the Haitian capital was rocked by a spike in gang violence, the UN's migration agency said Monday.

The International Organization for Migration described it as the worst wave of displacement in two years, with a total of 40,965 people in Port-au-Prince on the move between November 11 and 20 -- some for the second or third time.

"The scale of this displacement is unprecedented since we began responding to the humanitarian crisis in 2022," Gregoire Goodstein, the IOM chief in Haiti, said in a statement.

For the past two weeks, several neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area have been the sites of violent clashes involving "Viv Ansanm" ("Living Together"), an alliance of gangs formed in February aimed at overthrowing then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who resigned in April.

In total, over 700,000 people have been displaced in Haiti, the organization said.

"This crisis is not just a humanitarian challenge. It is a test of our collective responsibility," Goodstein added.

Haiti has suffered from political instability for decades, with the latest security crisis linked to the presence of armed gangs that are accused of widespread murder, kidnapping and sexual violence.