This article is published in association with United Nations.
The ongoing emergency in Haiti is crushing children’s chances of an education and a better future as scores of youngsters are recruited by heavily armed and violent gangs, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Friday.
UNICEF’s representative in Haiti, Geetanjali Narayan, told journalists that just last month, armed groups destroyed 47 schools in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, adding to the 284 schools destroyed in 2024.
“The relentless attacks on education are accelerating, leaving hundreds of thousands of children without a place to learn,” she said.
Speaking in Geneva, Ms. Narayan described reports of “yet another attack” on Thursday. “Videos capture piercing screams of children lying on the floor, motionless with fear,” she said, calling the scene a “chilling reminder that these attacks do damage far beyond the classroom walls”.
“A child out of school is a child at risk,” she warned.
UNICEF previously reported a 1,000 per cent increase in sexual violence involving children between 2023 and 2024 in the country. Children also comprise half of the record one million-plus displaced to date by the violence in Haiti.
Eight-year-old recruits
After sharing the latest displacement data, Ulrika Richardson, the UN’s top aid official in Haiti, insisted on Thursday that youngsters continue to bear the brunt of the crisis.
UNICEF’s Ms. Narayan stressed that last year, child recruitment into armed groups “surged by 70 per cent”.
“Right now, we estimate that up to half of all armed group members are children, some as young as eight years old,” she said.
The UNICEF representative described the different roles played by children within armed groups, depending on their age and gender. Eight to 10-year-olds are “used as messengers or informants” while younger girls are tasked with domestic chores.
“As they get older, the children are playing more and more active roles in terms of participating in acts of violence,” Ms. Narayan said.
Asked about the impact of being recruited into a gang at an early age, she spoke of “indescribable” damage.
“At that age, the child’s brain is still forming. They haven’t developed their understanding of the world. And so, to be to be part of an armed group where you are surrounded by violence at all times and where you yourself may be forced to commit acts of violence, has a profound effect on the child,” she said.
Ms. Narayan stressed that UNICEF is “working actively” to support the release, demobilization and reintegration of child armed group members.
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Saving young lives
This includes a “handover protocol” signed in 2024 between the United Nations, including UNICEF, and the Government of Haiti, based on the following questions: “What do you do when you encounter a child coming out of the armed groups? What are the steps? Who is involved? What are the procedures that need to be in place to ensure that this child is treated first and foremost as a child and not as a criminal?”
The initiative has proved successful, with more than 100 children demobilized and reintegrated last year and plans to continue the work in 2025, Ms. Narayan said.
The UNICEF official highlighted the fact that Haiti’s children’s chances of a better future are restricted by the armed violence surrounding them and the lack of funding for stop-gap measures that would allow youngsters to continue their education “despite the crisis”.
Funding freeze impacts
Such measures include establishing temporary learning spaces in displacement sites, rehabilitating schools and providing children with the necessary school supplies. The UN agency needs $38 million for these “critical interventions” but funding is at just five per cent.
Peace and stability are desperately needed in Haiti “but so are funds”, Ms. Narayan insisted. “More than half a million children are not getting the education support that they need and that UNICEF and our partners can provide, not only due to armed groups, but due to a lack of donor support.”
Cuts in humanitarian assistance from the United States have already had a “devastating impact” on children in Haiti, Ms. Narayan said, with some of UNICEF’s services reduced.
In 2024, the humanitarian community launched a $600 million plan for Haiti, receiving just over 40 per cent of the funding. Around 60 per cent came from the United States alone.
US grants terminated
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder added that on a global scale, following the US humanitarian aid freeze, the agency “received termination notices” for grants, affecting humanitarian and development programming.
“We continue to assess the impact of those termination notices on our programmes for children. But we already know that the initial pause has impacted programming for millions of children in roughly half the countries that we work,” he said.
For decades, UNICEF staff have witnessed how “those most at risk”, have found ways “to adapt, to rebuild, to push forward, despite unimaginable hardships”, Mr. Elder said.
“But even the strongest can’t do it alone…Without urgent action, without funding, more children are going to suffer malnutrition, fewer will have access to education, and preventable illnesses will claim more lives.”
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