©️UNICEF
Port-au-Prince, October 8, 2025.- As the security situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate, more than 680,000 children have been forced to flee their homes due to gang violence. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is alerting these refugee children to a humanitarian, health and educational crisis that is hitting them in temporary shelters.
In a report published this Wednesday, the UN agency states that this figure is almost twice as high as last year. Children account for more than half of the 1.3 million internally displaced persons registered in the country.
The organisation denounces the use of schools as shelters and accommodation in dilapidated buildings, often without adequate drinking water and sanitation. It also warns of an increased risk of infectious diseases such as cholera, already detected at several overcrowded reception sites.
In the most affected areas, essential services have collapsed. Children live in fear, without access to education, care or adequate food. UNICEF estimates that one in four children is out of school, increasing the risk of exploitation, marginalization and recruitment into armed groups.
UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Roberto Benes, urges the international community to act quickly: « This generation can no longer wait. Action must be taken before an already dramatic crisis definitively seals the fate of a youth doomed to grow up in uprooting. »
W.E.
