PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — United Nations (UN) chief Antonio Guterres apologised to Haitians Tuesday for what he said was their abandonment by the international community but noted during a visit to the violence-plagued Caribbean nation that there were “glimmers” of hope.

The secretary-general, who last travelled to Port-au-Prince in July 2023, visited a former school called Colombie that has been transformed into housing for more than 1,250 people displaced by violence.

In a stiflingly hot tin-roofed room a mother of four told Guterres about the insufferable conditions her family is living in. “Fifty people to a room, 10 families, with no privacy,” she said, while her neighbour complained of bedbugs and children being deprived of school.