Source: United Nations (video statements)
The United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Haiti, Ulrika Richardson, today (12 Aug) told reporters in New York that the situation is “strikingly horrific” in the country’s capital Port-au-Price with “3,000 people having been killed in gang related incidents since the beginning of the year.”
Briefing correspondents for the last time as the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti, Richardson said, “I often feel that I can’t even find words any longer to describe the situation. Is it alarming? Is it acute? Is it urgent? It’s all of that, and even more.”
She said, “we have 1.3 million people displaced currently, as a result of the gang violence, as the gangs have sort of rummaged the city. And half of them are children,” noting that 2 million people are in IPC four, meaning at an emergency level of food insecurity.
Richardson said, “all of that is just figures, in a way. And behind every figure there is, a woman, a mother, a child, a father, a young person.”
She said, “obviously children are particularly affected, particularly we have a malnutrition that is striking. We have children being recruited by the armed gangs. And of course, they fare really poorly, many of them also in terms of education. You can imagine, broken school years. We have generations that have not fulfilled an entire year of schooling.”
Richardson said, “we have a humanitarian response plan. It’s only funded 9 percent. It’s the lowest level of funding for any response plan in the world. And it’s 900 million. We are not talking about the biggest response plan either. So, that is of course a big frustration. But also, we have other; we have a sanctions regime that was introduced in 2022. We have an arms embargo, similarly, introduced in 2022. We have, the Multinational Security Support Mission that has been on the ground for a year but not given the tools or the sights needed to actually perform its role. So that is actually very frustrating. We have tools, but the response from the international community, is just not at par with the gravity on the ground.”
Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Richardson as his new Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and Resident Coordinator in Libya. She succeeds Aeneas Chuma of Zimbabwe.
She has been the Deputy Special Representative for the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Haiti since 2022, and was previously the Development Coordinator in Kosovo, working closely with the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) (2018-2022). Her earlier assignments include serving as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Cabo Verde (2013-2018), UNDP Resident Representative in Gabon (2012-2013), and Deputy Resident Representative in Türkiye (2007-2012) and in Cuba (2004-2007).