Haiti's surge in gang violence has led more than 53,000 to flee the capital in less than three weeks

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — More than 53,000 people have fled Haiti’s capital in less than three weeks, the vast majority to escape unrelenting gang violence, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday.

More than 60% are headed to Haiti’s rural southern region, which worries U.N. officials.

“Our humanitarian colleagues emphasized that these departments do not have sufficient infrastructure, and host communities do not have sufficient resources, to cope with the large number of people fleeing Port-au-Prince,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The southern region already hosts more than 116,000 Haitians who previously left Port-au-Prince, according to the report by the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration.

The exodus from the capital of some 3 million people began shortly after powerful gangs launched a series of attacks on government institutions at the end of February. Gunmen have burned police stations, opened fire on the main international airport that remains closed and stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.

More than 1,500 people have been reported killed up to March 22, and another 17,000 have been left homeless, according to the U.N.

Among the rare travelers trying to head north instead of south from the capital were Marjorie Michelle-Jean, a 42-year-old street vendor, and her two children, ages 4 and 7.

“I want to see them alive,” she said, explaining that stray bullets keep hitting the tin roof of their home. Last week, they tried twice to travel to her hometown of Mirebalais in central Haiti but were forced to turn back because of roadblocks.

“I will definitely try again,” she said. “It’s absolutely not safe in Port-au-Prince.”

Of the 53,125 people who fled Port-au-Prince from March 8-27, nearly 70% already had been forced to abandon their homes and were living with relatives or in crowded and unsanitary makeshift shelters across the capital, the U.N. found.

More than 90% of Haitians leaving the capital have been crowding into buses, risking travel through gang-controlled territory where gang rapes have been reported and gunmen have been known to open fire on public transport.

The violence forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce last month that he would resign once a transitional presidential council is created. Henry was in Kenya to push for the U.N.-backed deployment of a police force from the East African country when the attacks began, and he remains locked out of Haiti.

The transitional council, which will be responsible for choosing a new prime minister and council of ministers, has yet to be formally established.

Meanwhile, the mass migration from Port-au-Prince is expected to continue.

But Gary Dorval, 29, who was among a handful of people joining a demonstration on Tuesday, said he wants to stay until a new government is installed: “I want to be part of the change.”

Associated Press reporters Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

A man runs for cover as riot police launch tear gas in an effort to remove street vendors in the Champs de Mars area, next to the National Palace, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Men run for cover as riot police launch tear gas in an effort to disperse people near the National Palace, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

An armored police car patrols the General Hospital area, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

A man walks past, near the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Street vendors withdraw from the area where they were selling their bread, near the National Palace, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

A man looks for salvageable items at a car mechanic shop that was set fire during gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

People look for salvageable items at a car mechanic shop that was set on fire during gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Youth take cover after hearing gunshots at a public school that serves as a shelter for people displaced by gang violence, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, March 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

People look for salvageable pieces from burned cars at a mechanic shop that was set on fire during violence by armed gangs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, March 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

People observe the body of a man lying on the street of the Delmas 30 neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, April 1, 2024. Witnesses reported that he was struck by a stray bullet during a shootout between police and gangs. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (AP) — Dam Chan Nguyen saves dead and dying computers.

When he first started working two decades ago in Nhat Tao market, Ho Chi Minh City’s biggest informal recycling market, he usually salvaged computers with bulky monitors and heavy processors. Now he works mostly with laptops and the occasional MacBook.

But the central tenet of his work hasn't changed: Nothing goes to waste. What can be fixed is fixed. What can be salvaged gets re-used elsewhere. What's left is sold as scrap.

“We utilize everything possible,” he said.

The shop he works at is one of many in a market that spreads across several streets filled with haggling customers. Most repair shops are a single room crammed with junked electronic devices or e-waste with tables placed outside. Workers, many of them migrants from across Vietnam, repair or salvage items like laptops, scarred mobile phones, camera lenses, television remotes, even entire air conditioning units. Other shops sell brand-new electronics alongside old, refurbished items.

The bustle is emblematic of a world that is producing more e-waste than ever — 62 million metric tons in 2022, projected to grow to 82 million metric tons by 2030, according to a report by the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union and research arm UNITAR. Asian countries generate almost half of it.

“We are currently generating e-waste at an unprecedented rate,” said Garam Bel, e-waste officer at the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union.

Managing that waste is crucial. It's filling up landfills at an alarming pace and dangerous chemicals like lead leak into the environment and harm human health. It also means missing out on recoverable resources — $62 billion worth in 2022, according to the U.N. report.

And that waste is rising five times faster than formal recycling.

Less than a quarter of electronic waste was properly collected and recycled in 2022. Some of the rest winds up in the hands of informal waste workers, like Nguyen, in different parts of the world. That’s especially the case in Southeast Asian nations where, the UN report found, none of the electronic waste is formally collected or recycled.

Nguyen, 44, is one of three employees in the shop. His long years in the business have led to relationships with regular customers, including some other computer repair centers who rely on him for tricky jobs. It requires keeping up with changing trends and technology, so he’s constantly learning via friends and the internet.

He works 11 hours a day for a monthly salary of around $470 — about 2 1/2 times the minimum wage in Vietnam's biggest and most expensive city — with quick meals as his only breaks.

It's demanding work that doesn't come with health benefits or a retirement plan. Nguyen's health is OK, but he worries about potentially dangerous chemicals in the electronic devices he dismantles without protective gear.

Then there's Ho Chi Minh City's increasing extreme heat. The little shop can feel like an oven, particularly in summer.

