The phrase "a desperate plight" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation of extreme difficulty or distress that someone is experiencing.
Example: "The refugees found themselves in a desperate plight, struggling to find food and shelter in the harsh conditions."
Alternatives: "a dire situation" or "a critical condition".
The gritty 2009 film Sin Nombre, for example, about a girl from Honduras and a boy from a Mexican gang, captures the dangers of many a desperate plight.
4. Brown is not going to take any big risks before the general election Labour is in such a desperate plight that some in the party would have liked Brown to have surprised the conference with a dramatic policy announcement, a "game-changer", such as the cancellation of the Trident upgrade (which some polls suggest would be popular).
Once the lovers, spurning all advice, are bound in matrimony, they move to Bechuanaland, only to be kept apart for long periods, with Seretse detained against his will in England and his wife marooned in Africa: a desperate plight for the two of them, but not much fun for us, either, as we listen to them hollering down the phone.
That is because I know that beggars, from the outrageously brash to the pathetically passive, are almost always in a truly desperate plight.
"However, I have been able to talk about my situation and will continue to do so because there are others in a similar desperate plight that are not seen.
"It was the simple and unexamined impulse of human souls, drawn together in face of a common and desperate plight".
There is skillful direction of the crowd in the ruined camp, in which a sense of their desperate plight and their shattered nerves is well conveyed.
Later Cooke tried – and failed – to get a film commissioned about the desperate plight of the planet's amphibians; a third of which are threatened with extinction, a situation she likens to the wiping out of the dinosaurs.
Today, a further response to the desperate plight of Syrian children is once more urgently required".
But step inside a hostel for IDPs and their desperate plight is brought into sharp, disturbing relief.
A video released by Rudaw, a Kurdish news organization, gives a glimpse of those operations, as well as the desperate plight of those trapped on the mountaintop, besieged by extremists from the Islamic State.
