
Dispatch From Haiti: What Children Need Most
Multiple threats to children's health, safety and well-being include recruitment into armed groups amid escalating violence and displacement. A look at what UNICEF is doing to deliver urgently needed support, protection and hope.
Right now, the lives of the most vulnerable children hang in the balance as conflicts and crises jeopardize the care and protection that they deserve. Dependable, uninterrupted and effective foreign aid is critical to the well-being of millions of children. Please write your members of Congress and urge them to support ongoing U.S. investments in foreign assistance.
Child recruitment by armed groups on the rise
Children are being recruited into armed groups in Haiti in ever increasing numbers, UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder reported as he concluded a three-day visit to the country on Jan. 29. “Child recruitment into armed groups is rampant,” Elder said. "Children get recruited. It’s out of desperation. It’s out of manipulation, out of being engulfed in violence."
UNICEF estimates that up to 50 percent of armed group members are under age 18. Under international law, conscription of children is a violation of their human rights, whether they are coerced or not. Children are often forced by adult commanders to commit crimes and their juridical prosecution often fails to recognize the extent of their victimization.

While in Haiti, Elder visited a prison where dozens of children were being held. "I sat with a 16-year-old girl," Elder shared. "Before she was here she was learning Spanish. Caught up in a raid. She wants to be a pediatrician. She's sixteen... The point of this is that childhood should not be a gift. Childhood is a right.”
Fighting among armed groups escalated in Haiti over the last several months; it has now reached unprecedented levels. One in eight, or over half a million children in the island nation have been displaced by the escalating violence, a 48 percent increase since September 2024.
Children get recruited. It’s out of desperation. It’s out of manipulation, out of being engulfed in violence. — James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson
Displaced children and adolescents in Haiti face heightened risks of violence, including sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, which has also surged 1,000 percent in the past year, UNICEF reported.
Children's access to essential services, such as education, clean water, sanitation and health care, is severely disrupted – exacerbating malnutrition and increasing exposure to disease and violence. Nearly 6,000 people are living in famine-like conditions. Unsanitary conditions in displacement sites further increase their vulnerability to diseases such as cholera which, with almost 88,000 suspected cases, continues to affect children.
UNICEF estimates that approximately 3 million children are in need of humanitarian assistance in the country, with over 1.2 million children under threat in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince alone. More than 85 percent of the capital city is controlled by armed groups.

Doctors keep going at Port-au-Prince's only functioning public hospital
Almost half of the nation’s hospitals are not operating, and every hospital in the country is reporting difficulties in acquiring and maintaining essential medical supplies.
Elder spoke with Dr. Florence S. Saint-Surin, head of the Pediatric Department at La Paix Hospital in Port-au-Prince, the city’s last functioning public hospital. “The patients come from everywhere, and we have to take care of them,” Dr. Saint-Surin told Elder. “Where else will they go?”
The facility needs more of everything — materials, capacity, professionals — to keep up, Dr. Saint-Surin said. “We are giving care with heart, with what we have ... It's a fight every single day.”

The Jean Marie Cesar school in Port-au-Prince has been turned into a shelter for internally displaced families. It currently hosts 3,000 people. While at the site recently, Gianluca Flamigni, UNICEF Chief of Child Survival and Development for UNICEF Haiti, spoke with 13-year-old Dieussica, asking her what children living at the site need most.
"Most importantly, they need education," she told him. "Too many young people are carrying weapons."
For children and adolescents who have had their education interrupted by violence, UNICEF, together with the Ministry of Education and other partners, continues to support schools and organize catch-up classes and non-formal learning opportunities as well as vocational training.
For many internally displaced children and families staying at Jean Marie Cesar school and other displacement sites, there is nowhere to sleep but on the ground, and accessing safe drinking water is a struggle.
“UNICEF can make a difference by providing water through water trucking, by providing hygiene kits, by chlorinating the water,” Flamigni said.
UNICEF also supports mobile health clinics providing nutrition screenings and treatment for malnutrition, vaccinations and vitamin A supplements. “These mobile clinics save lives,” Flamigni said.
Other UNICEF-supported interventions include mental health and psychosocial support services for children, parents and caregivers, at both mobile and fixed child-friendly spaces and across communities.
Flexible funding allows humanitarian responders to stay agile
Flexible, unearmarked funding is the best way to support UNICEF's emergency response in Haiti, because it allows UNICEF and its partners on the ground to stay agile, and to deploy resources where they are needed most at any given time. This is especially crucial in crises like Haiti's, where conditions on the ground are continually changing.
“Haiti and its children are crying out for sustained, long overdue international support,” Elder said. “But you know, there’s an expression here: ‘We are like a reed — we bend, but we don’t break.’”
Individuals he encountered during his visit, Elder added, “are people with an unshakeable will to rebuild and protect their communities despite the chaos surrounding them.”
Learn more: Read UNICEF's 2025 humanitarian action plan for Haiti.
UNICEF continues to call for all parties to end violence and halt grave violations of children's rights in Haiti, including the recruitment and use of children by armed groups, and all forms of sexual violence. UNICEF also calls for the unimpeded access of humanitarian workers to safely reach vulnerable communities, including displaced populations in need.
“Children in Haiti are bearing the brunt of a crisis they did not create," said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. "They rely on the Haitian Government and international community to take urgent action to protect their lives and safeguard their futures."
HOW TO HELP
There are many ways to make a difference
War, famine, poverty, natural disasters — threats to the world's children keep coming. But UNICEF won't stop working to keep children healthy and safe.
UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories — more places than any other children's organization. UNICEF has the world's largest humanitarian warehouse and, when disaster strikes, can get supplies almost anywhere within 72 hours. Constantly innovating, always advocating for a better world for children, UNICEF works to ensure that every child can grow up healthy, educated, protected and respected.
Would you like to help give all children the opportunity to reach their full potential? There are many ways to get involved.


