Sexual violence against children soars in Haiti: UN

Sexual violence against children in violence-ravaged Haiti soared tenfold last year, the UN children's agency said Friday, as gangs who control most of the capital upped their recruitment of children.

Haiti has been mired for decades by political instability, made worse in recent years by criminal gangs that have grown more powerful.

Gangs now control 85 percent of the capital Port-au-Prince and children -- some as young as eight years old -- now make up to half of all armed groups, UNICEF spokesman James Elder told reporters in Geneva.

"A staggering 1,000-percent increase in sexual violence against children in Haiti has turned their bodies into battlegrounds," Elder said.

"The tenfold rise, recorded from 2023 to last year, comes as armed groups inflict unimaginable horrors on children."

He cited the case of 16-year-old girl, Rosaline, who was abducted by armed men.

"She was placed in a van with other young girls and taken to a warehouse. There she was extensively beaten," he said.

"She was then drugged and over the course of what she believes to be a month, she was relentlessly raped.

"When the armed group realised Roseline had no one to pay her kidnapping ransom, she was released."

Haiti has no president or parliament and is ruled by a transitional body, which is struggling to manage extreme violence linked to criminal gangs, poverty and other challenges.

More than 5,600 people were killed in Haiti last year as a result of gang violence, about a thousand more than in 2023, according to the UN.

More than a million Haitians have been forced to flee their homes, three times as many as a year ago.

"The suffering is immense," Elder said, adding that a full "1.2 million children live under the constant threat of armed violence" in the country.

Armed gangs now control 85 percent of Port-au-Prince, in what he described as "an astounding case of insecurity in a capital city".

Last year alone child recruitment into armed groups surged by 70 percent, he said.

"Many are taken by force," he said while others were "manipulated or driven by extreme poverty".

"It's a lethal cycle: Children are recruited into the groups that fuel their own suffering."