Haitian children ‘paying the highest price’ amid surge in gang recruitment

This article is published in association with United Nations.

As gangs continue to “terrorise” communities in Haiti, children are the ones paying the highest price, the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict warned on Thursday.

Children now constitute around half of the gang members who have taken de facto control of large swathes of the country, Vanessa Frazier told journalists at UN Headquarters, following her first fact-finding mission to the Caribbean island nation. 

Some 18,000 schools are reported destroyed, damaged or non-functional. 

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“Today, children in Haiti are facing levels of violence that no child, anywhere, should ever endure,” she said.

In a country where gang violence has led to widespread disorder for many years, Ms. Frazier said growing up in Haiti means a “daily struggle to survive, live in constant fear, and be subject to intimidation, violence, family separation, displacement, and trauma as gangs take advantage of the vulnerability of these children.”

In 2025 alone, the recruitment and use of children nearly tripled.

At the same time, killing, maiming and abductions of children almost doubled, with sexual violence also rampant and increasingly used as a deliberate tactic to instil fear and punish communities. 

Children are victims

“The Haitian Government and its partners reassured me that the protection of children is at the centre of their agenda,” she said. 

One major development is the implementation of the handover protocol signed with the UN in 2024 to facilitate the transfer of children associated with gangs, to child protection services. 

For children who may have committed serious crimes, Ms. Frazier said, international juvenile justice standards apply, with detention only as a last resort.

“I stressed in all my meetings that children encountered during security operations must be treated first and foremost as victims,” Ms. Frazier said. “They must be swiftly handed over to child protection services for care, protection, and reintegration.”

However, she warned that this principle was not always being followed by authorities, and called for change. 

At an overcrowded detention facility in Port-au-Prince called CERMICOL, Ms. Frazier said 80 children have been held for many years in “disastrous conditions, without charges, including many on suspicion of association with gangs. None has ever been seen by a judge. Most do not receive visits from their families. They are on their own.”

‘Window of opportunity’

Ahead of the launch on 1 June of the Security Council-mandated Gang Suppression Force (GSF) operation, Ms. Frazier called on authorities to end the mistreatment and release the children being held “as per the handover protocol.” 

“I want to emphasise that there is a window of opportunity now to do the right thing as the GSF deploys. Security and child protection cannot be separated,” she said. 

Efforts that focus on long-term reintegration outcomes for children are also being ramped up, particularly in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and Les Cayes, where a facility is being renovated to receive up to 600 children separated from the gangs.

Broader humanitarian crisis

The broader humanitarian and protection crisis is compounding children’s suffering. Many live in areas fully controlled by armed gangs, cut off from school, healthcare, and basic protection services. 

They told me they want only one thing: to go to school, to play, to learn, and simply to be children again

“I was informed that 18,000 schools were either destroyed, damaged or non-functional because of the gangs,” she said, creating conditions that isolate children and dramatically increase their vulnerability to recruitment, exploitation and abuse. 

Military use of schools and hospitals also surged sharply, highlighting a sharply deteriorating protection environment.

“No child should have to grow up in such conditions,” Ms. Frazier said.

Hope, despite ‘uninterrupted cycle of violence’ 

“I met young children and adolescents who were already in a situation of vulnerability within their own homes and had gone through an uninterrupted cycle of violence inside and outside their homes,” Ms. Frazier said. 

However, Ms. Frazier also said that while heartbreaking, the children’s testimonies were full of hope. 

“They told me they want only one thing: to go to school, to play, to learn, and simply to be children again. Even in the darkest moments, Haitian children continue to show extraordinary resilience. They deserve more than survival – they deserve the chance to grow, to dream, and to reclaim their childhood.”

She said she had been “profoundly moved by the resilience and courage of Haiti’s youngest generation.”