Humanitarian Action for Children 2021: Haiti

This edition of UNICEF's Humanitarian Action for Children appeal covers 2021. Haiti faces growing socio-political instability and deteriorating economic conditions, rising food insecurity and malnutrition, the Haitian-Dominican migration dynamic, waterborne disease epidemics and high vulnerability to natural hazards, all further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Deteriorating economic conditions from confinement measures are depleting vulnerable families' resources: an estimated 4.1 million Haitians, nearly 40 percent of the population, are food insecure, and an estimated 168,000 children suffer acute malnutrition, particularly in metropolitan Port-au-Prince.

An estimated 2.3 million people, including 1 million children and 315,000 pregnant women and adolescent girls, require emergency health care that has become harder to access due to COVID-19. On top of 60 school days lost during 2019's national lockdowns, 4 million children missed learning during four months of COVID-19 school closures, and most schoolchildren have lost out on an entire year of education. The cholera epidemic is coming to an end, with no cases confirmed since February 2019, though surveillance must continue to officially declare its end by 2022.

For 2021, UNICEF requests USD 75 million, its largest appeal to date, to support the continuity of health, nutrition, WASH, education, child protection and social protection services, strengthen shock-responsive social protection with emergency cash transfers for 20,000 households, and facilitate disaster risk reduction and gender-based violence prevention.