Haiti plight has ‘never been worse,’ UNICEF chief warns

Children recruited by gangs, houses burned and young girls raped are examples of the latest “horror” befalling Haiti’s people, the head of UNICEF described Thursday as she implored the world not to abandon the violence-plagued country.

The impoverished Caribbean nation “is truly becoming a forgotten crisis,” warned Catherine Russell days after returning from the capital Port-au-Prince. 

The UN children’s fund director noted nearly half of Haiti’s population, an unprecedented 5.2 million people, were in dire need of humanitarian assistance, including nearly three million children.

Violent armed gangs control more than 60 percent of the capital and large swaths of the countryside, Russell told a briefing.

“Our team there are telling me it’s never been worse than it is now,” she said.

Russell highlighted “unprecedented hunger and malnutrition, grinding poverty, a crippled economy, resurgence of cholera, and a massive insecurity that creates a deadly downward spiral of violence.”

Compounding the crises, the flooding and earthquakes which ravage the country “continue to remind us all just how vulnerable Haiti is to climate change and natural disasters,” she added before reporting the shock testimonies from victims of gangs that are using rape as “a weapon for intimidation and control.”

At a survivors’ center in Port-au-Prince, “an 11-year-old girl told me in the softest voice that five men had grabbed her off the street,” Russell said. 

“Three of the men raped her. She was eight months pregnant when we spoke and gave birth just a few days later.”

Russell said one woman told her that “armed men had barged into her house and raped her. Her 20-year-old sister resisted so strongly that they killed her by setting her on fire, then they burned down the house.”

Amid the relentless violence, schools and public areas that should be safe spaces are not, she added.

Russell accused the international community of sitting on their hands.

“Collectively the world is failing the Haitian people, and unless we take immediate action it’s hard to imagine a decent future for the population,” she said, noting that the government’s plea for an international assistance mission has so far gone unanswered.

“We can’t watch this country completely fall apart,” she said.

But “amid the horror was also some hope,” according to Russell.

She said she met teachers and health workers who were “braving the dangers of the streets” to show up for work educating and caring for Haiti’s children.