- ActionAid survey finds 99% of families are going without meals – sometimes for days at a time – because they can’t afford to buy food.
- 88% of households said a family member had gone all day without food in the past month.
- Some families survive on just over US$1 worth of food per person for an entire month.
Haiti’s hunger crisis has reached alarming levels, with almost all families (99%) surveyed by ActionAid regularly skipping meals and 95% reporting that they’ve gone to bed hungry in the past month. The aid organization warned that US funding freezes are likely to make the situation even worse.
ActionAid surveyed almost 200 families (1,499 people) in two Haiti townships, Jérémie and Roseaux, and found that 67% were displaced, having fled their homes to escape Haiti’s escalating gang violence.
Of those surveyed, 88% said a family member had gone an entire day without eating in the past month, and almost one in 10 had gone 24 hours without eating at least 10 times.
Féduine, 28, lives in Jérémie. She told ActionAid she is struggling to feed her three children:
“It has become so difficult to eat … we don’t know how to cope. It is really worrying when we can only eat every other day. I have children, and some days, I have nothing to give them. It is very hard to live with. I don’t worry about myself, but I worry about my children. When I left this morning, I had nothing to give the baby.”
Armed gangs continue to disrupt food supplies by closing roads and demanding bribes from truck drivers, pushing up prices, and leaving many families unable to afford basic goods.
More than 85% of ActionAid’s respondents have fallen into debt, and 17% reported having no income at all.
Emelyne, 49, had to leave her home with her family due to gang violence. Inflation has pushed up food prices so high that she’s now unable to afford to feed her family of eight. She said:
“It has become more difficult to buy food. Before, I could feed my whole family with 500 gourdes (US$ 3.80). Now, 500 gourdes is only enough for one item. How can we possibly feed everyone with 500 gourdes a day?”
On average, families reported spending just $90 (11,742 HG) per month on food. With an average of eight people per household surveyed, this equates to just $11 per person for an entire month. Some households survive on just over $1 per person per month.
As a result, 97% of families said they’ve had to reduce food portions, and 53% have been forced to ask friends or family for food.
Haiti is grappling with one of the world’s most severe hunger crises, with 5.5 million people – nearly half the population – struggling to feed themselves. Between March and June, two million people are expected to face ‘emergency’ levels of hunger, which means they face severe food shortages, health complications, and high levels of disease.
The crisis is particularly devastating for women and girls. Poverty and debt increase their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, with reports of girls as young as 15 being coerced into trading sex for food. Malnutrition also endangers pregnant and breastfeeding women, increasing premature birth and maternal mortality.
Despite this dire situation, the humanitarian response in Haiti is critically underfunded. Less than 43% of the $673 million required by the UN for Haiti in 2024 was raised, and the funding gap for 2025 is even greater, with a UN target of £900 million.
Angeline Annesteus, ActionAid’s Country Director in Haiti, said:
“What we’re witnessing in Haiti isn’t a food shortage – it’s a full-blown hunger crisis driven by violence, inflation and systemic neglect. The markets still have food, but millions simply cannot afford it. To think that more than 9 in 10 people – many of them children – are going to bed hungry is heartbreaking.
The levels of hunger, suffering and death in Haiti are beyond disturbing, world powers are looking away or – even worse – actively disrupting humanitarian efforts. People will starve to death in the coming months unless urgent funding is released. There is no chance for peace and stability in Haiti while millions are facing starvation.”
ActionAid supports vulnerable families by providing cash grants and food to those most in need and strengthening agriculture projects to increase food production and support farmers, including women.
Notes to editors
ActionAid surveyed 193 households across Jérémie and Roseaux between January 11 and 20th. The total number of people in the households surveyed was 1499. Key findings include:
- 31% said they face security threats where they live, with robbery and murder cited as the most common dangers.
- 95% reported having no food in the house in the past month. Of these, 46% said they’d gone without food at least 10 times that month.
- 183 of those surveyed (95%) said someone in their household had gone to bed hungry at least once in the past month. Of these, 41 (22%), said a family member had gone to bed hungry at least 10 times in the past month.
- 170 people (88%) said someone in their household had gone all day and all night without eating in the past month. Of these, 16 (9%) said they’d gone all day and night without food at least 10 times in the past month.
- 188 people (97%) said they’d had to reduce their daily food intake.
- 191 people (99%) said they’d had to cut back on the number of meals they eat because they don’t have enough money to buy food.
- 128 people (66%) said they could not meet any of their family’s basic needs (food, water, clothing), whilst a further 11% said they could only meet some of their basic needs.
ENDS
For media requests, please email christal.james@actionaid.org or call 7046659743.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.
ActionAid has been working in Haiti since 1997, with programs in agricultural development, women’s leadership, and humanitarian response.
