In Haiti, armed gangs terrorize the population. Within ten days, more than 40,000 people had to flee their homes. In addition, more and more children are being drawn into gang crime.
According to the United Nations, tens of thousands of people fled their homes in the capital Port-au-Prince within ten days due to escalated gang violence in the Caribbean state of Haiti. Between November 11th and 20th, more than 40,000 people were on the run in Port-au-Prince, some for the second or third time, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
This is the worst wave of displacement in two years. “The scale of this displacement is unprecedented since we began responding to the humanitarian crisis in 2022,” said IOM Haiti chief Gregoire Goodstein. According to IOM, a total of more than 700,000 people were displaced in Haiti. “This crisis is not just a humanitarian challenge. It is a test of our collective responsibility,” Goodstein continued.
The island state with ten million inhabitants has been in a serious crisis for years, to which not only gang violence but also political instability and economic hardship are contributing. According to the UN, hundreds of thousands of people have fled within the country as a result of gang violence.
Up to 50 percent of Gang members are children
In the meantime, more and more children are being drawn into gang crime. According to the UN children's fund UNICEF, the number of minors recruited by gangs increased by 70 percent last year. Between 30 and 50 percent of all members of criminal gangs in Haiti are now children. “This is a very worrying trend,” said UNICEF Haiti representative Geeta Narayan.
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch said that women and girls in Haiti often suffer horrific sexual abuse at the hands of gang members. Criminal gangs control around 85 percent of the capital Port-au-Prince.
Recently, those few neighborhoods that had previously been largely spared from the violence were repeatedly attacked. Boys are often used as scouts by the gangs because they are not perceived as a threat, Narayan told the AP news agency. But they would also be forced to fight. “They are not doing this voluntarily,” Narayan said. “Even if they are armed, the child is the victim here.”
The youngest children are only eight years old
In a country where more than 60 percent of the population lives on less than four euros a day and hundreds of thousands suffer from hunger, it is often easy to recruit children for crime. A minor who belonged to a gang said he received around 30 euros every Saturday, according to a UN Security Council report. Another said he received thousands of dollars in his first month in a gang.
“Children and families are becoming increasingly desperate in some cases due to extreme poverty,” Narayan said. When children refused to join a gang, gang members threatened them or their families or simply kidnapped them.
The gangs also targeted children separated from their families after being deported from the neighboring Dominican Republic. “These children are increasingly being targeted,” Narayan said. The children would then first have to prove themselves and would be promoted if they killed someone. The youngest of these recruited children are just eight years old. And the longer they have been in the gangs, the harder it is to reintegrate them into society, experts say.
