In Jérémie and across the country, women are eating least and last as violence, flooding and a deep funding shortfall strain families and the local groups trying to help them.
By EEW Magazine Online News Editors
A woman stands among hanging laundry in a camp for displaced people in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Oct. 28, 2026. More than 1.5 million Haitians have been forced from their homes by armed violence. (Photo by Clarens Siffroy/AFP via Getty Images)
In Jérémie, a city in southwestern Haiti, Louis Litane cares for a family of four, including her grandson, Woodley Michel. When Woodley became ill, the family spent everything it had on his care, and Litane had to stop running her small business, according to the humanitarian organization CARE.
Woodley is now enrolled in a child nutrition project run by CARE and local partners, and the family still struggles to find enough to eat from one day to the next.
“Sometimes we find something to eat in the morning, but in the afternoon, we don’t know what we’re going to do,” Litane said in a statement released by CARE on Oct. 29.
Her family is among millions of Haitians struggling to get enough to eat. A new United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released Oct. 28 found that 5.94 million people, or 53% of the population, face crisis-level hunger or worse, according to CARE. That figure is expected to climb to 6.35 million between March and June 2027 as armed violence, displacement and economic hardship continue to grip the Caribbean nation.
The U.N. World Food Programme warned that Haiti is on track to reach record levels of hunger. The projection is more than half a million above the same period this year. Almost 2 million people are likely to face Emergency conditions, the second most severe level on the IPC scale. At that level, households face severe food shortages and may resort to extreme measures to meet basic food needs.
Violence is driving much of the crisis. More than 1.5 million Haitians have been forced from their homes, many more than once, according to WFP. The agency said armed groups constrain farm and market supply chains, making it hard for farmers to get their products to market. Inflation near 17% is eroding household budgets, and El Niño-linked drought and flooding are cutting into harvests. In the southwest, CARE said, rising transportation costs keep many families from reaching nutrition services like the one serving Woodley.
A vendor carries trays of eggs through the city center of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Oct. 26, 2026. Inflation near 17% is eroding what Haitian households can afford to buy. (Photo by Clarens Siffroy/AFP via Getty Images)
Aid workers describe the same strain across the country. Dianna Darsney, CARE’s global humanitarian director, said families are cutting meals, selling belongings and borrowing money to buy food, leaving children and pregnant and breastfeeding women weaker and sicker. She said women and girls are the most affected, especially women running households alone.
“Burdened to care for and prioritize others, they tend to eat least and last,” Darsney said.
A woman carries a pot and a charcoal stove in a shelter for displaced people at the Rex Theatre in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 13, 2026. (Photo by Clarens Siffroy/AFP via Getty Images)
CARE also warned that hunger is pushing women and children toward dangerous choices. Some women are trading sex for food or money to feed their families, a practice CARE calls survival sex. Some families are resorting to child marriage, and some children are being recruited into armed groups.
Women and girls also face direct violence from those groups. According to CARE, the U.N. Security Council was recently told that nearly 700 women and girls reported being raped by gangs in July and August alone.
Save the Children said in an Oct. 29 statement that nearly one in two children in Haiti is experiencing severe hunger. The country relies heavily on rain-fed agriculture, and the organization said El Niño-related rainfall shortages and above-average temperatures are already affecting crops and threatening future harvests.
New violence and flooding are adding to the losses. Nearly 14,000 people fled Petite-Rivière de l’Artibonite after violence erupted Oct. 19, according to the International Organization for Migration, as noted in an Oct. 29 U.N. briefing. Artibonite is one of Haiti’s key farming regions. In the south and southwest, heavy rain and flooding in late October displaced thousands and destroyed farmland, CARE said, citing The Associated Press. Harvests there had already been weakened by Hurricane Melissa in 2025.
Communities taking in displaced families are stretched as well. “Many people are moving to other departments, placing additional pressure on host communities,” said Nathalie Éléonor Vilgrain, co-founder and general coordinator of MARIJÀN, a youth-led feminist organization working in Port-au-Prince and southern Haiti. CARE said local women-led groups receive a disproportionately small share of available funding.
“When survivors turn to us as a local organization, we want to be able to support them,” Vilgrain said.
Funding has not kept pace with need. WFP has supported 2.6 million Haitians so far in 2026 through emergency food and cash, school meals, social protection and malnutrition prevention for young children. Seventy-four percent of its school meals are made with food grown by local farmers. The agency urgently needs $78 million to sustain operations through March. Less than half of the U.N.’s $880 million humanitarian appeal for Haiti this year has been funded, according to CARE.
“Our teams are witnessing increasing levels of desperation as violence continues to displace families,” said Lauren Landis, WFP’s country director in Haiti. Landis called for continued emergency food aid along with longer-term investments that help communities withstand shocks such as El Niño.
For Litane and millions of other Haitians, the immediate concern is finding enough food to get through another day. The latest projections suggest that without more humanitarian assistance, improved security and stronger support for local livelihoods, that struggle will grow harder in the months ahead.
Empowering Everyday Women Ministries, the nonprofit behind EEW Magazine Online, supports Haitian families through its Help & Hope for Haiti campaign. Through humanitarian organizations working in Cap-Haïtien and Quartier Morin, the campaign provides malnourished children with ready-to-use therapeutic food, known locally as Medika Mamba.
Reporting note: This article is based on the Oct. 28, 2026, IPC analysis and published statements from the World Food Programme, CARE, Save the Children and the Office of the Spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General. The account of Louis Litane and all attributed remarks come from those organizations’ reporting. No direct EEW interviews are represented.
