Child alert: Haiti’s children confront a polycrisis

How are children being impacted?

In 2025, more than 3.3 million children in Haiti need humanitarian assistance. The unprecedented level of insecurity has displaced more than 680,000 children, often multiple times. Meanwhile, cases of acute malnutrition, child recruitment, gender-based violence, and other grave rights violations of children’s rights have also increased.

What’s behind the crisis?

Haiti’s current crisis is not rooted in one single event, but in decades of compounding shocks and chronic instability. Political fragility, economic inequality, natural disasters and weakening institutions have converged to create one of the most complex humanitarian emergencies in the world.

For many families, the tipping point came with the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, which triggered a power vacuum and a sharp escalation in armed violence. Since then, armed groups have expanded their control over neighbourhoods, ports and national roads – paralyzing services, disrupting trade and terrorizing communities.

At the same time, Haitians have endured recurring environmental disasters. In the past 15 years alone, the country has been struck by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010, Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in 2021. These disasters destroyed infrastructure, eroded coping mechanisms and strained an already fragile state. 

Haiti’s children face an immediate protection crisis

In Haiti today, children are not only caught in the crossfire but are also being directly targeted. The scale and severity of violence against children and women have reached alarming levels, with grave violations of children’s rights becoming a daily reality in areas under the control of armed groups. 

For countless children, trauma is a daily reality, and unless protection services are urgently restored, an entire generation risks growing up in fear and under relentless exposure to violence and exploitation.  

Long-term threats to their health and nutrition

More than 1 million children face critical levels of food insecurity. In many of these areas, insecurity and armed group activity have cut families off from food markets and humanitarian assistance. Rising prices for staple goods have further reduced household purchasing power, forcing families to skip meals or rely on nutrient-poor diets. 

Water and sanitation infrastructure has collapsed in many displacement sites and areas under the control of armed groups, and more than 1 million children lack regular access to safe water, increasing the risk of waterborne diseases. 

The health system is overstretched and under-resourced, with insecurity forcing the closure of multiple health centres, particularly in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. Treatment coverage for malnutrition, meanwhile, remains dangerously low – well below the threshold required to prevent a broader crisis.  

And enormous barriers to learning

Haiti’s education system is in freefall – with the future of an entire generation of children hanging in the balance. 

Conflict, displacement, poverty and insecurity have converged to make learning nearly impossible for hundreds of thousands of children. During the school year 2024–2025, many schools were directly impacted by violence, with more than 1,600 schools closed and dozens occupied by armed groups. 

In overcrowded shelters and displacement sites, children lack access to textbooks, learning materials and qualified teachers. Many adolescent girls drop out entirely due to safety concerns, caregiving responsibilities or the absence of menstrual hygiene materials.