Haiti’s Hunger Trap, Daily Brief 8 October, 2024

Rampant insecurity in Haiti can be summarized in some shocking numbers.

Criminal groups control nearly 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and its surrounding region, and they’re expanding into other areas. About 2.7 million people live under their control. Another number stands out: experts estimate at least 30 percent of criminal gang members are children.

But you need to go beyond the numbers to understand the depth of the horrors here.

Recruited as young as ten years old, child gang members may start as informants or running errands, but soon, many of them are carrying weapons, looting, extorting, and kidnapping. The kids are abused if they refuse to take part, usually with beatings and death threats. Girls are particularly at risk of sexual violence.

What pushes children into violent gangs in the first place is often hunger and poverty. Abandoned by the state, deprived of food, education, and health care, these kids find in criminal groups their only source of livelihood and shelter. In other words, it’s about survival.

A 16-year-old from Port-au-Prince, said he joined a criminal group when he was 14: 

“Before [joining], I lived with my mother … [A]t home, there wasn’t any food. But when I was with [the group], I could eat.”

Haiti is caught in a hunger trap: crime drives poverty; poverty drives crime. And at the moment, the situation seems to be getting worse.

Criminal groups have apparently increased their recruitment of children as a response to the law enforcement operations of the new international presence, the Multinational Security Support mission, and the Haitian National Police. Hundreds, if not thousands, of kids, driven by hunger and poverty, have joined criminal groups in recent months.

Escaping this downward spiral will obviously be neither quick nor easy, but Haiti’s transitional government should focus on children in particular, as a new HRW report highlights. Authorities need to concentrate on providing protection and access to essential goods and services, like education.

While holding to account those responsible for abuses, authorities also need to provide pathways for rehabilitation and reintegration, so children can safely leave gangs and have a life afterward.

In short, kids need survival options outside criminal groups, and authorities need to help kids find them.