The last time 10-year-old Faida Pierre went to school, her mother found her stuck on the roof of the school building, barefoot and crying.
The principal and teacher were calling parents to pick up their children when the sound of gunfire grew louder and an armed man approached. Then everyone ran for their lives. Faida ended up alone.
“There was panic,” Faida recalls. “And people were running out of the building. People were saying bandits had attacked the neighborhood, so kids were trying to get to the roof.”
It was a year ago, and like some 300,000 other children in Haiti, Faida, a third-grader, stopped going to school.
Deprived of their education and future prospects, Haitian children are often overlooked victims of the gang violence that has crippled the country.
Many schools remain closed because they are occupied by gangs. Others became a de facto refuge. Because more than 1 million people (about 10% of the country’s population) abandoned their homes during the takeover of community gangs.
About 15,000 families descended on government and school buildings after a spike in violence in the capital last February, according to UNICEF, the United Nations children’s protection agency. Not attending school.
Even families whose schools remained open said they were unable to enroll their children because they lacked money for school fees, uniforms, and supplies. Most children in Haiti attend private schools, but public schools charge nominal fees that many families, whose homes and businesses have been burned to the ground, can no longer afford.
At the same time, tens of thousands of children are abandoning Port-au-Prince for safer places elsewhere in Haiti, abandoning overwhelming schools in some communities.
Schools also had to deal with an influx of teachers and staff. Haitian schools have lost about a quarter of their teachers, according to government officials.
In addition to the loss of education, leaving school makes them vulnerable to joining highly armed groups that wreak havoc on their lives. experts estimate that Up to half of gang members I am a minor.
In the province that includes Port-au-Prince, 77,000 ninth graders appeared for the provincewide final exam at the end of the 2023-24 school year, a decrease of 10,000 from the previous year, the Education Department said. As a result, officials estimate that about 130,000 students in the Capital Region withdrew from Grade 13 last school year.
Officials said they were unable to fully assess how many students dropped out this year.
Faida may not go to school, but she lives in one. Faida’s father was killed in a gang attack, her mother said, so she and Faida joined nearly 5,000 people living at the Lycée Marie Jeanne school in Port-au-Prince.
When a New York Times reporter and photographer visited the school in the fall, Faida and her mother, Faroline Parris, were sleeping outside in the courtyard with mosquitoes and rainwater.
“Sometimes at night she wakes up and she’s crying,” Parris said. “Ask when she will go back to school.”
Wudley Beauge, 17, and her sister Sadora Damus, 15, were also there, having missed more than a year of school.
Sadora dreams of becoming a police chief, but left school after the 8th grade, having to pass the 9th grade exam to enter the police academy. Wudley, who missed the 10th grade, wants to become an auto mechanic.
They sleep on the classroom floor along with about 12 other people.
“My first priority is to go back to school, because when I share goals with people older than me, they say, ‘If you want to be a mechanic, you have to go back to school.’ “Yes,” he said. “My family doesn’t have money to send me to mechanic school.”
His mother, Soirilia Elpenord, 38, wants her children at school, but when a cosmetics store and a house set are set ablaze by gang members, the mother of four is forced to take refuge in the school. I said that higher ranks are ranked higher.
“School? That’s not a priority,” she said. “My priority is to survive. The main priority of every Haitian parent right now is how to survive.”
UNICEF has been working with the Haitian government to provide cash assistance to poor families, but it prioritizes those whose children are registered in schools and says many parents do not qualify for assistance.
Bruno Mace, who recently left as head of UNICEF in Haiti, admitted there was not enough funding to help all families, but said more children would drop out of school without aid. .
The educational situation was complicated by more than 100,000 students, mainly from the capital.
However, there were no seats available at school. Many students fled with only the clothes on their backs and showed up without birth certificates, school transcripts, or other documents proving what grade they were in.
“You lack documentation, you have the effects of violence mandating you to flee, and then you don’t have money and you can’t pay because there were no seats in school,” Mae said. . “The range of issues that affect the majority of children is huge.”
The stakes are high: UNICEF says number of children recruited by gangs last year increased by 70%. According to experts, it is common to see children as young as seven years old working as lookouts for gangs.
Jeanine Morna, who studies children of armed conflict for Amnesty International, said the young Haitian gang members she interviewed for a forthcoming report said they felt they were under threat or had financial problems. He said he told her he joined out of desperation. Gangs often offer small monthly payments or allow young members to keep the change after running errands, she said.
None of the minors she interviewed were at the school.
“Schools know that by keeping kids active and engaged, they can prevent recruitment,” Morna said. “The children we spoke to remained idle. Sometimes they were confined to their homes and shelters without opportunities for enrichment and play.”
“The prospect of joining a gang,” she added.
Haitian officials said they are committed to improving the education system as a key step to stabilizing the country. The goal is to make school more affordable by making sure early grades are free and providing salaries and books to families.
The government also leased buildings to accommodate students whose schools became de facto shelters.
“Haiti has invested a lot in education,” said Augustine Antoine, the country’s education minister.
Some schools in the western province, including Port-au-Prince, reopened in the fall but with fewer students, said Etienne Louisault France, an Education Ministry official who oversees schools in the region.
Haiti has been in turmoil since 2021, when its last elected president was assassinated. Last year, gangs united in coordinated attacks on police stations, hospitals, and entire neighborhoods. With police departments depleted — many officers took advantage of U.S. humanitarian parole visas — the government is struggling to contain the violence.
Port-au-Prince airport has been closed since November after gang members shot at a U.S. commercial aircraft. An international force funded by the Biden administration and made up primarily of Kenyan police officers has done little to loosen the gang’s grip on the capital.
the UN said at least 5,600 people killed in 2024, an increase of nearly 25% from the previous year.
“The situation now is that many schools, even private schools, have had to close,” Mr France said.
Elpenode’s backup plan is to eventually allow her son to live and attend school away from the neighborhood with his family. Her daughter tried going back to school a few weeks ago, but gang skirmishes kept her out.
“I feel like this is destroying me,” said her son, Wudley. He still hopes to start 10th grade. “And that makes me sad.”
Andre Poeltl Contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
