Haitian gangs are recruiting child soldiers, rights group says | News about armed groups

Boys and girls driven into gangs by hunger face abuse and are forced into criminal activities, Human Rights Watch warns.

Haiti’s powerful armed groups are increasingly recruiting children into their ranks amid a growing humanitarian crisis, a global human rights watchdog has warned, with girls being sexually abused and forced into domestic work.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of children “driven by hunger and poverty” have joined gangs in recent months and been forced to commit criminal acts ranging from extortion and plunder to murder and kidnapping, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report published on Wednesday.

Boys are often used as informants, trained in the use of weapons and ammunition, and deployed in confrontations with police, the report said.

One of the boys interviewed, fourteen-year-old Michel, said he had joined a gang at the age of eight. “I had no parents and lived on the street,” he told HRW.

“Most of the time I was running errands or participating in roadblocks. There were four other children in the group, aged 13 or 11.

Haiti has been rocked by escalating violence since February, when gangs launched attacks on prisons and other state institutions in the capital Port-au-Prince. The unrest spread to other parts of the Caribbean country and has forced more than 700,000 people to flee, according to the United Nations.

According to testimonies collected by HRW, girls are raped and forced to cook and clean for gang members, and are often abandoned once they become pregnant.

“Gabriel, the gang leader of Brooklyn (in Cite Soleil), asks his henchmen to bring him a virgin girl every month. Now that the boss is doing this, there is no way to stop others from doing the same,” a humanitarian worker told the New York-based group.

‘States absent’

According to HRW, ‘severe hunger’ was the main reason why the children joined the criminal groups.

“They said the state was absent, there were no police in their neighborhoods and they had no legal economic or social opportunities to earn a living, buy food or access basic needs,” the report said.

Haiti’s gangs have expanded their influence in recent years, while state institutions have been paralyzed by a lack of money and political crises. Gangs now control the area where 2.7 million people live, including half a million children.

According to UN estimates, about a third of gang members are children. The criminal groups control almost 80 percent of Port-au-Prince and are expanding into other areas, according to HRW.

According to the report, gangs are increasingly using popular social media apps to attract recruits. The leader of the Village de Dieu gang is a rapper and publishes music videos of his soldiers. HRW said he has a specialized unit to train children in handling weapons and setting up checkpoints.

The rights group said it interviewed 58 people in Port-au-Prince in July, including children linked to criminal groups, humanitarian workers, diplomats and representatives of Haitian civil society and UN agencies, and another 20 remotely.

The UN approved Haiti’s request a year ago for a multinational police mission to help the country’s police fight the gangs, but it has so far only been partially deployed.

HRW outlined several measures for both the government and the international community to address the deep instability, including providing more resources to security forces, ensuring children can eat and go to school, and providing rehabilitation for recruits.