Hurricanes Fiona and Ian, which displaced thousands of people across the Caribbean as they battered several islands, risked plunging an already struggling region into a deeper food crisis and could trigger further migration, the regional director for the United Nations World Food Program for Latin America and the Caribbean said Friday.
Lola Castro, who is visiting Washington this week from Panama, said populations across the region were already struggling to make ends meet due to a lack of opportunities as well as the economic crises brought on by COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine when the storms hit, leaving millions in Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the Turks and Caicos and Cuba in the dark and in need of relief.
“We just saw the two biggest (hurricanes) of the season in two weeks; one in the Dominican Republic, very, very heavily affected, and Cuba,” she said, noting that there is still time to go in what could be a very busy storm season.
