Displacement, Gendered Harm, and the Normalization of Crisis in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

With Haiti's internal displacement at a record 1.4 million people in 2025 and displaced children nearly doubling to 680,000, this Mercy Corps Crisis Analysis Team (CAT HT) report examines conditions inside five IDP sites in Port-au-Prince (Club International, République Équateur, OPC, DDO, Kay Felix; combined population 9,145, about 5.6 percent of the capital's 163,811 IDPs). Mixed methods combine 114 structured surveys of displaced women with 20 key informant interviews. The findings show sites operating as active producers of protection risk: 95.6 percent of respondents feel their site is insecure; 30.7 percent of women report physical or sexual violence within the site and 19 respondents report sexual assault or rape by gangs; two thirds (66.7 percent) report no mechanism for reporting violence.

Livelihood collapse is near-total (88.6 percent had income before displacement, 99.1 percent have none now) while household headship among women rose from 45.6 to 93 percent. Food deprivation is near-universal (96.5 percent of women and 87.5 percent of children eat fewer than two meals a day), only 45.6 percent have access to a functioning toilet, 63.2 percent cannot obtain menstrual hygiene products, and only 34.2 percent of children attend school. The report argues GBV is driven by survival economics and site-governance failure, that cash and food support should be treated as protection interventions, and that donor attention must not drift from Port-au-Prince as violence spreads to other departments.