Giulia Di Pierri, April 2024
© Roger LeMoyne and U.S. CDC Over 2,500 people have lost their lives to gang violence in Haiti. (United Nations, 2023)
The streets of Haiti have become the scene for horrors of violence by criminal gangs, and the population is being victimized. Under an absentee government and a complete lack of public resources to address this crisis, children are the first to suffer the catastrophic consequences, living amidst the rubble and massacres and without access to education and health resources.
Since the beginning of 2024, the wave of violence already established over the past few years on the island of Haiti has only increased scandalously, to the detriment of its population. The cause remains the same: the presence of criminal gangs in the city. If between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 the number of acts of violence toward the civilian population ranged from 45 to 73 cases (UNICEF, 2021), the intensification of this last period reports 4,451 killings during 2023 and 1,554 until March 2024 alone. In just three years, the numbers of violent acts inflicted on the population have multiplied a little less than 100 times and are steadily increasing, as data from these early months of this year show.
But why have gangs increased aggression to such an extent? The explanation, as is often the case, falls on the country's political crisis. Since the establishment of its constitution in 1987, the Haitian government has tried in vain to find democratic stability to which it aspires. On the contrary, we are witnessing the reverse phenomenon, with not only an increasingly unstable government but one that is absent. After the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021, the government was entrusted by interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry, and to describe him as detested by the population seems like an understatement (AfricaNews, 2024).
After the failed election attempt this February, public institutions led by armed government protestor groups forced Henry to announce his resignation from office on March 12th, already weakened by the current state of control of more than 90 % of the capital Port-au-Price by criminal gangs (Save the Children, 2024).
And it is precisely in the terrain of countless unsuccessful attempts toward democratic governance that armed criminal groups can luxuriantly increase their control over the territory, bending the population to conditions that cannot be further from respect for Human Rights.
The way the growth of gang power affects the population consists of complete indifference to the point of exhaustion of basic needs and respect for human dignity. In particular, on Haitian children.
Plan International Haiti, in December 2023 identified the state of emergency concerning access to nutrition, education and personal safety. Gangs clog food resources and it has been estimated that 46% of the population expresses that they are only slightly above the standardized state of hunger as "famine," which particularly impacts families, where parents give up 6 days out of 7 to feed themselves to feed their children.
Lack of food can lead families, not only to extreme malnutrition but also to make desperate decisions. An example of this phenomenon is the increase in sexual exploitation of young women and girls to earn money, as well as forced child marriages due to the inability of parents to provide for their vital needs (Plan International, 2024). In this way, we find the consequences of civil conflict on gender-based inequalities, which are taken to the extreme, particularly through everyday occurrence of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls (Plan International, 2024; WorldVision, 2024)
Rape and abuse have become a tool that gangs use to keep the population in a state of terror, as well as poverty and exhaustion (Plan International, 2024). Indeed, frequent are the cases of women who have been forced to witness the killing of their loved ones only to be sexually abused and then eventually, killed. However, the murders and violence are not only aimed at the degradation of human dignity, but also at the access to resources.
Gangs continue to engage in burning down countless public and private buildings in cities, leaving entire families homeless and consequently, preventing children, not only from the security of having a home and family, but also from being able to access a school education, as well as basic health services (Save the Children International, 2024). AfricaNews (2024) estimated that approximately 360,000 children have been forced to leave their homes due to attacks, the majority of whom are months away from entering a school classroom. Another key issue that undermines child safety in this period of conflict is the risk of kidnapping and recruitment by gangs, which are estimated to be made up of 30-50% of underaged members. Indeed, the victims most at risk are unaccompanied boys and girls who have dropped out of school (Plan International, 2024).
Currently, Haiti finds itself unable to offer resources to be able to support its people, a reason why funds from international organizations come to its rescue. Numerous international associations, such as UNICEF, Save the Children and Plan International are involved in supporting the Haitian people, providing resources such as food and health resources, as well as a possible way to flee the country, while at the same time calling for an end to the violence.
As an NGO, Terre des Hommes Suisse, with the support of seven local partners with whom it has been working with the objective of free quality education in Haiti since 1989, as well as training school personnel to respond to dangerous situations from natural disasters. There are currently 12,800 youth and children who have benefited from Terre des Hommes Suisse's daily support to provide them with the security and well-being that will enable them to receive an education as the Human right that it is.
Bibliography
AfricaNews. (2024, March 30). Education, child safety under threat in Haiti. Africanews. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://www.africanews.com/2024/03/30/education-child-safety-under-threat-in-haiti/
Duss, B. P. (2024, March 20). World Vision warns of grave impacts to children in Haiti resulting from escalating gang violence | World Vision. World Vision. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://www.worldvision.org/about-us/media-center/world-vision-warns-of-grave-impacts-to-children-in-haiti-resulting-from-escalating-gang-violence
Phillips, T., Bland, A., & Holmes, O. (2024, March 12). Haiti : what caused the gang violence and will it end now the PM has quit ? The Guardian. Retrieved april 5, 2024, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/08/haiti-crisis-gang-jailbreak-explained
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Terre des Hommes Suisse. (2024, February 15). Nos projets à Haïti. Retrieved April 6, 2024, from https://terredeshommessuisse.ch/notre-action/international/haiti/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwwr6wBhBcEiwAfMEQs830Jk_Rv9V65EJ7hF_-yjGPDEG-cOgygNJ6gSYYY4f_v9QdV-GxthoCV_0QAvD_BwE
UNICEF. (2021, April 15). Rising gang violence in Haiti is now targeting children, UNICEF warns. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/press-releases/rising-gang-violence-haiti-now-is-targeting-children-unicef-warns
UNICEF. (2021, April 15). Rising gang violence in Haiti is now targeting children, UNICEF warns. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/press-releases/rising-gang-violence-haiti-now-is-targeting-children-unicef-warns
United Nations. (2023, September 1). Haiti violence: ‘Carnage needs to stop’ says UN relief chief. UN News. Retrieved April 6, 2024, from https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1140317
United Nations. (2024, February 9). Haiti: Human rights deteriorating as gang violence spreads. UN News. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146407
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