(2023-08) ACAPS Thematic Report: Haiti - A Deep Dive into the Food Security Crisis (2 August 2023)
Summary — This thematic report maps the severity and drivers of Haiti's food security crisis, where the population facing Crisis (IPC Phase 3) or worse food insecurity rose from 4.1 million in March-June 2020 to 4.9 million in March-June 2023. Using the four food security pillars (stability, availability, accessibility, nutrient use), it traces how gang violence, political instability, natural hazards, inflation, and currency depreciation have converged to deepen hunger. The outlook section identifies gang territorial expansion, El Niño-related drought risk, and further gourde depreciation as the indicators to monitor over the following six months.
Key Findings
- The population facing Crisis (IPC Phase 3) or worse food insecurity rose from 4.1 million in March-June 2020 to 4.9 million in March-June 2023, including 1.8 million at Emergency (IPC Phase 4) levels.
- Gang violence directly undermines all food security pillars: by April 2023 gangs controlled about 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, closed markets, blocked fuel and food transport, and drove the abandonment of roughly 2,400 hectares of arable land in Artibonite, Haiti's main rice-producing region.
- Falling purchasing power compounds the crisis, with inflation of about 34 percent at end-2022, gourde depreciation from HTG 65 per USD in 2018 to HTG 139 by July 2023, and 56 percent of surveyed households reporting reduced income.
- Negative coping is widespread: 49 percent of surveyed households used emergency coping mechanisms reducing meal quality or quantity, and 69 percent of planting households consumed seeds or immature harvests.
- Food insecurity spills into other needs, with a 30 percent rise in severe acute child malnutrition compared to 2022, increased child labour and school dropout, hunger-driven exploitation of women and girls, and growing outward migration including over 23,000 Haitians crossing the Darién in early 2023.
Full Description
Published on 2 August 2023, this ACAPS thematic report provides a structured deep dive into Haiti's food security crisis, based on a review of secondary data from humanitarian organisations, networks, think tanks, and international media. The number of people projected to need food assistance rose to about 4.9 million in March-June 2023 (3 million in IPC Phase 3 and 1.8 million in Phase 4), up from 4.1 million in 2020. The report organises the analysis around the four pillars of food security. On stability, it documents gang territorial control (about 80 percent of Port-au-Prince by April 2023), violent protests, looting of humanitarian warehouses, and recurring natural hazards. On availability, it covers fuel shortages, blockades, drought since September 2022 that hit Artibonite (source of up to 80 percent of Haiti's rice), and the June 2023 floods. On accessibility, it links inflation of roughly 34 percent at end-2022, gourde depreciation from HTG 65 per USD in 2018 to HTG 139 by July 2023, and displacement of at least 160,000 people to falling purchasing power; in Artibonite, some 2,400 hectares of arable land were abandoned versus 2022. On nutrient use, 49 percent of surveyed households had resorted to emergency coping mechanisms and 69 percent of planting households were consuming seeds.
The report then traces spillovers into nutrition (a 30 percent increase in severe acute child malnutrition versus 2022; 22 percent of children chronically malnourished), protection (gang recruitment of children, sexual exploitation linked to hunger), education (dropouts and school closures ending school meals), health (cholera interacting with malnutrition), and migration (over 23,000 Haitians among roughly 100,000 Darién crossings in early 2023). The outlook expects the number of food-insecure people to increase given limited state response capacity, likely gang expansion, El Niño-related drought risk despite forecasts of normal precipitation, and continued currency depreciation.
Notes
ACAPS thematic/anticipatory analysis