'I saw the house in flames': In Haiti, homeless children struggle to survive

• Rising number of Haitians driven from homes by gangs
• Children bear brunt of forced displacement
• Displaced, hungry Haitians living in makeshift camps

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Catalia Guerrier's pregnant mother died several months ago, burned alive in their home set on fire by armed gangs that have taken control of nearly all of the capital Port-au-Prince.

Homeless and destitute, the 12-year-old girl lived on the streets for weeks, one of about one million Haitians, many of them children, forced to flee their homes because of gang violence.

Struggling to survive, they are vulnerable to rape and other violent attacks, without access to enough food or care.

Catalia said on the day of the fire, she had gone to a grocery store and left her mother at home.

"When I came back, I saw the house in flames. Gangs had set the house on fire," she told Context.

"In it was my mother, pregnant," she said.

This year more than 78,500 people in Haiti, including more 40,000 children, have been driven from their homes, more than double the number displaced in the first three months of 2024, according to the charity Save the Children.

Catalia fends for herself. At night, she sleeps in a room offered by a passerby several weeks ago.

"My mother was the only support I had because I have never seen my father," she said, sitting on a bench in the Petion-Ville neighborhood where she spends most of her days.

She does not go to school.

Other street children sometimes beat her up, she said.

"When that happens, there's nothing I can do because I don't know how to fight," she said.

Rising hunger

Haiti's violent armed groups have united in a coalition known as Viv Ansanm and forced more than one million people from their homes over the past year, a threefold increase from December 2023, when 315,000 people were homeless, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

More than half of the current tally are children, the IOM says.

The rampant gang violence since 2021 has led to record mass hunger, and  5.4 million Haitians – nearly half the population – do not have enough to eat, according to the U.N. World Food Programme(WFP).

"Right now, we're fighting to just hold the line on hunger," Wanja Kaaria, WFP country director in Haiti, said in a statement on April 17.

"Above all, the country needs peace," she added.

Facing what aid groups describe as an already deteriorating humanitarian crisis, Haiti on April 2 was among the countries slapped with 10% tariffs by the United States, a hard blow for the poor Caribbean nation that counts the U.S. as its top trade partner.

Further, humanitarian operations in Haiti have been hit hard by the U.S. decision to halt many foreign aid programmes globally.

Multiple displacements

Haiti has been under a state of emergency since March due to escalating gang violence and lawlessness, with armed groups  seizing control of all major roads into the capital.

More than 5,600 people were killed nationwide last year in gang violence, and thousands of women have been victims of sexual violence, according to the United Nations.

In Port-au-Prince, thousands of displaced families live in overcrowded public buildings, schools-turned-shelters and  makeshift camps, such as one in the Lalue neighborhood where Briana Casimir has found refuge.

"This is the second time my family and I have been forced to flee our home because of gang violence," said Casimir, 21, who lives in a tent with her mother and 3-year-old daughter.

Conditions are grim.

"When it rains, we can't sleep because water runs under us," she said.

Providing food and clean water has become increasingly difficult, said Peterson Joachim, spokesman for what is known as the Darius Denis Camp in Lalue, home to about 1,300 people.

"Several charitable and humanitarian organizations ... used to help us. But now it's no longer the case because they say U.S. President Donald Trump has stopped funding for their program," he said.

Like many Haitians, Casimir has witnessed the harsh and often random brutality of gang killings.

"I've seen, with my own eyes, a number of people being killed and houses burned down by gunmen who were acting with no pity," she said. "They don't care whether they are dealing with vulnerable women or children."

The transitional government, a rotating body of presidential council members appointed nearly a year ago, along with an under-staffed and under-funded U.N.-backed security mission, have done little to hold off the gang escalation.

Dozens of police stations have been closed or abandoned by officers fleeing the violence.

Many critics say the government's poor performance is tied to state corruption and even collusion with the armed gangs and their financial backers.

The government rejects these accusations, but Haitian authorities have a long history of corruption, and its judicial system has been paralysed amid the violence.

Haitian interim Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime has vowed to quell the gang violence to allow people to return to their homes.

"The government won't abandon displaced people .... I've heard your complaints," Fils-Aime told displaced people in a camp during a recent visit.

Catalia said she hopes to be adopted to escape her plight.

"There are three things I wish for whoever would want to adopt me," she said.

"Give me food, send me to school and provide me with a place to sleep."

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva; Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Ellen Wulfhorst.)