The UN reported that approximately 45 percent of Haiti’s population lacked access to clean drinking water in 2025, with seven out of ten Haitians lacking access to an improved sanitation system. The water and sanitation crisis, which had been building through years of infrastructure neglect and crisis-related disruption, was directly connected to ongoing cholera transmission and the broader public health emergency that the security crisis had created.
Only 40 percent of Haitians had access to electricity — intermittently and at high prices — reflecting the collapse of the state electricity utility and the reliance on expensive private generators that only wealthier households and businesses could afford. The combination of inadequate water, sanitation, and electricity represented a quality-of-life baseline that was among the lowest in the hemisphere and that directly constrained health outcomes, economic productivity, and human development.
The gang-related disruption of water infrastructure had added a new dimension to a pre-existing crisis. When fuel blockades prevented the operation of water treatment pumps, when fighting damaged distribution pipes, or when displacement moved populations away from whatever water access they had possessed, the already-inadequate water supply for affected communities deteriorated further. The cholera cases that resulted were a predictable and documented consequence of infrastructure disruption in a country with these baseline conditions.
Water and sanitation organizations called for emergency and longer-term investment in Haiti’s water infrastructure, including solar-powered pumping systems that could reduce dependence on diesel fuel, pipeline rehabilitation, and expanded household-level water treatment capacity. They argued that water access was a fundamental human right and a public health necessity that needed to be treated as a core component of any recovery strategy rather than a development aspiration to be addressed after other priorities were met.