The United Nations and international humanitarian organizations issued a revised humanitarian appeal for Haiti in 2020 that attempted to account for the additional needs created by the COVID-19 pandemic on top of an already dire pre-existing situation. The appeal requested hundreds of millions of dollars to fund food assistance, healthcare, water and sanitation, protection services, and emergency shelter for the millions of Haitians facing acute need.
The international response fell significantly short of what was requested. With donor governments simultaneously managing the economic and humanitarian consequences of the pandemic in their own countries, and with global attention focused on COVID hotspots in Europe and North America, Haiti’s chronic crisis struggled to compete for international resources and attention.
Humanitarian organizations on the ground described the consequences of the funding gap in human terms: food distribution programs reaching fewer beneficiaries than planned; health facilities unable to maintain adequate supplies; water and sanitation programs scaling back their reach; protection services unable to respond to all reported cases of violence and abuse.
Haitian civil society organizations pointed to the underfunding of the humanitarian appeal as evidence of a fundamental failure of the international community’s stated commitment to the people of Haiti. They argued that Haiti’s crisis was not a natural disaster but was substantially the result of historical exploitation and failed international interventions, and that the international community therefore had a particular obligation to provide adequate support.