UN allocates $9 million in emergency funds for Haiti
Key Points(5)
- “We cannot fail here.”</p> <p data-start="1515" data-end="1974">La Paix has become a lifeline in a capital largely in the grip of armed gangs.
- With more than 1.3 million people displaced nationwide and half of Haiti’s population suffering from hunger, healthcare needs are soaring.
- The hospital handles nearly 3,600 surgeries a year and treated over 20,000 emergency cases last year — most of them trauma-related.
- Patients include victims of gun violence, malnourished children, and women who have endured sexual assault.</p> <p data-start="1976" data-end="2293">Yet like most of Haiti’s fragile health system, La Paix is operating on borrowed time.
- Generators power much of its operations, and staff face the constant threat of kidnapping and gang attacks.
The United Nations has released an additional $9 million in emergency funding to Haiti as the country reels from escalating gang violence, mass displacement, and a worsening hunger crisis.
The funds, announced Tuesday by Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for Secretary-General António Guterres, come from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). They are intended to support displaced families and host communities in Haiti’s Center and Artibonite regions, where shortages of food, water, healthcare, and protection are increasingly dire.
The announcement coincided with a visit to Port-au-Prince by Tom Fletcher, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Fletcher spent Tuesday touring L’Hôpital Universitaire La Paix, the only functioning public hospital in the capital, where he praised the courage of staff working under extraordinary pressure but warned that the facility could soon lose most of its emergency ward personnel due to lack of funding.
“It would be heartbreaking if this hospital that so many people depend on, the only functioning hospital in this area, were to cease to function when they’ve done such immense work with such courage and tenacity, and expertise to make it work,” Fletcher said. “We cannot fail here.”
La Paix has become a lifeline in a capital largely in the grip of armed gangs. With more than 1.3 million people displaced nationwide and half of Haiti’s population suffering from hunger, healthcare needs are soaring. The hospital handles nearly 3,600 surgeries a year and treated over 20,000 emergency cases last year — most of them trauma-related. Patients include victims of gun violence, malnourished children, and women who have endured sexual assault.
Yet like most of Haiti’s fragile health system, La Paix is operating on borrowed time. Generators power much of its operations, and staff face the constant threat of kidnapping and gang attacks. The country’s largest hospital, the State University Hospital, was forced to shut down last year after repeated looting.
During his visit, Fletcher met with displaced families sheltering in a former health ministry compound near the hospital, where about 5,000 people now live after being forced from their homes. He emphasized that Haiti’s humanitarian crisis is among the most neglected in the world, with donor shortfalls leaving the UN appeal just 12 percent funded. Of the $908 million requested for 2025, only $105 million has been received.
“When you look at where the red lights are flashing, it’s often around those big gender-based violence programs, protection of women and girls, in these more neglected crises,” Fletcher told the Miami Herald. “That’s the logic of using these emergency funds.”
The new allocation is meant to help agencies such as the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and UNICEF continue delivering essential medicines, nutrition services, and free healthcare access to the most vulnerable. Still, Fletcher warned, without sustained international support, even the most efficient facilities like La Paix may be forced to scale back.
“Every day here you are seeing thousands of people getting treatment,” Fletcher said. “But all of this is in jeopardy because of crucial funding that will run out at the end of September.”
