In Haiti, schools increasingly being targeted for looting, kidnapping, violence by gangs

In Haiti, schools have traditionally been considered respected safe zones, regardless of the country’s crisis of the moment. Not anymore.

Schools are increasingly targets of armed violence, the United Nation’s leading child welfare agency said Thursday, reporting that shootings, ransacking, looting and kidnappings in Haiti’s schools have increased nine-fold in one year.

“As children reel from the effects of armed violence, insecurity in Haiti shows no sign of abating,” said Bruno Maes, UNICEF Representative in Haiti. “Violence continues to take a heavy toll on children’s lives in and around Port-au-Prince, and schools are no longer spared. A child who is scared to go to school is a child more at risk of being recruited by armed groups. We must act urgently to protect children’s lives and futures.”

Maes called on armed groups to refrain from targeting schools and for the government to hold individuals accountable.

In January, children lost an average of one and a half school days per week because of the violence, which has led to closures. In the first six days of February, 30 schools were shuttered as a result of escalating violence in urban areas, while about 25 percent of schools have remained closed since October, UNICEF said.

Without urgent action to protect schools from violence, UNICEF predicts that students will lose an estimated 36 days of school by the end of June.

Last week, students in Petionville were thrown into a panic when armed gang members from the Timakak gang operating in the hills above the capital attempted to get inside a school. Police quickly responded before anyone was harmed.

UNICEF said that since the academic year started in October, 72 schools have been targeted, compared to eight during the same four-month period the year before. This includes at least 13 schools targeted by armed groups, one school that was set on fire, one student who was killed, and a school in which two staff members were kidnapped, according to reports by UNICEF partners.

“In certain urban areas of the country, armed groups consider looting schools as a lucrative alternative to other forms of extortion and crime,” said Maes. “This must stop. The targeting of schools by armed groups is having an enormous impact on children’s safety, well-being and ability to learn.”

Numerous children in Haiti currently remain out of school due to the social unrest and insecurity, high education costs, lack of support for the most vulnerable and poor educational services, while violence against schools is fast becoming a reason for parents to keep their children at home, UNICEF said.

Schools were already victims of the country’s rising violence and widespread unrest when a two-month blockade by gangs of the country’s main fuel terminal prevented schools from opening on time.

Still, the ministry of education, which had opened fewer than 1 in 10 schools in October, had 3 in 4 schools reopened by December.

During a visit to Haiti on Wednesday, Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, raised concerns about the escalating gang violence on children and Haitians living in neighborhoods where the armed groups control territory.

“It’s a living hell,” he said. “I heard about 500,000 children living in these circumstances, not being able to go to school properly, not being able to be comforted by their parents because their parents are afraid of what might happen the next day. I hear that 20,000 people are in catastrophic, famine-like conditions in a country where the world does not put the spotlight. The people, the most impoverished ones, those who are in the most vulnerable situations, need help.”