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full screenMany residents of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince have fled due to gang violence and unrest. Archive image. Photo: Odelyn Joseph/AP/TT
More than 53,000 people have fled Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince over a three-week period due to escalating gang violence and political unrest.
The data on the refugee flows was published by the United Nations on Tuesday, when the refugee agency IOM said that 53,125 people had fled their homes between March 8 and 27.
Even before the latest unrest, around 116,000 people had been forced to leave their homes. Most of them are internally displaced, as the border with the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola is fairly well guarded.
But the conditions in Haiti’s countryside make it difficult for the internally displaced.
“It must be emphasized that (the other) provinces do not have enough functioning infrastructure to enable them to cope with the enormous amount of refugees coming from the capital,” writes the IOM in the report.