The continuing inability of public authorities in Haiti to wrest control from armed gangs is providing a special challenge for the country’s education system. Not only are many youngsters in gang-controlled areas unable to get to school, but those same kids have become vulnerable to the lure of a “better” life in a gang.
Last May, the United Nations estimated that 30% to 50% of armed group members are children “who are subject to coercion, abuse and exploitation stemming from persistent social, economic, and political fragility caused by ongoing violence that has spiraled parts of the country into chaos.”
In October, the world body reported that 919 schools in the country have closed.
Another path
Charitable organizations are working to provide alternatives that keep youngsters out of gangs.
“Young people see the members of the gang, who wear expensive clothes or drive expensive cars, so they consider them like a model,” said Makenson Leonard, who works on victim protection projects for the aid group AVSI. “Our task is to ensure that we can work with the young people, in order to offer some alternative, another model, working with education, working with protection activity.”
Mary’s Meals International is another organization struggling against the children-in-gangs phenomenon. Mary’s Meals’ whole approach is to provide meals to youngsters in school, helping to ensure that they receive both nutrition and an education. For many, whose families are beset with food insecurity, the temptation is to skip school in order to help provide a meager income for their struggling families.
One of MMI’s partners, which provides daily meals in a number of schools in Port-au-Prince and nearby areas where gangs run the show, has reported that the school feeding program is “more critical than ever.”
“Obviously, food security is a big concern, but also many of those children wouldn't be going to school without the school feeding program, and then they become much more susceptible, more likely to be recruited by gangs if they're not in schools,” said Alex Keay, Mary’s Meals Director of Program Affiliates & Partners.
Keay said that the partner – one of three local organizations that MMI works with in Haiti – was very clear about the importance of the school feeding program in those urban schools.
“We know that that some of those urban schools that we're feeding in are in some of the more volatile parts of Port-au-Prince, in some of those very poor communities and those which are really overrun with the gangs and with the violence from those gangs, and we've been hearing that some of those schools have found it difficult to stay open,” Keay told Aleteia. “Of course we want to do all we can to make sure that those schools remain open and sometimes that means finding innovative ways to be able to continue to serve those schools.”
MMI provides food to a number of schools in Port-au-Prince, the capital, including in some of the areas where gangs have taken over.
“So there have been times when schools have been forced to close,” Keay said. “There's been times where a state of emergency has been declared, requiring schools to remain closed and curfews to be implemented.
“But the partners we work through are amazingly resilient and amazingly resourceful and they have huge networks of friends who help guide them about which areas, particularly when we're moving food around,” Keay said. “That's a very high risk activity. Food is obviously in very high demand, so moving food to distribute to the schools and stuff is an activity that they have to be very diligent and careful about making sure that they're moving food along roads that are not currently subject to roadblocks from gangs or particular episodes of violence less likely to be held up and food to be stolen.”
AVSI’s Makenson Leonard said that armed gangs man a checkpoint on the main access route into Port-au-Prince. “So the people who want to come out of Port-au-Prince have to pay for the checkpoint,” he said. “If they have merchandise they have to pay a lot.”
Increasing aid
Keay said that, recognizing the huge and increasing need that Haiti is going through at the moment, MMI is seeking to add 10,000 children to the feeding programs. Already, 175,000 Haitian children in over 600 schools benefit from Mary’s Meals on a daily basis.
The Scotland-based organization also is trying to find more ways to source food locally.
“Haiti is very dependent on imported food at the moment, so where there's opportunities to source food from within Haiti, that's obviously a real bonus because it supports the local economy as well as simplifies our supply chains if we're not reliant on food coming through the docks in Port-au-Prince,” Keay said.
Keay called Haiti a beautiful country whose people are “so kind and friendly and welcoming. It's heartbreaking that there's so much difficulty, so much poverty, so much food insecurity and so much violence there. You wish for nothing more than for peace for Haiti because it's really difficult for them to progress in terms of development and quality of life and standards of living.”
But, he said, “Peace still feels a long way away.”
