Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Wednesday that Haitian gangs are bolstering their manpower by recruiting more young boys as child soldiers, while young girls are pressed into service as sexually abused household slaves.
“Hundreds, if not thousands, of children in Haiti, driven by hunger and poverty, have in recent months joined criminal groups, where they are forced into illegal activities and face abuse,” HRW said.
The report noted that criminal gangs are increasingly recruiting children to swell their ranks in response to the U.N. Multinational Security Support (MSS) and greater international support for the Haitian National Police (HNP).
The gangs have a deep pool of children to recruit and abuse. Gangsters and warlords currently control almost 80 percent of the national capital, Port-au-Prince, which puts half a million children under their rule.
“While no official figures are available, human rights and humanitarian organizations and government officials estimate that at least 30 percent of criminal group members are children,” HRW noted with alarm. “Children participate in criminal activities ranging from extortion and looting to severe acts of violence, including killing and kidnapping.”
UNICEF warned in June that up to half of the soldiers in some gangs are children. The gangs like to use them as spotters, and for confrontations with the police. UNICEF worried that the problem was getting worse because the gangs are blocking shipments of humanitarian aid, creating more hunger they could exploit to bring children into their ranks.
HRW researchers spoke to several children recruited by Haiti’s thousands of criminal gangs. Young boys pressed into service as soldiers cited hunger as a major reason they went along with it. Some of them said associating with a gang was the only way to guarantee food for their families.
As for the girls, Haitian youths told HRW that gang bosses have developed a taste for raping children, inspiring each other to greater acts of cruelty and debauchery to satisfy their appetites and demonstrate their power.
“They rape them, not only the boss, everyone, whoever wants to, can rape them. They are in the group to serve them with sex and cooking and washing clothes,” one child soldier said of young girls taken by the gangs.
Other witnesses said the gangs stop feeding their young sex slaves and cast them aside if they become pregnant.
Haiti’s child soldiers said they are routinely threatened with violence and death if they hesitate to obey the sadistic commands of their bosses. U.N. officials have supported these claims by documenting numerous summary executions and lynchings of children since the beginning of 2024.
The child soldiers also face the prospect of death in battle with other gangs, Haitian police, and the vigilante groups that have appeared in Port-au-Prince.
The gangs make no great secret of recruiting children. One prominent gang leader has been known to create slick rap videos lionizing his young recruits, and boasts of having a “specialized unit” to train children in the use of high-powered weapons.
“To stem the violence, the transitional government should focus on improving children’s lives by providing protection, access to essential goods and services including education and legal opportunities for their rehabilitation and reintegration,” advised HRW crisis and conflict researcher Nathalye Cotrino.