Five children have been killed or injured in Haiti for every week of the first six months of 2024, caught in the crossfire of warring gangs.
At least 131 children have been killed or injured so far this year, according to analysis of UN Data by Save the Children – up 47% on the final six months of 2023 when 89 cases were documented.
Most were hit by stray bullets when armed gangs launched machine gun assaults on their neighbourhood or battled with other armed groups and the police in the streets.
A small but growing number of those children have been actively targeted out of suspicions they supported a local self-defence group, rival gang or the police. Others were lynched by the public after being accused of committing minor offences, according to the aid organisation Save the Children.
“We are at a loss for words when it comes to the unimaginable suffering children in Haiti are enduring. Entire neighbourhoods have been burned, kidnappings and sexual assaults are rampant, and children are being directly targeted or caught in the crossfire,” said Chantal Sylvie Imbeault, the group’s country director for Haiti.
Armed gangs control about 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. They joined forces in March to oust acting prime minister Ariel Henry, laying siege to the international airport and torching police stations and hospitals.
Haiti’s new acting leader, Garry Conille, took office in June after being appointed by a transitional council and has been trying to regain control, with 400 Kenyan police officers dispatched to the Caribbean country to help restore order.
Analysts say the taskforce will need reinforcements to take on the gangs, however, and local groups have voiced concerns that their ranks are swelling with children who are being recruited to kidnap, loot and murder.
Haiti’s deep and rampant poverty makes it easy to convince children to take up arms or work as informants, say civil society groups. With one in two children regularly going hungry and schools often closed, the offer of regular food can be sufficient.
“There’s a lot of young boys, and a lot of girls too, that are joining the gangs for security, but also because they don’t have any opportunities,” said Emmline Toussaint, from the Bureau de Nutrition et Développement (BND).
BND offers school meals to try to keep children in education and off the streets, where they are more likely to be recruited into taking up arms.
Save the Children released a statement in June warning that it believed more children would be at risk of being killed or seriously injured when international security forces were deployed to Haiti.
Observers have voiced concerns that Kenyan officers with a chequered human rights record at home could be heavy-handed when trying to retake control of the country from the gangs, and Save the Children said it had not seen evidence that the security forces had measures in place to protect the children that live in gang-controlled slums.
“We still have serious concerns about the integration of child protection measures by the Multinational Security Support Mission. With armed groups in Haiti actively recruiting children, their safety cannot be an afterthought,” Imbeault said.
The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin and Chad have offered to send forces to Haiti to bolster the initial Kenyan deployment but the security mission lacks the required international funding.
