“This is not a country where you can dream”

The shattered hopes of the Haitian people

For millions of people in Haiti, life is a daily, terrifying struggle. Gangs use rape as a form of intimidation, children go to school hungry and in fear of stray bullets, and more than 5.2 million people need humanitarian assistance. The country’s dire situation is the result of three consecutive years of economic recession, a political impasse and unprecedented levels of gang violence.

Aid organizations working in the country gave a voice to some of the affected people by collecting nearly 200 testimonies and featuring them in the 2023 Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) for Haiti. Each testimony paints a harrowing picture of the country’s humanitarian situation.

Three Haitian artists, Silva Jean Francisco, Shneider Léon Hilaire and Oliga, agreed to contribute their artwork to the HNO. Each illustration, a testimony in its own right, sheds a unique light on Haitians’ daily lives.

Below is a selection of the testimonies and illustrations featured in the 2023 HNO.

The Displaced. Acrylic on canvas. Copyright: Shneider Léon Hilaire.

Fleeing for survival

Place Hugo Chavez was a spontaneous site in the capital’s metropolitan area that became a refuge for people fleeing violence, particularly in April and July 2022. Faced with an influx of hundreds of destitute households, but with no basic health infrastructure, living conditions at the site quickly became unbearable. Assistance from humanitarian organizations was critical to support Haitians forced to abandon their homes.

Christelle* fled the violence with her baby:

"My journey was very difficult. That day, many people were hit by bullets, and some died. The bandits kept shooting. God helped me to get through, and I managed to escape despite my pregnancy."

Christelle lives in appalling conditions. She explains:

"We can't have a normal life on the site, we don't live well. Even with my pregnancy, I find it difficult to feed myself, and I fear that this will affect the health of my baby. People share with us what little they have, they are good neighbours but it is not enough.

“On the site, the quality of living conditions is not good, especially with the young men waging war with rocks, endangering my baby's life. I live in the open air, I sleep with my baby, and when it rains I stand around waiting for the rain to stop, until the ground becomes dry again. Then I try to go back to sleep. We have access to some drinking water, and water for showering. The problem is where to take my bath, because it is in the open, in full view of everyone."

Despite all this, Christelle does not regret her decision to leave:

"The impact is positive for me because the way I used to live in fear was worse, unbearable. Now I have some peace because I don't hear the gunfire anymore. Where I lived before, I lost two brothers and the father of my child. You can't do worse than that.”

Faced with deteriorating living conditions and daily violence, Christelle, like many Haitians, is considering building her future abroad:

"I don't want to stay at the site, I don't want to go home, but I want to find somewhere to live to raise my child, in the Dominican Republic. Or I would like to be able to lease a house in Maïs Gâtés, because I already have a cousin living in the area."

The pursuit of happiness. Copyright: Oliga.

The scourge of cholera

Haiti’s deteriorating security and economic situation is a major barrier to accessing basic health services. After the Ministry of Public Health and Population confirmed two cholera cases in October 2022, the epidemic spread rapidly across the country; there were more than 22,000 suspected cases by the year’s end.

Chrismene's* family, like so many others, has to cope with the disease while living in precarious sanitary conditions. She explains:

"My two-year-old was taken to hospital after giving me a big scare: She had diarrhoea and was vomiting all the time. I noticed it on Tuesday morning when I was preparing food. Everything was fine, but in the evening she was moving around. During the night I saw that her stomach was distended, so we decided to go to the doctor.”

Access to care is often complicated by the cost in private facilities and transport costs:

"When we arrived at the doctor's, he told us that he could not take us without paying. So we rushed to a public hospital on a motorbike and borrowed 1,500 gourdes ($9.7) from a friend. When we arrived, they didn't even have time to make a chart, so they gave her a serum. There was no bed, so I spent the day sitting on a bench, giving her the serum. The doctors took good care of her, I'm happy with what they did for her. Today the diarrhoea is still there, but the vomiting has stopped.”

Chrismene’s daughter seems to be out of the woods, but cholera could still strike her family. She knows that lack of access to water is a major factor in the spread of cholera in Haiti:

"A gallon of drinking water sells for 30 gourdes ($0.19). Sometimes I go all day without water because I have no money. Domestic water, on the other hand, is not so difficult to find, and it costs much less, 5 gourdes ($0.03) a bucket. Domestic water, for washing clothes, is not a problem for us. It is drinking water that is difficult. I am afraid that other people will drink the domestic water by default and get sick.”

The manipulation of childhood. Digital illustration. Copyright: Francisco Silva.

Going to school with fear in your stomach

Children are among Haiti’s most vulnerable people. Parents want to see their children go to school and succeed, but many can no longer afford their education. In some gang-controlled neighbourhoods, students’ and teachers’ access to schools is impossible. The situation’s impact on Haiti’s future is alarming.

Rose,* a teacher at a school in Port-au-Prince, notes students’ growing dependence on school-feeding programmes:

"I think the meal is very important for the children, it really helps them. Sometimes they come without food, so we give them salt water so that they don't faint. We always ask them if they had a meal before coming to school. Unfortunately, the answer is almost always no. It's so rare to get a positive answer that when it happens, we talk about it among the teachers.”

Rose also talks about her fear of walking to school:

"Well, in the last few months, Port-au-Prince has been very difficult for us. Difficult in the sense that you have to go out as a teacher, but you are afraid. It is not normal to go to work with fear in your stomach. It's the same for the pupils and even the parents.

"Parents are afraid to send their children to school in the morning and not see them again in the evening.

"There is shooting everywhere, all the time. Sometimes you don't know where the bullets will come from. You can get a bullet in the schoolyard or in a classroom, because when they [the gangs] shoot, the bullets have no direction. Because of the shooting, the children are no longer able to concentrate in class.”

These testimonies are just a small reflection of the dire situation that Haitian people face every day. The 2023 Humanitarian Needs Profile for Haiti provides a more comprehensive view of the country's dynamics through additional testimonies and in-depth analyses of the humanitarian context.

*All names have been changed.