A record number of people – almost 1.3 million – have been internally displaced in Haiti due to violence, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

That represents a 24% increase since December 2024, according to the UN report, which added that it was "the highest number of people displaced by violence ever recorded in the country."

Haiti has long suffered from the violence of criminal gangs, accused of murders, rapes, pillaging and kidnappings, amid political instability.

"Behind these numbers are so many individual people whose suffering is immeasurable," said Amy Pope, director general of the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM), in a statement.

'Forced to flee multiple times'

Many of those people have been "forced to flee their homes multiple times, often with nothing, and now living in conditions that are neither safe nor sustainable", Pope added.

According to the IOM, Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince remains the epicentre of the crisis but gang violence has spread beyond the city.

"Recent attacks in the Centre and Artibonite departments have forced tens of thousands more residents to flee, many now living in precarious conditions and makeshift shelters," the agency said.

In the Artibonite region, "violence in Petite Riviere alone has driven thousands more from their homes, bringing the total number of displaced people in the area to over 92,000," the statement read.

Fleeing to other parts of Haiti

In Haiti, although nearly a quarter of all internally displaced people live in Port au Prince, "increasing numbers of people are fleeing to other parts of the country in search of safety. In the North, the number of people forced from their homes has grown by nearly 80 percent," the IOM said.