UN food agency appeals for $46 million to help 2 million Haitians facing
severe hunger
[June 06, 2025]
By EDITH M. LEDERER
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. food agency is appealing for $46 million
for the next six months to help about 2 million Haitians in dire need of
food, including 8,500 at the worst catastrophic level of hunger.
The appeal was issued by Lola Castro, the World Food Program’s regional
director for Latin America and the Caribbean, who recently returned from
Haiti, where escalating gang violence has displaced well over 1 million
people and left half the population — 5.7 million people — in urgent
need of food.
Two million of them are in the two worst categories in the Integrated
Food Security Phase Classification, the leading international authority
on hunger crises, and 8,500 are in the worst Phase 5 category, she said.
That means at least one in five people or households severely lack food
and face starvation and destitution.
Haiti is one of only five countries in the world that have people in the
Phase 5 category of catastrophic hunger, Castro said, “and it is really
dramatic to have this in the Western Hemisphere.”
Gangs have grown in power since the assassination of President Jovenel
Moïse in July 2021 and are now estimated to control 85% of the capital
and are moving into surrounding areas. Haiti has not had a president
since the assassination, and the top U.N. official in the country said
in April the country could face “total chaos” without funding to
confront the gangs..
A U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police arrived in Haiti last year to
help quell gang violence, but the mission remains understaffed and
underfunded, with only about 40% of the 2,500 personnel originally
envisioned.
The WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, is among the
U.N. agencies facing funding cuts, mainly from the United States, which
provided nearly half of its funding in 2024.
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 Castro said WFP reached over 1.3
million people this year until March using carryover funds from last
year. But the agency is facing a dramatic situation now with food
stocks only until July to assist with emergencies, new displacements
or hurricanes, she said.
In the past four years, Castro said WFP always had stocks to help
between 250,000 and 500,000 people with any emergency.
“This year, we start the hurricane season with an
empty warehouse where we have no stocks for assisting any emergency,
or we have no cash neither to go and buy (food) locally if it was
possible in some areas, or to do a rapid humanitarian response,”
Castro said. “We are very concerned that a single storm can put
hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti again into humanitarian
catastrophe and hunger.”
WFP normally provides a meal every day for around 500,000 school
children, but that number will be cut in half without additional
resources, she told a video press conference on Tuesday.
With $46 million, she said, WFP will be able to help the 2 million
Haitians in most need of food, keep providing school meals for half
a million children, and provide social protection for very
vulnerable people in camps for the displaced.
Haiti must not be forgotten as the world deals with other crises,
Castro said, urging donors to be generous.
“We really need to stop this and to hold the line on hunger,” she
said. “We continue calling the humanitarian community to provide
support.”
With $46 million, she said, WFP will be able to help the 2 million
Haitians in the two worst IPC categories, keep providing school
meals for half a million children, and provide social protection for
very vulnerable people in camps for the displaced.
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