“We don’t have water, we don’t have food. We have nothing. »
This is how the man standing in front of a mobile clinic run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, describes the situation he and his family have been in since he was forced to leave his home two months ago. We talk in the courtyard of a small church in the district of Croix-des-Bouquets where the mobile clinic is held. This is where he took refuge with other people after fleeing attacks by armed gangs fighting for control of the capital.
“Today is the first time that we see someone and receive help,” he said of the MSF clinic. This man sleeps in a small space with more than 900 people, without a roof or a functional toilet. He points to small children, pregnant women and elderly people who stay in this informal makeshift camp. “We are completely on our own,” he says.
Multiple crises and insufficient humanitarian response
The UN estimates that more than 127,000 people in Port-au-Prince are currently living on the move due to the activities of armed groups, who use violence and terror to gain and maintain control of the territory, to both in the capital and elsewhere in the country. By almost any measure, Haiti is in the grip of a serious humanitarian crisis, which urgently requires a major international response. About 5.2 million people (out of a population of 11.5 million) need humanitarian assistance in Haiti and, according to the World Food Programme, 4.9 million people are suffering from hunger.
Although desperately needed, humanitarian aid remains insufficient. The challenges of delivering humanitarian assistance should not be underestimated.
Faced with high levels of insecurity, many humanitarian agencies remain reluctant to operate in the most affected areas. MSF, which has worked in Haiti for more than 30 years, is one of the only emergency medical care organizations present in the country.
Only a few days ago, on the night of July 6 to 7, around 20 armed men violently entered the MSF hospital in Tabarre to forcibly take a patient with gunshot wounds who was in the operating room. This intrusion forced MSF to suspend all its activities in the hospital. This is not the first incident: earlier this year, MSF had to temporarily close its hospital in the Cité Soleil district due to violence outside the walls of the establishment. “We are observing a scene of war a few meters from our hospital,” MSF’s medical adviser said at the time.
What can Canada do?
For the situation to recover in Haiti, countries like Canada need to seriously rethink the way they provide assistance.
Indeed, the short-term forms of assistance that we usually provide will not allow organizations that could to respond to Haiti’s most urgent humanitarian needs. They also fail to build the presence and networks they would need to operate sustainably in such a complex environment. Canada could directly address this problem through a long-term strategic approach to humanitarian assistance. He could also use his notoriety to encourage other members of the international community to do the same. This is precisely what a group of Canadian parliamentarians, the members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, recommended in a recent report entitled The human rights situation in Haiti.
Canada therefore has an important role to play in addressing the many challenges currently facing Haiti, a country that is not only in our hemispheric backyard, but with which we maintain a long-standing commitment of assistance.
Back in the churchyard in Port-au-Prince, another man we spoke to would like to make sure the world does not remain indifferent to his situation and that of his fellow citizens. “Tell everyone what’s going on here,” he exclaims. Tell the international community that people in Haiti have to give up everything they have and are forced to live in a place that doesn’t belong to them. They sleep in the rain. The world needs to know. »