Food Security Outlook Update: Insecurity and poor fall harvests raise prices, causing widespread Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes

This Food Security Outlook Update covers December 2023. Despite below-average production, fall harvests temporarily improved the availability of certain local foods in some areas, and the number of food-insecure people fell slightly compared with October and November. Widespread Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes nonetheless persist, and rising insecurity in Cité Soleil keeps that commune in Emergency (IPC Phase 4). The report's central mechanism is that gang violence and the illicit tolls armed groups impose on the national highways linking Port-au-Prince to the north (RN1), south (RN2) and center (RN3) raise transaction costs and disrupt market supply, so prices stay high even as the national currency appreciates.

BINUH reporting cited by the Haiti Partners Liaison and Security Office puts almost 80 percent of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area under gang influence or control; OHCHR recorded more than 8,000 victims from January to 8 December 2023 (3,960 dead, 1,432 injured, 2,951 kidnapped), far above 2022, and CARDH recorded 362 abductions in the third quarter, up more than 140 percent on the second. Below-average and irregular rainfall followed a mid-November tropical disturbance that flooded parts of Grand'Anse, Nippes, Sud and Nord-Ouest.

Bean, sorghum and pigeon pea harvests were under way in most departments; bean prices rose by up to 27.7 percent in November over October except at Cap-Haïtien and Ouanaminthe, where fall black bean harvests pushed prices down. The closure of the border with the Dominican Republic raised transport costs for imported fertiliser and for mechanised ploughing services.