“Sitting here can feel like death,” he said. “I just have to endure. I must work to make a living."

Informal waste workers like Nguyen can help solve a problem that plagues formal operations: Getting their hands on enough waste to make recycling cost-effective. They don't wait for people to bring it to them.

In Vietnam, for instance, waste workers fan out to people’s homes and collect waste that can be salvaged from bins at street corners. Others, like Nguyen, have established networks to acquire discarded electronics.

“We source used items from everywhere — anyone who sells, I buy,” he said.

Formal recycling companies typically have certifications for dismantling and recycle electronic devices using sophisticated machinery. They also take more precautions for the health risks of e-waste, which can include toxic components. For instance, crude processes like melting plastic circuit boards to recover valuable copper can expose people to highly toxic and persistent chemicals called dioxins that, in high levels, are linked to birth defects and cancer. Some devices also contain mercury.

Copper, gold, silver and even some tiny amounts of rare earth minerals — necessary for smartphones, computer displays and LED light bulbs — can be recovered from recycling. Only about 1% of the demand for 17 of those key minerals is met through recycling, according to the U.N. report. Bel, of the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union, said he had no data on how much of those minerals are recovered via informal recycling.

Bel said that formal recyclers should try and work with informal workers to get access to more waste without hurting the livelihoods of the informal workers. That could have other advantages, like mitigating health risks for the informal workers, and ensuring that they don't cherry-pick the most valuable parts of any waste and dump the rest.

Such collaborations are already being attempted in some places. In the Indian capital of New Delhi, for instance, a company called EcoWork has built a co-working space where informal recyclers can dismantle their waste. They can use modern machines to do it more safely, and aggregating it means better prices while also saving on transportation costs. And that makes it easier for companies that want to buy the salvaged materials at a scale that isn’t possible otherwise.

“You can’t just say: Stop the informal sector from working on e-waste,” said Deepali Khetriwal, the co-founder of EcoWork.

Nguyen said that a similar collaboration of informal and formal waste workers in Vietnam would be great for informal workers in Vietnam. He'd have more computers to fix and salvage and make more money. “If we could formalize our work, that would be perfect,” he said.

The Southeast Asian nation is among the few countries in the region with laws to deal with e-waste. It set up a national plan to manage e-waste in 2020, aiming to collect and treat 70% of it by 2025, and has been trying to integrate informal workers into formal systems to give them better protections.

Stopping isn’t an option for the tens of thousands of mostly women waste collectors like Nguyen Thi Hoan, 52. Unlike waste recyclers, where there are many more men, the collectors trudge several miles daily in Vietnam looking for trash. It's one of the few things that women on the margins can do.

Hoan moved to Ho Chi Minh City over a decade ago from the coastal Binh Dinh province in central Vietnam to try to escape poverty. She wakes every day at 4 a.m. in the tiny room she shares with two other people. She pushes her scrap cart – her biggest investment, costing $40 -- around Nhat Tao market from 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., collecting scrap from shop owners.

Electronic waste is the most valuable and she still remembers the time somebody sold her an old refrigerator. But all waste, ranging from aluminum or iron to the ubiquitous plastic and paper, has some value. On rare good days, she can collect up to 30 kilograms and make around $8.

She rarely takes breaks, but sometimes stops for water out of exhaustion from pushing the heavy cart around in extreme heat. At those times, she enjoys reading Doraemon comics — Japanese comic books about a time-traveling robotic cat – that she finds on her routes or gets as gifts from those who know of her fondness for the comics.

“I have to devote myself to this job as it’s my only option,” she said.

Ghosal reported from Hanoi.

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Waste workers load casings of various home appliances onto their trucks in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. Less than a quarter of electronic waste was properly collected and recycled in 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A Buddha head statue sits atop used electronic devices while shoppers browse for items at Nhat Tao Market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A shopper attempts to untangle used wired earphones in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A technician repairs a TV in a shop in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. The world is producing more electronic waste than ever. And it's growing faster than formal efforts to recycle it. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A waste worker fills out paperwork after dropping off a bag of copper at a recycling shop in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A worker tosses the shell of an air conditioner onto a pile after disassembling it in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. The world is producing more electronic waste than ever. And it's growing faster than formal efforts to recycle it. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

An e -waste collector uses a cleaver to remove copper wire from a device in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Shoppers crowd the street in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Vendors toast with beer, with piles of used electronic devices behind them, in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Used laptops and other refurbished electronic devices are for sale in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Used remote controls for various home appliances are lit by afternoon sunlight in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Used charging cables and power adapters are piled up at a shop in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Used smartphone batteries for sale are scattered on a tarp in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A technician works on an audio device in his repair shop in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A woman hauls a cart full of cardboard for recycling as the sun sets in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Bao Loc eats his lunch in his shop packed with refurbished gear motors in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Truong Huu Co removes plastic components from a washing machine in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. The world is producing more electronic waste than ever. And it's growing faster than formal efforts to recycle it. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Shoppers and vendors crowd the street in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A boy in a school uniform sits next to a vendor selling used remote controls for various home appliances in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A man sits on a scooter with shells of home appliances loaded on the back of his bike in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Tu Chi Vy tiptoes through his shop packed with refurbished motors in Nhat Tao Market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A man sitting on a scooter purchases a used remote control for a home appliance from a vendor in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. The world is producing more electronic waste than ever. And it's growing faster than formal efforts to recycle it. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A vendor selling used remote controls for various home appliances takes a nap in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)