UNICEF warns that number of children in Haiti displaced by violence has nearly doubled

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The number of children displaced by violence in Haiti has almost doubled to 680,000, according to a new UNICEF report released Wednesday that warns that minors are increasingly facing hunger, violence and recruitment by armed groups in the Caribbean country.

In total, around 6 million Haitians, or half the country’s population, are in need of humanitarian assistance, including more than 3.3 million children, UNICEF said.

“Without decisive action, the future of an entire generation hangs in the balance,” the report said.

Gang violence has displaced a record 1.3 million Haitians in recent years, many of them crowding into makeshift shelters after the destruction of their communities.

The number of such shelters doubled nationwide to 246 in the first six months of the year, according to the report. Among them, more than 30% do not have infrastructure capable of ensuring basic protection.

Many shelters are located in dangerous areas, where gangs control up to 90% of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.

“In many areas, aid workers cannot reach communities safely and families cannot travel to clinics, food distribution points or schools,” the report notes.

Around 5.7 million people, including more than a million children, face acute hunger.

“This has to change,” said Géraldine Matha-Pierre, mother of two boys aged 13 and 15. “I’m hungry. My children are hungry.”

They have been living in a shelter for two years after gangs attacked their community, and Matha-Pierre often calls friends to see if they have food to send them.

She sold plantains, bananas and other crops from the Haitian countryside at a local market, but gang violence left her without a job to feed her children and send them to school.

Her two boys missed an entire school year, but Matha-Pierre says that a relative promised to help pay for them this year, even though classes have only just started.

In Haiti, at least one in four children is out of school, and violence has forced more than 1,080 schools to close this year, according to the UNICEF report.

During the last school year, more than 1,600 schools were closed and 25 were occupied by armed groups, affecting more than 243,400 students and 7,548 teachers, UNICEF found.

Meanwhile, 84 schools are being used as makeshift shelters this year, with displacement disrupting the education of nearly 500,000 school-age children, the report said.

Jeanette Salomon’s son, 20 years old, is one of those deprived of education.

“He doesn’t go to school, he doesn’t do anything,” she said.

She already lost her 13-year-old son to a stray bullet that hit him in the head two years ago, and she doesn’t want the gangs to recruit her eldest son.

“He has money and I don’t know where he gets the money from,” she said. “I’m very protective of him, because he’s all I have left.”

The UN verified more than 300 cases of armed groups recruiting and using children last year, almost double the previous year.

“Children as young as 10 are forced to carry weapons, serve as lookouts or human shields,” the report states. “Girls, in particular, face brutal risks of sexual violence, coercion and exploitation from members of armed groups. »

Caroline Germain, who lives in the same shelter as Salomon, says she is also worried about her son. But he’s 17 and she can barely move and keep up with him after losing her leg in the devastating 2010 earthquake.

“I hope he understands not to get involved in something stupid,” she said. “There is no one to protect him.”

The UNICEF report warns that many of the 1.6 million women and children living in areas controlled by armed groups are largely cut off from aid.

The agency noted that its humanitarian appeal for children in Haiti is only 13 percent funded and that programs to protect, feed and provide medical assistance to minors are limited.

“Haiti’s children are experiencing violence and displacement on a terrifying scale,” said Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF. “Every time they are forced to flee, they not only lose their home, but also the ability to go to school and just be children. »

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Dánica Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.