By Caitlin Stephen Hu, CNN
(CNN) — As a new multinational force musters in Haiti, its foreign police and soldiers could soon find themselves face-to-face with hundreds of children.
Children make up about 50% of armed groups in the country, experts estimate. In 2024 alone, at least 302 children were “recruited and used” by gangs across the capital, Port-au-Prince, according to the latest UN secretary general’s report on children and armed conflict. Most were used in combat roles, it said.
Traces of this phenomenon can be spotted on gangs’ social media. Last week, during a gang attack that left dozens dead in Artibonite, Haiti’s agricultural heartland, one video appeared to show a round-cheeked young boy waving a rifle and mugging for the camera. Behind him, an older man repeatedly fired into the distance.
That same week, the first installment of new Gang Suppression Force reinforcements arrived in Haiti, according to the force’s X account. Initial plans call for the force, authorized by the UN Security Council, to eventually field about 5,500 personnel to work with Haiti’s police and armed forces.
“With the GSF operations, we anticipate that many children will be exiting the gangs. We very much hope they will not be casualties,” said Geeta Narayan, head of UNICEF’s Haiti operations.
Driven into the arms of gangs
Life has grown increasingly difficult in Haiti after years of political turmoil and gang terror. Dozens of armed groups run rampant in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, extorting businesses, kidnapping people and driving farmers off their land.
And after years of sowing fear and desperation, they are also reaping young recruits, drawing in 200% more boys and girls in 2025, according to UNICEF.
“Armed groups are really good at social media,” Narayan said. “They put attractive stuff on social media saying, ‘Come and join us — it’s about the people rising up,’ with superficial slogans. They’re explicitly trying to attract people and then visually, they’re showing money, gold, they’re in a nice house.”
One such account, run by a Village de Dieu gang leader known as Izo, produces colorful music videos flaunting the group’s military-style body armor and weapons alongside shoes and jewelry. It has 19,000 subscribers and over 2 million views on YouTube.
Most vulnerable to gang recruitment and trafficking are children struggling to survive on their own. In a country with a threadbare social safety net, the wealthier gangs in Port-au-Prince often create food and housing distribution systems for homeless kids within their territories, claiming to “take care of” them, according to UN research.
Cash payments can follow — in return for gang work.
“Depending on the nature of the tasks assigned, payments range approximately from USD 100 to 300 for activities such as guarding kidnapped persons, gathering information, ransacking homes, or monitoring police movements,” the UN report says. “According to local sources, these payments are generally made twice a month. Higher payments, reaching up to USD 700, are reportedly granted for participation in ‘major missions,’ such as carrying out kidnappings, hijacking vehicles, or engaging in armed clashes with rival gangs.”
In 2024, one child recruit told CNN that he was 11 years old and homeless when a gang offered him food to join. He was eventually given the job of burning the bodies of people killed by the gang, he said.
Not all are lured in. In some neighborhoods ruled by gangs, children may be handed over by desperate parents in hopes of protecting them and the family, Narayan said. Others are abducted or forced into exploitative sexual relationships with gang members.
There’s only so much that aid groups can do to mitigate pressures on Haitian children and families.
While humanitarians are practiced at speedy emergency response following gang attacks, sending in water trucks and setting up temporary shelter for fleeing families, the sheer scale of the crisis makes real rebuilding hard to imagine. Over 1.4 million people are now homeless, and deadly gang raids have left homes, schools and medical facilities in ashes.
That’s why hunger and basic humanitarian needs must be addressed in tandem with any security crackdown, said Wanja Kaaria, head of the World Food Program in Haiti, which provides both emergency response and regular meals to about 600,000 schoolchildren.
“It’s difficult to imagine full peace when people wake up and don’t have enough to eat,” she said.
A ‘handover protocol’ for children
The nascent GSF is the international community’s latest and boldest attempt to break the grip of heavily armed gangs in the country, with an expanded mandate to aggressively pursue armed groups. So far, an advance team of Chadian troops has arrived to bolster the boots already on the ground from a UN-authorized predecessor mission, the Multinational Security Support (MSS).
When GSF operations get underway, child soldiers could be pushed to the front lines to face the new force, multiple security experts tell CNN. Meanwhile, rights experts have raised concerns about how any children affiliated with gangs will be treated when they are confronted in the volatile streets.
According to UN figures, at least three dozen children have been summarily executed since 2022 by police or vigilante groups after being accused of gang association — some as young as 10 years old.
Narayan said she hopes security forces that encounter children will follow a “handover protocol,” signed by the Haitian government and United Nations, which requires children to be detained appropriately and passed on to Haiti’s child welfare agencies. It is unclear whether GSF troops have any particular training or experience in doing this.
For children who make it out of gangs, UNICEF runs a program called Prejeune that aims to help reintegrate them into civilian society afterward. Over 500 kids have participated so far, many going through a complicated process of working through deep trauma.
“There’s a whole process of reconciliation that you do with the child and the community,” said Narayan. “They’ve often done horrible things, and it’s not a given that their family will want them back.”
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