The convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic with Haiti’s pre-existing food security crisis created what humanitarian organizations described as a double emergency in spring 2020. Movement restrictions intended to slow COVID transmission disrupted food markets, supply chains, and the ability of humanitarian organizations to deliver assistance, just as the economic shock of the pandemic was destroying household incomes that were already desperately low.
The World Food Programme revised upward its estimates of acute food insecurity in Haiti as the pandemic took hold, warning that the combination of supply disruptions, income loss, currency depreciation, and inflationary pressure was pushing millions more Haitians into hunger. Communities that had managed to stay above the emergency threshold before COVID fell below it rapidly as their economic buffers evaporated.
The informal economy workers who made up the majority of Port-au-Prince’s labor force were among the most severely affected. Day laborers, market vendors, moto-taxi drivers, and construction workers who earned daily wages had no income when they could not work, and no savings to fall back on. For these families, the choice between observing COVID precautions and feeding their children was devastatingly real.
Humanitarian organizations called for emergency food assistance to be dramatically scaled up to meet the compounded need, arguing that a COVID response that failed to address food insecurity would be incomplete and ultimately ineffective. People who were hungry, stressed, and unable to access healthcare for other conditions were more vulnerable to severe COVID outcomes, making food security a health imperative as well as a humanitarian one.