The UN agencies and non-governmental international organizations’ senior humanitarian delegates arrived in Haiti this month, with Maria Moita, the Director of Humanitarian Response and Recovery from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and Youri Saadallah, Global Emergency Director of the Norwegian Refugee Council and the head of the mission, addressing Haitian press correspondents virtually on July 10th, 2026. As per IOM figures, the total number of internally displaced people has hit 1.47 million in Haiti, with 300,000 located in the Metropolitan Area of Port-au-Prince. More than 3,000 people have been displaced due to armed clashes between the groups in Ganthier and Kenscoff communes, even before the mission arrived in the country.

“Haiti’s displacement crisis is entering an even more alarming phase,” said Gregoire Goodstein, IOM Chief of Mission in Haiti, when the agency published its latest displacement report. “The crisis is no longer confined to specific neighborhoods or regions. As violence spreads into areas once considered safe, more and more people are being forced to flee repeatedly, often with nowhere left to turn.” More than half of the displaced persons are women and young girls. UNICEF has noted that there are more than 741,000 displaced children, while about 5.7 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, including 1.2 million child refugees under the age of five years. Displacement is now compounded by returns, since the start of 2026, when more than 110,000 Haitians have been forcibly returned from neighboring states, among them women, children, and other vulnerable groups of people. IOM reports that many of them arrive with no resources, often to communities already struggling to absorb new arrivals or to areas affected by armed group activity.

This represents a trend that occurs whenever displacement is extended over a long period of time: people seek refuge in a place that they eventually become displaced from. Areas where people took refuge before, such as the South-East Department and rural communes outside the capital, are now displacement areas, and as such, families find themselves relocating twice or more with less and less resources at their disposal. Instead of addressing the issue at hand, individuals are returned forcibly, and the number of people in an already overwhelmed system increases by tens of thousands. The principle behind international protection holds that one must not be forced to go back into conditions in which they cannot be assured safety.

The present-day crisis in Haiti worsened considerably following the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, leaving the country in what is defined by the UN as a multidimensional crisis characterized by violent conflict, political deadlock, and severe humanitarian circumstances. The resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry in 2024 created a new set of instabilities under the transitional government. IOM registered over 1.4 million people displaced by the end of 2025 and even more people during the first six months of 2026. There were over 18,000 people displaced by violence in Cité Soleil, while the number of internally displaced people in Port-au-Prince reached 300,000 for the first time in history. There were more than 5,000 people displaced in the South-East Department from armed attacks in an area considered a safe haven until now.

The visit comes before a period of concentrated international attention on Haiti. The most recent report from the Secretary-General on the UN Integrated Office in Haiti was scheduled to be delivered by July 14th, and the Security Council is to have its 90-day update this month, which includes briefings by both Special Representative Carlos Ruiz Massieu on the recent situation and Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Monica Juma, on organized crime and arms smuggling. These agencies keep coming through: the IOM with camp coordination support, the UNHCR with protection and legal assistance, and UNICEF with child protection, nutrition, and water and sanitation programs. But the Haitian humanitarian appeal itself continues to be underfunded, leaving all that is possible to do still constrained. This will be the gap between attention and assistance for those Haitians currently residing in camps with their neighbors in Ganthier and Kenscoff, and for those who are being returned to a country that has no capacity to receive them.