Food Security Outlook, February - September 2024: Persistence of acute food insecurity exacerbated by insecurity and political instability in Haiti

This is FEWS NET's full Food Security Outlook for February to September 2024. Acute food insecurity persists on three fronts: insecurity, socio-political instability and economic conditions. Sporadic protests calling for the prime minister's resignation, recurring clashes between rival gangs in the capital and continued kidnapping form the backdrop. Armed groups seek to expand territorial control by unlawfully establishing toll stations on major roads, causing massive displacement, disrupting market operations and undermining income-generating activities.

In Cité Soleil, disadvantaged households face substantial food consumption gaps and resort to emergency coping strategies, so Emergency (IPC Phase 4) persists there while most of the country is in Crisis (IPC Phase 3). Rainfall improved on the previous year, but the winter agricultural campaign is still below average because of low availability of quality inputs, escalating gang violence, unmaintained irrigation channels, higher input prices and expensive agricultural labor; the earlier temporary closure of the border with the Dominican Republic raised the cost of production factors, notably mechanised ploughing partly supplied by Dominican operators.

Food assistance is both insufficient and a concern for targeting and distribution: Food Security Cluster data show cumulative emergency food aid beneficiaries from January to November 2023 did not exceed 14 percent of the total population or 10 percent of the number of people in need, and Cluster partners expect 70 percent of cumulative beneficiaries through September 2024 to be in Grand'Anse. Despite the gourde's appreciation since April 2023, greater fuel availability than the previous year and a lower annual inflation rate, staple prices remain unusually high because of limited distribution and gang tolls, and poor households' purchasing power has deteriorated against a food basket well above its five-year average.

The report notes 1.66 million people out of an estimated population of 11,724,763, about 14 percent, and annual inflation of 21.2 percent in December 2023 after a peak near 49 percent in January 2023.