UN rights expert urges urgent action as Haiti crisis worsens

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The United Nations' expert on human rights in Haiti said on Friday that the situation in the conflict-hit Caribbean nation had worsened and efforts to rebuild security must be amplified as a security mission deadline fast approaches.

"The solutions are there, and they already exist. But efforts must be redoubled immediately," U.N. expert William O'Neill said as he concluded a visit to Haiti. "This enduring agony must stop. It is a race against time."

Powerful gangs armed largely with weapons trafficked from the United States have taken over most of the capital and expanded to nearby areas, driving mass displacement, food and medical shortages, record hunger and widespread sexual violence.

Its former government requested an international security mission to help police in 2022, and with less than two weeks left on the mission's initial one-year mandate, less than a quarter of promised troops have deployed and results remain scarce.

"The equipment it has received is inadequate, and its resources are insufficient," O'Neill said, adding that firearms and ammunition continue to be smuggled in, allowing gangs to carry out large-scale attacks and expand their territories.

Some 700,000 are now internally displaced and half of these are children, he added, up from nearly 580,000 estimated in June.

Southern areas previously not impacted by the conflict are now seeing soaring inflation, lack of key supplies and flows of displaced people, while sexual violence, child trafficking and child recruitment into gangs have all increased, he said.

Well under a third of the country's health services are functioning normally and close to 5 million people are facing severe hunger, notably in prisons where several dozen inmates have died in unsanitary, crowded cells with lack of food.

More than 8 in 10 of prisoners have not sat trials and anti-graft units have struggled to contain corruption that "corrodes the system at every level" with "almost complete impunity," he said.

So far, around 400 of at least 2,900 troops promised by a handful of countries to help Haiti's police have arrived, and just $63 million paid into the U.N.'s dedicated trust fund.

(Reporting by Sarah Morland and Harold Isaac, editing by Deepa Babington)