FILE PHOTO: Haitian soldiers patrol near the Toussaint Louverture International Airport following a gunfight with armed gangs on the surroundings of the airport, as the government declared state of emergency amid violence, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 4, 2024. REUTERS/Ralph Tedy Erol/File Photo
GENEVA (Reuters) - Sexual violence against children in Haiti has surged in the last year and their bodies have been turned into "battlegrounds," UNICEF warned on Friday.
Describing the increase between 2023-2024 as "staggering," the spokesperson for the United Nations agency for children, James Elder, told reporters at the Palais des Nations in Geneva that armed groups have inflicted "unimaginable horrors on children" in the Caribbean country.
Powerful gangs, armed with weapons largely trafficked from the United States, have united in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince under a common alliance. They control 85% of the city, according to the U.N.
Elder, who recently returned from a visit to Haiti, told reporters about a 16-year-old girl who was abducted by armed men and extensively beaten, drugged and raped. She was later released and found shelter in a UNICEF-supported safe house.
Amid surging violence and what the U.N. describes as "rampant sexual violence," more than 100 Kenyan police arrived in Haiti's capital on Thursday to reinforce a security mission. Its future has been in limbo since the U.S. froze $13 million in funding on Tuesday, before passing a waiver to unlock a separate batch of funds.
The security mission, approved by the U.N. Security Council but not led by the U.N., has struggled to make headway in fighting gangs as its numbers remain far under target.
More than a million people, over half of them children, are displaced within Haiti due to ongoing violence, according to U.N. data. Extreme poverty has also pushed children into gangs, with up to half of all armed groups made up of minors, "some as young as eight years old," Elder said.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; Editing by Rod Nickel)
