The number of Haitians who have fled their homes because of gang violence has tripled in the last year to over one million people, the United Nations (UN) said on Tuesday. The poor Caribbean country has been mired for decades by political instability,

Surging gang violence in Haiti has caused a threefold rise in the number of people uprooted from their homes in a year, the UN migration agency, IOM, said on Tuesday, in a call for “sustained humanitarian assistance right now to save and protect lives”.

More than 5,600 people were killed and thousands more injured or kidnapped in 2024 due to soaring levels of gang violence in Haiti, the United Nations said. In a statement released on Tuesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk condemned the “absolute horrors” faced by the population of the Caribbean country noting rights abuses and corruption are also rife.

More than a million people, over half of them children, are now displaced within Haiti where gang violence continues unabated despite the start of a United Nations-backed security mission last year, U.

At least 5,601 people were killed in gang violence in Haiti last year, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday, appealing for greater efforts by the authorities and the international community to address the root causes.

The U.N. migration agency says internal displacement in Haiti, largely caused by gang violence, has tripled over the last year and now surpasses 1 million people — a record in the Caribbean nation.

Children make up at least half of Haiti’s displaced population, which has tripled within a year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says. View on euronews