“I miss my mother but I know she will come back for me”
Since July 8, 2022, the wave of gang-related violence in the municipality of Cité Soleil has left many dead, injured and displaced
- Français
- English
Port-au-Prince, July 25, 2022 - The sight is sadly all too familiar. Yet another wave of gang violence in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince sends thousands of families scrambling for their lives sometimes with as little as the clothes on their backs - the only personal items they are fortunate enough to take with them while trying to escape the crossfire. They then gather at informal shelters throughout town.
Yet, this time felt different.
At the Saint-Louis de Gonzague campus, kids were back in classrooms in the heart and the heat of the summer. Not to attend school, but to save their lives.
Many of them travelled without parents or guardians. Many of them too young to be there. By themselves. Making for a surreal scene.
“I miss my mother but I know she will come back for me”
Roodmaelle Pierre, 13 years old, one of hundreds of kids roaming the recess yard.
The violence that has been waged on the population of Cité Soleil and especially the children is barely describable.
A new spate of violence erupted in Cite Soleil, in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. According to the UN, between 8 and 17 July 2022, over 471 people were killed, injured or unaccounted for. Serious incidents of sexual violence against women and girls as well as boys being recruited by gangs have also been reported. Around 3,000 people have also fled their homes, including hundreds of unaccompanied children, while at least 140 houses have been destroyed or burnt down.
“When they started burning the houses, I rushed to take my two children to safety, the 10-month-old and the 5-year-old. I went to hide them at a neighbour’s house but left the two-year-old one because I couldn't carry all three. When I returned, the house had completely burned down with my two-year-old daughter inside. I will not go back to live in Cité [Soleil] for anything in the world.”
Chilove Mercy, 24, single mother of 4 children
To escape what amounted to an inferno, most of the kids had to dress in their school uniform to cheat their captors. But it came at cost, leaving their loved ones behind… And any information about their fate or ways to reconnect.
The vast majority of the displaced people encountered are unaccompanied children, mainly from the Brooklyn area. A buffer zone caught in between the rival gangs’ territory that seems by all accounts to have suffered the highest burden. The few rare women and mothers present in these centres are teachers or instructors also fleeing the gang war in Cité Soleil. Several claim to have lost their husbands as well as their children, killed before or during the last confrontation.
To respond to the urgent needs of women and children affected by violence, UNICEF delivered 312,000 litres of drinking water, enough for 20,000 people for two days and 300 hygiene kits to serve 1,500 people. It also assisted 780 children with psychosocial support activities and 110 among them received treatment at a mobile clinic.
Most of these children only have a set of clothes and sometimes fled barefoot. They all live in uncertainty. We are faced with the possibility of difficult or even impossible family reunification. Some parents remain stranded in Cité Soleil with no way out as the conflict persists despite somewhat of a respite in the last few days.
Lacking the means and living in aggravated economic precariousness, some parents risk simply abandoning their children to their fate. Many of these children need sustained medical assistance. Access to drinking water was already difficult in Cité Soleil. Water from artesian wells tends to be unsafe to drink over there. Consequently, some of the children have bouts of diarrhea, fever and skin pathologies such as scabies.
According to the testimonies of mothers on the site, many of these children are traumatized, they sleep poorly at night and often cry out. Besides, the reopening of classes in a few weeks seems already compromised. These children, for the most part, are at risk of dropping out of school.
There is also the fact that some of these centres can only provide immediate and interim assistance. They are not equipped nor have resources for quality support beyond the first weeks.
Considering the ambient and customary precariousness of Cité Soleil, these displaced people find themselves, all in all, in a rather paradoxical situation: The consequences of the conflict are that undoubtedly for the first time, they have access to a place to sleep, a hot dish and regular drinking water, if only for a while, at a bare minimum. This creates a new dynamic of uncertainty and anxiety.
However, these children and women do not know if they will ever see their loved ones again or what the future has in store for them.
UNICEF calls on all parties to refrain from the use of violence and open access to basic services for women and children while asking for the international community to continue to support Haiti.
