Daily Tragedy

Roseline* was on her way to buy groceries when multiple gang members forced her to get in a van. The 16-year-old girl was taken to a warehouse, where she and other girls were beaten up, drugged, and raped for weeks. The plan of the kidnappers was to  exchange her for ransom. Such stories are far from unusual in Haiti.

The Bigger Picture: Children’s Suffering

The power of preexisting gangs exponentially grew since the 2010 earthquake, filling the vacuum left by a corrupted and failed Haitian state. As of 2025, they control up to 85% of the capital Port-au-Prince and imposed their tyrannous reign on the entire population, including children. According to UNICEF, around 3,000,000 children in Haiti are in need of humanitarian assistance, and 1 out of 8 children have been displaced. This marks a 50% increase only from September 2024. Children are direct victims of the gangs’ violence, with at least 289 killed or injured in 2024. Sexual violence against children is used as a weapon of terror by the gangs, with 566 verified cases reported the same year, making it the highest figure in the entire world.

The Scourge of Kidnappings

Kidnappings increased significantly over the last few years in Haiti, with a spike of more than 2,000 cases in 2024 (all ages combined). The proportion of children among these reported cases is difficult to estimate because of a lack of data. Despite that, youngsters can constitute particularly vulnerable targets since gangs are “using children as bargaining chips and making money off of parents’ love for their children.”, according to UNICEF. However, ransom is not the only way for gangs to get to their profits, as shown by the events of Ouanaminthe, a city located at the border with the Dominican Republic. At least ten children, as young as 5 years old, have been kidnapped between January and April 2025 in the city, without any ransom requests. When Naydjelie Similien, aged 10, came back home, she was traumatised, and a part of her thumb had been removed.

Food Insecurity and Malnutrition

As of 2025, around 289,000 children suffer from acute malnutrition. This is directly linked to gang violence, which impacted agricultural production and supply chains, made food prices rise, and blocked or slowed the delivery of humanitarian aid. Additionally, 2.85 million children (one quarter of the Haitian child population) are facing high levels of food insecurity. The IPC update for March to June 2025 estimated that 51% of the whole population (5.7 million people) experience a level of acute food insecurity – IPC phase 3 or above. More precisely, around 2.1 million individuals are expected to be in IPC phase 4 (emergency), compared to 386,000 in early 2019.

Abduction Into Gangs

All gangs in Haiti count minors in their ranks and exploit them for a multitude of tasks. A 13-year-old boy explained in an interview with Amnesty International how the Ti Bwa gang forced him to gather intelligence for them on the police and their equipment, or to spy on rival gangs. He also declared that he was scared because “the [other gang] could take you and burn your body” if they find out. Others testified how they were forced to carry weapons and rob people in the street, or guard kidnapped victims. Gangs also abduct young girls and use them to complete household duties. Between mid-2023 and mid-2024, the number of children forcibly recruited by armed groups increased by 70%, making this phenomenon one of the main threats for Haitian children.

Recruitment of Child Soldiers

Gangs also use social media to recruit children by promising them money and a better life.  On Facebook, a member of the gang 400 Mawozo shows himself distributing money to a group of minors. Professors Sandy Larose and Peterson Noncent studied the young population of Haiti and found that the banalisation of violence, the absence of the state, and poverty create strong incentives for youngsters to join the gangs. Moreover, some of them may be convinced by the insurrectional discourses of leaders like Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, the leader of the most powerful gang alliance called Viv Ansanm, who depicts himself as a revolutionary leader against a corrupted state.

Extrajudicial Executions by the Police

The presence of children in gangs and their carrying of weapons expose them to violence from the police. In November 2024, during an operation of the Haitian National Police against some Viv Ansanm gang members, two 13-year-old children were killed by the police. This is not an isolated incident as the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) raised concerns about the rise of summary or arbitrary extrajudicial executions committed by law enforcement officials. From July to September 2024, among the 106 extrajudicial killings reported, mostly perpetrated by police officers, six children as young as 10 years old were killed after being accused of passing information to gang members. Such executions constitute severe violations of international and national laws, such as articles 6 and 37a of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Tip of the Iceberg

The numbers presented here depict a critical situation for children. However, it must be taken into account that most of these statistics are only based on cases that were actually reported and documented. For a full picture of the scale of the abuses and casualties in Haiti, the figures will be significantly higher. As pointed out by NGOs like the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights (CARDH), “citizens do not trust the Haitian National Police.” And many of them do not report crimes to the authorities nor go to the hospital when injured. Thus, the total numbers of children suffering in Haiti are higher than official reports will capture. Moreover, national and international authorities may not even know how many children there are in Haiti since the last census of the population was conducted over 20 years ago, in 2003, and the government failed to precisely count its population ever since.

*name changed due to security concerns