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A report by the organization InSight Crime denounced the recruitment of minors by armed groups in Haiti.
The organization, founded in April 2010, is dedicated to studying and investigating threats to national and citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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The report comes after the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, recently raised the alarm over extreme gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, which has caused thousands of families to flee.
According to InSight Crime, children are being taken off the streets and out of shelters by armed groups who recruit them with offers of money and security. "Homeless and at-risk teenagers are increasingly being used in gang wars in Haiti's capital," the report warned.
Most of the children who joined the gangs are from Croix des Bouquets and Martissant, districts where conflicts have raged since mid-2021.
Nearly 200 dead and almost 17,000 displaced in one month as a result of gang violence in Port-au-Prince, #Haiti's capital city, according to a United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report. pic.twitter.com/Oj9SbnyDhH
— In Context (@incontextmedia) June 2, 2022
In early May, the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti expressed concern about children joining gangs, one of the six grave violations of children's rights, and reported that some minors are even executed.
Over the last three years, Haiti has been facing an upsurge in violence, with a police force that is insufficient for its 11.9 million inhabitants and barely more than 1 000 troops in the country's incipient army.
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