Haiti Key Message Update: Hurricane Melissa and persistent insecurity worsen acute food insecurity, November 2025 – Haiti | ReliefWeb
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Haiti
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11 Dec 2025
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10 Dec 2025
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Several areas of the Port-au-Prince Metropolitan Zone (ZMPP), including Cité Soleil, Croix-des-Bouquets, Port-au-Prince, and IDP sites, remain in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), while most rural areas of the country remain in Crisis (IPC Phase 3). Poor households face a combination of crop losses, atypically high food prices, and persistent insecurity, leading to increased reliance on negative coping strategies such as reducing the number of daily meals, selling productive assets, forced migration, contracting risky debt, begging, and resorting to informal or high-risk mechanisms, including survival sex. FEWS NET estimates that between 3.0 and 3.49 million people will require food assistance between November 2025 and May 2026, with needs peaking during the lean season (April–May).
Insecurity continues to deteriorate in the ZMPP, Artibonite, and Central Plateau. Armed group activity is paralyzing mobility, markets, and essential services, exacerbating internal displacement affecting more than 1.4 million people, including 210,000 in the ZMPP. According to PLSO, no major area is considered safe. BINUH reports 1,247 deaths, 710 injuries, 145 kidnappings, and more than 400 cases of sexual violence linked to gang activity during Q3 2025. Since September, approximately 45,000 people have been displaced, some multiple times (CCCM).
The impacts of Hurricane Melissa at the end of October, with rainfall totals exceeding 250 mm, have significantly worsened food security conditions in several regions. According to the WFP, more than 1.25 million people were affected in the South, Southeast, Nippes, Grand’Anse, and West departments, with over 11,900 homes flooded or damaged and nearly 16,000 people sheltered in temporary facilities. Agricultural losses are substantial, including the destruction of autumn crops (banana, maize, sorghum, roots and tubers, pigeon peas) in the hardest-hit communes, damage to irrigation infrastructure, and road blockages limiting market access. These shocks have sharply reduced food availability and household agricultural income.
Food prices remain atypically high nationwide, well above the five-year average, driven by the seasonal absence of harvests and crop losses from Hurricane Melissa. In hurricane-affected areas, price increases are particularly pronounced. For example, yellow maize in Jérémie rose 31 percent between September and October — further constraining poor households’ economic access to food.
Despite significant scale up in areas affected by Hurricane Melissa, emergency food assistance remains far below needs. Of the 360,000 people identified by WFP as requiring immediate assistance, only 12,700 (3.5 percent) were reached during initial distributions. A second phase aims to assist about 190,000 people, but implementation depends on security, logistics, and funding. According to OCHA, the Humanitarian Response Plan for Haiti, estimated at $908 million, is only 21 percent funded.
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