Nearly 100,000 people have fled the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince’s metropolitan area in a month to escape gang violence, which has escalated rapidly since last month, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday.

After starting to collect data on the most-used bus stations, it recorded, between March 8 and April 9, the departure of 94,821 people from the capital, mostly to southern prefectures, which had already received another 116,000 evacuees who fled in recent months , the IOM, part of the UN system, clarified in a statement.

A previous IOM estimate put 53,000 people fleeing in the three weeks from March 8 to 27.

The Agency underlines that these numbers do not necessarily reflect the totality of the flows of displaced people: some of the citizens who leave do not pass through points where data is collected, or spend hours that are not collected.

The areas where the displaced take refuge, the IOM stresses, “do not have adequate infrastructure”, nor do the host communities “have sufficient resources” to cope with these “flows of mass displacement from the capital”.

According to the data he collected, the majority (63%) of those nearly 100,000 people who fled the capital were already internally displaced, many of whom had gone to stay with relatives or friends in the capital’s metropolitan area. Several had been displaced two, three, or even more times.

However, the IOM also recorded a new phenomenon.

While, in early March, those leaving were mainly people who had already been forced to relocate, residents who had not been forcibly displaced so far also began to progressively leave Port-au-Prince.

A fact that shows the further “deterioration of the situation, given that leaving the capital should be a faster decision for someone who was already forcibly displaced than for someone who was still at home and decided to leave, seek refuge in the countryside,” he explains.

The vast majority (78%) of people surveyed by the IOM as part of the data collection said they were leaving the capital because of the violence, while 66% reckoned they would stay away from Port-au-Prince “for as long as necessary” ».

Haiti has been faced for decades with scourges such as poverty, natural disasters, political instability, the violence of armed thugs.

In late February, powerful gangs, which control most of the capital, joined forces and began launching attacks on police stations, prisons, the international airport and the main port, with the stated aim of ousting the de facto prime minister. Ariel Henri.

The latter, increasingly disputed, announced on March 11 that he would resign, leaving to a transitional council the task of naming his official successor. This council has finally been announced as being formed, but has not yet taken over.