Today in Haiti 1.2 million children live under the constant threat of armed violence. The gangs have an established operating routine: they attack, rob, set fire to houses and cars, and in the end they kill the civilian population, either directly themselves or through stray bullets.
Joel Michel Varona
The gangs are carrying out an offensive in the capital and the surrounding area. In 2024 they controlled 80% of the area; now 85% is under their power, which represents a gradual and very dangerous advance.
Towards the end of February, criminal groups assaulted the Delmas 30 district of Port-au-Prince. An adolescent was shot dead and his body burned. To prevent scavenger birds finishing the job, a member of his family took the youngster’s lifeless remains to the cemetery in a wheelbarrow.
Locals denounce the emergency services’ inaction, including that of the paramedics who did not want to intervene due to fears for their own safety.
Another tragedy occurred when members of a gang burned a baby in front of its mother’s eyes. It happened during the siege of the Kenscoff commune when bandits started a fight with Eliana Thélémaque and ordered her to throw her child on a bonfire they had lit. Thélémaque refused so the gang did not hesitate to seize her baby and throw it onto the flames.
The young mother went mad and began wandering the streets aimlessly, constantly repeating, “I can still hear my baby’s cries in the flames. I would have preferred to die.”
Thélémaque was taken to the Pétion-Ville police station where she received basic psychological care but the pain was too great and in the night her heart failed and she died.
In Christ-Roi, a district of Puerto Príncipe, an adolescent lost his life after being hit in the neck by a stray bullet in his house.
These are some of the tragic episodes of childhood in Haiti.
Behind every murdered child or adolescent is a life destroyed, dreams stolen and families plunged into mourning. Save The Children reported that in 2024 gang attacks left 289 children dead or wounded. Armed groups were responsible for an average of 24 minors murdered every month, a 68% increase on the 172 children killed in 2023.
However, according to the NGO the real number of child victims is probably much higher. More than one in three murdered children in the final quarter of 2024 belonged to a criminal gang.
Chantal Sylvie, Director of Save The Children in Haiti, laments that children who live in conflict zones cannot attend school, play outdoors or walk freely down the street, as their lives are permanently under threat.
They cannot sleep at night, Sylvie continues, due to the worry their houses will be set alight and they will be displaced again. She denounces the recruitment by the gangs of hundreds of children who are forced to loot, kidnap and even kill to survive. Unicef (the United Nations Children’s Fund) describes the growth in sexual violence against children as astonishing. Children suffer unimaginable horrors at the hands of the gangs according to Unicef who state that the incidence of sexual violence was ten times greater in 2024 than in 2023.
For its part, The Departmental Initiative against Child Trafficking and Smuggling (IDETTE) revealed that in 2024 the number of rapes rose to 186, of which 173 were of minors.
Another tragedy affecting Haitian children is recruitment by the gangs, which in 2024 rose by 70%.
At present, half of armed group members are children, some as young as eight years old. Many have been recruited by force, while poverty has led others to become killing machines. PL
(Translated by Philip Walker – Email: philipwalkertranslation@gmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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