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In Martissant, a district west of the Haitian capital, wanders a teenager who has nothing to eat. “My stepmother didn’t love me, and she couldn’t help me finish the seventh year of school,” says François, who is about to turn 18. Tired of the abuse from his wife, at the age of 10, the son of a mechanic and a merchant from Port-au-Prince who was murdered when he was younger decided to escape. Three years later, the 5 Segonn gang – Five Seconds in Creole – recruited him. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you under my protection,” the head of the armed group, Johnson Izo André, told him, the young man says today.
América Futura found him in a local Hearts for Change organization for street children in Haiti (Occedhin its Creole acronym), which houses more than 1,500 boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 18 who, like him, were recruited as members of the gangs that control some areas of the capital. The young man insists that he has a story to tell, a story that has developed amidst “gunfire, blood and a duel” and that he has not yet been able to overcome.
According to his account, a friend shot one of his two younger brothers in the head due to a conflict over his girlfriend. “Whoever killed my brother will pay; I will take revenge. Whoever made me suffer will also suffer,” François continues with a frown. Anger is one of the main motivations cited by minors who join gangs. They often seek to avenge the death of loved ones whom they have seen fall into the hands of enemies in an environment of violence. Some of them feel helpless and gang leaders take the place of a parental figure.
François admits to having participated in several attacks, such as one in the city centre alongside Izo soldiers, where they destroyed around six police establishments. Also in an invasion in Carrefour-Feuilles in 2023 with the Grand-Ravin gang, which left more than 100,000 internally displaced people, and approximately 800 square metres of housing destroyed. In this last attack, he was arrested and ended up in Martissant’s organisation where they try to help them get out of the gangs. Although it doesn’t always work.
As François leads the tour through the facility, the sound of machine guns echoes in the distance. “I am a chimè (a bandit)!” shouts a thin young man as he leaves the office of a coordinator of the organization. Children and adolescents who are part of gangs often blame the state (or the lack thereof) for their plight.
In the building’s central courtyard, a group of children play under the scorching sun. The place that houses this project funded by the Haitian diaspora now has peeling walls, but it was once immaculately white. There, young people receive psychosocial support from this organization, which has been active in the neighborhood for about a decade. “My mother was murdered a year ago in front of me and my brothers. They raped her, they raped me. I know I have to take revenge. Every time I kill someone I feel relief for what they did to my mom,” says an 11-year-old girl in the courtyard. Once again, the rage.
The vulnerability in which many Haitian children live makes them the ideal target for gangs. According to data UNICEF, which includes UNICEF, represents between 30% and 40% of gang members. “Children in Haiti are trapped in a vicious cycle of suffering: they are forced to join armed groups out of sheer desperation, because of ruthless violence, poverty and the collapse of the systems that should protect them,” said the organization’s executive director, Catherine Russell, in a statement.
“Children are responsible for most murders”
Local child protection organisations suggest that Unicef’s figures are inaccurate due to a lack of reports, and although they do not dare to give figures, they admit a significant presence of minors in armed gangs in Port-au-Prince. “Children and adolescents are responsible for most of the murders. Most minors have been psychologically manipulated to carry out these crimes. The leaders do not get their hands dirty,” says Camille Emmanuel, of the Committee for Child Protection Site Letènèl, a group that offers psychosocial support to some 50 minors who are involved in armed groups in the capital’s disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
Forced recruitment sometimes involves children who have lost their parents amid the chaos the country has faced since 2021. But sometimes parents watch helplessly as their children are recruited. A father of four living in Carrefour Feuilles, west of Port-au-Prince, told América Futura how his 12-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son joined the 1999 migrant smuggling squad last year. 5 Secondsthe Izo gang, one of the most powerful in Haiti, which mainly dominates the coast and Village de Dieu, a slum in the south of the capital. The gang has become popular through rap videos on social media.
According to him, they left in search of means of subsistence that he could not provide them. In addition, in March 2024, the gang coalition Viv ansanm The death of his small informal car-washing business in the city centre has destroyed him, pushing him further into precariousness. “It hurts me because I don’t have the financial resources to bring my children back,” says the man from an internally displaced persons camp in Port-au-Prince. Although he has not seen his children or heard from them for more than a year and a half, he says that his eldest brother has been identified by his face-covering scarves in Pétion Ville, in the centre of the capital.
In gangs, “these children play roles as informants, spies, lookouts, transporters of weapons and ammunition in exchange for financial compensation,” explains Camille Emmanuel. According to her, although they are promised payments of between 10 and 20 dollars a month, the leaders usually do not pay them. They simply clothe and feed them in order to win them over.
“Armed groups use children for various tasks such as cooking, cleaning, acting as ‘wives’ or as lookouts,” said Russell, from UNICEF, in the statement, in which she defines the problem as “a tragedy that must be addressed immediately.” In addition, gang members “sexually abuse young girls within their ranks,” according to Harold Barreau, from the Minor Protection Brigade (BPM) of the Haitian National Police, told América Futura. Some of them also carry out tasks such as buying drugs, participating in looting, setting up tolls and committing crimes in the hope of rising within the gang.
“Vulnerability makes them targets for exploitation”
“But what these children have in common is that they lose their innocence and are separated from their communities,” adds the UNICEF official. The organization estimates that more than half a million children live in areas controlled by armed groups in Haiti, which makes them more vulnerable to violence and child recruitment.
Manel Barreau, police commissioner and head of the BPM, agrees. “Their socio-economic vulnerability makes them easy to exploit,” he says. He regrets that initiatives to curb child recruitment are insufficient. Although the police occasionally arrest adolescent members of criminal groups, Jude Chery, president of the Association of Volunteers for the Reintegration of Detainees in Haiti, says that once they are released, they have no support whatsoever, so “the risk of reoffending is significant.”
“I am tired of the situation in this country, but I have had no other choice,” says François, who dreamed of becoming a doctor when he was younger. He says that belonging to the gang makes him feel fear, but also adrenaline. “I will never have the power that having a gun has given me at any other time in my life. I feel that people respect me. This was never in my plans, I was forced to be here,” he adds, looking at a drawing of a gun that he made himself in the Occedh activities yard when they asked him to illustrate his present. “I am not afraid of death, you know?” he says suddenly, as if it were a recurring thought. “If I die, at least I will die in my country and I will do it for my country. For my compatriots and for the wings that have been cut off from us.”
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