Almost Half of All Haitians Are Without Food As UN Supplies Are 'Dwindling And Disappearing'

Almost half of Haiti's population is without food, a United Nation's agency said, as gang violence continues to ravage the country.

Concretely, the World Food Program (WFP) said that Haiti is one of five countries in the world facing catastrophic levels of hunger, the others being Mali, South Sudan, Sudan and the Gaza Strip. It added that its supplies are "dwindling and disappearing," and there is not enough food to help people entering the state of emergency.

Overall, 5.7 million Haitians are experiencing severe hunger, and 2 million are already in an emergency face. 8,400 are directly facing starvation.

"This year, we start the hurricane season with an empty warehouse where we have no stocks for assisting any emergencies," said Lola Castro, who leads the WFP's Latin American and Caribbean office.

"We are very concerned that a single storm can put hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti into a humanitarian catastrophe and danger," Castro added.

The WFP added that its school feeding program is also in danger of facing reductions due to lack of funding. "We normally assist around half a million children every day, but those numbers will be reduced to half" if the situation continues down this path, Castro said.

The official went on to say there is no more funding on the horizon, especially as the UN grapples with less funding following the Trump administration's decision to withhold funding. The government reportedly asked Congress to take back tens of millions of dollars earmarked to the UN.

The warning comes as gangs are increasingly closing in on the last neighborhood they don't control in the capital, Port-au-Prince, with only a band of self-defense groups led by a police officer standing between them and the transitional government.

The Financial Times reported this week that remaining fighters are engaging gang members in the street. However, as police and private contractors have begun using drones with explosives, gangs are now blasting through houses' walls to move around the neighborhoods.

The transitional government has hired U.S. military contractor Erik Prince to help its forces, largely to deploy drones aimed at killing gang members. The Washington Post reported in April about the effort to deploy weaponized drones, detailing that they are commercial models modified with improvised explosives. Authorities have yet to report a high-profile killing as a result from the strategy.

Prince has also been scouting Haitian American military veterans to hire and send to Port-au-Prince to aid forces there. He expects to send up to 150 mercenaries to the country over the summer and has already shipped a large amount of weapons there.