As UN-backed forces arrive, Haitians wait for normality to return

Majorie Edoi sells food from a stand in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince – or she used to until a conflict with armed gangs cut off the city from suppliers, paralysed trade routes and pushed the Caribbean country to its highest levels of hunger on record.

The 30-year-old mother of three now sells food out of one of the many makeshift camps for displaced people set up in schools across the city.

But with goods harder to come by, opportunities to provide for her children are shrinking fast.

“We can’t buy anything. We can’t eat. We can’t drink,” she said. “I’d like there to be a legitimate government to establish security so we can move around and sell goods, so the children can go to school.”

About five million people in Haiti, nearly half its population, are struggling to feed themselves due to the violence, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an international benchmark used to assess hunger.