The Biden administration is urging U.S. citizens in Haiti “to strongly consider returning to the United States” amid a gang-aggravated fuel shortage and a deteriorating security climate in which 17 Christian missionaries, including 16 Americans, have been held hostage more than three weeks.
The message in a Friday security alert from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince came as Haiti’s commercial banks and other businesses announced reduced hours starting this week, grocery store owners warned of coming food shortages and the United Nations encouraged employees to stock up on emergency supplies of water, food and other essential items.
“The U.N. can confirm that a message was sent to all U.N. staff on 28 October strongly advising them, due to the prevailing security and fuel situation, to stock at least 14 days of emergency supplies of water, food and necessities,” Daniel Dickinson, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s political office in Port-au-Prince, said. “This advice is in line with the U.N.’s security and contingency planning.”
Americans in the country are being encouraged to depart while commercial flights are still available, noting that while the security situation has been unpredictable for months, the environment has deteriorated rapidly in recent days.
“It sounds like an abdication of any kind of responsibility,” Robert Maguire, a longtime Haiti expert who once prepared U.S. diplomats being sent to Port-au-Prince, said of the responses of the U.S and the U.N. to the unfolding crisis, which is expected to get worse this week if authorities don’t manage to supply fuel. “I think this administration would prefer for Haiti to go away. But it’s not going to go away. It seems that there is no real unanimity of what to do in this administration.”
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said that the welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad is the highest priority. The U.S. has been encouraging U.S. citizens for some time to avoid non-essential travel to Haiti and those deciding to travel to Haiti should carefully consider the information available on travel.state.gov regarding the extremely high risk of kidnapping.
“Our Travel Advisory for Haiti is a Level 4: Do Not Travel due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and COVID-19,” the spokesperson said. “Kidnapping is widespread and victims regularly include U.S. citizens.”
Over the weekend, ramped up gang shootings in Port-au-Prince led to panic and deaths and further dashed hopes that fuel tankers would be able to get through gang-controlled territories to access blocked distribution terminals.
A justice of the peace confirmed to Le Nouvelliste, the country’s daily, the deaths of a 95-year-old woman and her driver as they crossed Martissant 7 on Saturday, where there were other unconfirmed reports of deaths during a gang rampage less than a half-hour away from the presidential palace.
That same day, at the other end of the capital, in Croix-des-Bouquets, bandits opened fire on a vehicle, killing a young child and injuring his father and older brother. The incident was confirmed by the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Port-au-Prince, which said that its student coordinator, Pastor Stanis Stifinson, was in the car with his children.
When the unabated gang violence and political instability aren’t leading to deaths, they are crippling everything from cellphone service to COVID-19 treatment to schools and food supplies.
“Children in classrooms across urban areas are increasingly becoming targets for robbery or ransom,” UNICEF said in its latest plea about the vulnerable state of children in the country. “Gang violence is fast becoming another reason for parents not to send their children to schools.”
Since June, the violence has forced at least 19,000 people in metropolitan Port-au-Prince to flee their homes and thousands of school children to interrupt their education, the U.N. said. The growing violence is also affecting the recovery efforts in the south of Haiti, where a 7.2 earthquake in August killed over 2,200 people and left 800,000 in need of humanitarian assistance.
Haitians say the current crisis is the worst to hit the country since the the 1990s, when the international community and Clinton administration maintained economic sanctions after a Sept. 29, 1991, military coup toppled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The embargo produced three years of economic contraction. The current economic and financial crisis is slated to produce four years of negative economic growth, said a leading Haitian economist.
“It’s scary,” said Kesner Pharel, describing life in the country. “No economic growth plus high inflation equals unemployment, extreme poverty and misery, and now add insecurity. That can create great pressure on people to leave the country.”
