Haitians need aid and face 'staggering levels' of gender violence, UN children's chief says
CTV
Close to half of Haiti's people, 2.2 million adults and 3 million children, need humanitarian aid and thousands of youngsters face "staggering levels" of gender-based violence, the head of the UN children's agency said Thursday.
Close to half of Haiti's people, 2.2 million adults and 3 million children, need humanitarian aid and thousands of youngsters face "staggering levels" of gender-based violence, the head of the UN children's agency said Thursday.
"Haitians and our team, they're telling me it's never been worse than it is now -- unprecedented hunger and malnutrition, grinding poverty, a crippled economy, resurgence of cholera, and a massive insecurity that creates a deadly downward spiral of violence," said Catherine Russell, the executive director of UNICEF.
Russell said what was clear during her just-completed visit was that the police don't have the capacity to secure the country and protect the population from violent gangs and "something needs to change."
"We have to, as an international community, say we can't watch this country completely fall apart," she said. "And so my job is to try to bring some attention to that problem and to make sure people understand how terrible the humanitarian crisis is, what kind of impact that's having on children."
Russell repeated at a news conference some of the stories she heard at a centre for survivors of gender-based violence in a dangerous part of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
An 11-year-old girl who was eight months pregnant recounted how five men had grabbed her on the street and raped her, Russell said. The girl gave birth days after their talk, she said.
Also at the center, Russell heard from a woman who described how men barged into her home and raped her. And when her 20-year-old sister resisted, they killed her by setting her on fire and then burned down the house.
