The Unit­ed Na­tions says this year has seen a stag­ger­ing 1,000 per cent or ten-fold surge in sex­u­al vi­o­lence against chil­dren in Haiti dur­ing an un­prece­dent­ed cri­sis which has al­so seen armed gangs con­tin­ue to ter­rorise com­mu­ni­ties amid a grow­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter.

“Chil­dren are be­ing used by armed gangs in Haiti, and we are wit­ness­ing some re­cent trou­bling trends, no­tably the use of sex­u­al vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing rape and col­lec­tive rape, as a weapon of war by gangs,” said Vir­ginia Gam­ba, UN Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al for Chil­dren and Armed Con­flict.

High­light­ing the im­pact on chil­dren of the ex­treme lev­els of bru­tal­i­ty and law­less­ness across the French-speak­ing Caribbean coun­try, she called on “all ac­tors to en­sure that chil­dren are pro­tect­ed from vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing sex­u­al vi­o­lence and clash­es, and that they are not in­volved in hos­til­i­ties”.

The UN said po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty con­tin­ues to plague Haiti, as mem­bers of the tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ing coun­cil, which was formed in April, re­moved in­ter­im Prime Min­is­ter Gar­ry Conille from of­fice amid re­port­ed in-fight­ing, re­plac­ing him with busi­ness­man Al­ix Di­di­er Fils-Aime.

UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res urged all Hait­ian stake­hold­ers to work con­struc­tive­ly to­geth­er to ad­vance the po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tion, his spokesper­son Stéphane Du­jar­ric told jour­nal­ists at the reg­u­lar news brief­ing in New York on Mon­day.

“Over­com­ing their dif­fer­ences and putting the coun­try first re­mains crit­i­cal to that end,” Du­jar­ric said.

Conille, a for­mer UN of­fi­cial, was sworn in as in­ter­im Prime Min­is­ter in June and the UN said that the cri­sis in Haiti has al­so dis­rupt­ed es­sen­tial ser­vices, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion and health­care, leav­ing over 300,000 chil­dren with­out ac­cess to schools.

It said gangs have tar­get­ed hos­pi­tals and schools in the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince and sur­round­ing ar­eas, and schools have turned in­to tem­po­rary shel­ters for the thou­sands dis­placed by vi­o­lence.

The UN said this surge “re­flects the stark vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of mi­nors in a coun­try where ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple, in­clud­ing 1.6 mil­lion women and chil­dren, live in ar­eas un­der gang con­trol.

“Alarm­ing­ly, chil­dren un­der 18 are es­ti­mat­ed to make up be­tween a third and half of the gang mem­bers,” the UN said.

Gam­ba called on all ac­tors and those with in­flu­ence “to do every­thing to pre­vent grave vi­o­la­tions against chil­dren” and to im­me­di­ate­ly hand them over to civil­ian child pro­tec­tion of­fi­cials.

She un­der­scored the ur­gent need for “safe and un­ob­struct­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­cess to pro­vide crit­i­cal ser­vices” and re­newed the call for en­hanced vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tions to the UN-ad­min­is­tered trust fund, which sup­ports the Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port mis­sion (MSS) to bol­ster Haiti’s se­cu­ri­ty and re­spond to hu­man­i­tar­i­an needs.”

The UN said the MSS mis­sion, which was re-au­tho­rised by the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in Sep­tem­ber for an­oth­er year, is “seen as piv­otal to sta­bi­liz­ing the coun­try.”

But the UN said it lacks suf­fi­cient po­lice of­fi­cers and fund­ing, re­strict­ing its op­er­a­tions.

The UN said the hu­man­i­tar­i­an im­pact of the vi­o­lence ex­tends far be­yond im­me­di­ate threats.

In Oc­to­ber, armed clash­es in Port-au-Prince’s neigh­bor­hoods of Soli­no and Tabarre, and the ad­join­ing dis­trict of Arc­a­haie led to mass dis­place­ments, “com­pound­ing ex­ist­ing aid chal­lenges,” the UN said.

It said es­ti­mates in­di­cate that over 12,600 peo­ple were dis­placed in Soli­no and Tabarre alone, with many forced in­to makeshift shel­ters.

The UN In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) re­port­ed that 58 per cent of these dis­placed in­di­vid­u­als found refuge in 14 sites, in­clud­ing new­ly-cre­at­ed shel­ters fol­low­ing the out­breaks of vi­o­lence.

The UN said Arc­a­haie wit­nessed a par­al­lel wave of dis­place­ment, with over 21,000 peo­ple flee­ing their homes.

UNIT­ED NA­TIONS, Nov 12, CMC

CMC/nk/or/2024