UNICEF warns that child recruitment by armed groups in Haiti tripled last year

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The recruitment of children by armed groups in Haiti tripled last year as poverty and violence deepens across the troubled Caribbean country, according to a new UNICEF report released Thursday.

The surge comes as gang violence displaces a record 1.4 million people across Haiti — more than half of them children whom experts say are left exposed and vulnerable.

''The extent of the increase definitely is a surprise,'' said Geeta Narayan, UNICEF's representative in Haiti. ''That's devastating.''

The United Nations estimates that 30% to 50% of members of armed groups are children, with some as young as 9 years old being recruited, she said in a phone interview.

''The younger the child, the more you can control them,'' she said. ''They have less ability to fight back, to be disruptive. … You can coerce them to do horrible things.''

The U.N. Secretary General is expected to provide a breakdown of how many children were recruited last year in his annual report on Haiti in upcoming months.

Gangs control an estimated 90% of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as swaths of land in the country's central region.

Meanwhile, girls often face sexual violence and are tasked with domestic work including cooking and washing clothes.

''In many cases, the child or the family does receive some kind of payment,'' she said.

Previous U.N. reports have stated that payments can range from $30 a week to several hundred dollars a month.

Narayan noted that sometimes families are paid to give up a child, noting they don't have a choice given the country's extreme poverty.

More than 60% of Haiti's nearly 12 million people live on less than $4 a day, and hundreds of thousands of Haitians are starving or nearing starvation.

''That makes the child even more dependent on the armed group,'' Narayan said, adding that such groups can be attractive to minors. ''There's no alternative for these children. The armed group offer weapons, power, food and identity.''

Roughly 500 children who used to be gang members have escaped or been arrested by authorities during operations in recent years, but reintegrating them is difficult, experts say.

UNICEF currently helps such children by putting them in a safe place where they receive medical care for any possible wounds or drug addiction and then meet with counselors and social workers who try to contact their family.

''Children associated with armed groups must not be treated as perpetrators,'' UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.

Much of the reintegration success depends on the child's age and gender, when they joined an armed group and when they were liberated, Narayan said.

''In some cases, there's been a rupture,'' she said. ''There's so much stigma attached to it that they don't want to receive the child back.''

Some of the toughest cases are older teenagers, Narayan said.

''If you have an 18-year-old who has been in armed groups for five years, that young man is not going to go back into school,'' she said, adding that Haiti needs options for apprenticeships or vocational training, and that UNICEF needs up to $30 million to reach every child.

Narayan said she's hopeful that more children will be helped as the current U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police that was understaffed and underfunded transforms in upcoming months into a so-called gang suppression force, which will have more power.

She noted that the current prime minister and other government officials also are committed to releasing children and reintegrating them.