MIAMI – Haiti is in the grips of a humanitarian crisis not seen in decades.
Violent gangs have forced the country into a lockdown for weeks.
It’s a crisis too complicated to explain, but it’s easy to see why humanitarian groups are calling conditions in the Caribbean nation “catastrophic.”
Violent gangs have been controlling the country for so long, they’re now making demands.
Cholera, a deadly bacteria in food or water, is once again on the rise, with children making up half all cases, according to UNICEF.
If not cholera, it’s Haiti’s stifling poverty.
Thousands are said to be starving to death. On a scale of one to five in terms of severity, international groups say Haiti is now at level five.
“It’s not false advertisement,” Claude Joseph, Haiti’s former acting prime minister, said in an interview with Local 10 News anchor Calvin Hughes. “People are dying.”
Last July, Joseph was in charge of Haiti after his friend, President Jovenel Moise, was assassinated.
Photos of him welcoming a grieving Martine Moise back into the country went viral.
“That was such a moment for me in my life, when she held my hands with such a strength that I wonder where she got that from,” Joseph said.
Haiti’s first lady herself was recovering from gunshot wounds at the time.
She sat down for an exclusive interview with Local 10 News last September.
Her husband’s murder unsolved and the investigation is stalled.
Haiti is on America’s doorstep, but the U.S. is in no rush to help.
With the country on the verge of collapse, the international community is considering military intervention, but many outspoken Haitians are not in favor.
“We can not go that way now—perhaps we can have a specific task force to go into Haiti to train our police and eventually work with our army,” Joseph said. “I see how Ukraine is resisting. Even though these are two different realities, thanks to the helps of Western powers, I think if they really wanted to help us, the training would take only 30 days.”