The appeal was issued by Lola Castro, the World Food Program’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, who recently returned from Haiti, where escalating gang violence has displaced well over 1 million people and left half the population – 5.7 million people – in urgent need of food. Two million of them are in the two worst categories in the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the leading international authority on hunger crises, and 8,500 are in the worst Phase 5 category, she said. That means at least one in five people or households severely lack food and face starvation and destitution. Haiti is one of only five countries in the world that have people in the Phase 5 category of catastrophic hunger, Castro said, “and it is really dramatic to have this in the Western Hemisphere.” Gangs have grown in power since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 and are now estimated to control 85 per cent of the capital and are moving into surrounding areas. Haiti has not had a president since the assassination, and the top UN official in the country said in April the country could face “total chaos” without funding to confront the gangs. (Jamaica Gleaner)