“I want this school year to go well”
The dream of a child of Martissant plagued by armed gang related violence
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Port-au-Prince, October 3, 2022 – This morning, 13-year-old Jonalson Fravien received everything he needs to start the school year. Slate, notebooks, compasses, and pens, to follow lessons in class and do his homework. His father Ives Paulo Fravien was able to buy him all this school material as soon as he received a most expected cash transfer.
A few days before the start of the school year, Ives was rather worried.
“I didn't know how to buy school material for my children. Now I will be able to buy some books, uniforms and other school items to start with,” says the 48-year-old.
Ives lives in Martissant in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, a neighborhood entirely controlled by gangs since June 2021, destroying the lottery sale he used to support his wife and five children.
Let the shooting stop so we can study
Jonalson already has his school kit but the child is already worried about how his school year will go, because of gang-related violence. “I want this school year to go well. Let there be no shooting. I want them to stop for a while so we can study and do our homework,” he said. In the 9th Fundamental, the year he will take the end of primary school exam, he would have liked the teachers to be able to come every day. “Sometimes teachers spend more than a week without being able to come to school,” he clarifies.
In Martissant, schools have been closed for more than three years. Only some of them have been reopened thanks to the combined efforts of the Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training (MENFP) and UNICEF. Assessments conducted in June showed that more than 200 schools were partially or completely closed by violence in Port-au-Prince, and nearly a quarter of them were occupied by armed groups.
This year again, insecurity risks jeopardizing classes. Since mid-September, violent protests have erupted over price hikes in Haiti. Thousands of people took to the streets, erecting barricades, burning tires, throwing stones and looting shops and warehouses. This new spate of violence has stopped or slowed down the provision of basic services, and threatens to seriously disrupt the education of children.
The new school year - which officially begins on Monday 3 October - has already been delayed by a month and is unlikely to be massively attended if violence across the country does not subside in the coming days. Over the past two weeks, 27 schools have been attacked and looted by armed groups, depriving children of their right to education.
“Education is a child's path to a better future. It is imperative that schools remain open and that children can attend them without fear,” said Bruno Maes, UNICEF Representative in Haiti. “Continued school closures are feeding a perverse spiral – an out of school child is a child one step closer to being forcibly recruited into armed groups and furthering the violence that is keeping schools closed.”
UNICEF provided 2,100 vulnerable families with financial support of 30,000 HTG (approximately US$300) each, to help them meet urgent needs and facilitate children's access to education, health and care nutrition in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. Among them, 250 families as vulnerable as Ives Fravien’s, received an additional 11,000 HTG (about 110 USD) to prepare for the return of their children to school.
“I thank everyone who contributed to the UNICEF program to help us, the poor, who are not able to help our children,” says Fravien.
School is a protective environment where children learn, build their future and befriend others, sometimes for life. Jonalson can't wait to get back to school and reunite with his friends.
“I am looking forward to the reopening of the school. It's been a long time since I last saw my friends," he says, nostalgic.
At the end of 2021, UNICEF launched a $97 million appeal to reach 950,000 people, including 520,000 children in Haiti with humanitarian assistance. To date, UNICEF has received only a third of these funds.
