UNICEF’s 2024 assessments highlighted the specific situation of Haitian children who had been born during the crisis years — children for whom political instability, gang violence, and humanitarian emergency were simply the normal conditions of childhood. For a child born in 2019, the entire span of conscious memory included only a country in crisis: protests, COVID, the earthquake, the assassination, the fuel blockades, the gang offensive. This generation had never known Haiti as a functioning state.
Child development experts expressed deep concern about the long-term consequences of raising a generation in conditions of chronic trauma, disrupted education, food insecurity, and exposure to violence. The developmental impacts of adverse childhood experiences were well-documented: impaired cognitive development, emotional regulation difficulties, increased risk of mental health conditions, and reduced life outcomes across education, employment, and health dimensions.
The scale of the affected generation was enormous. Children under ten in 2024 represented millions of young Haitians whose developmental trajectories had been shaped by crisis conditions from birth or early childhood. The long-term consequences for Haitian human capital — the education, skills, and health of the future workforce and citizenry — were profound and would be felt for decades regardless of when political and security conditions improved.
Child protection and education organizations called for emergency investment in programs that could mitigate the developmental impacts of the crisis on children — psychosocial support, educational catch-up programs, nutritional interventions, and family support services. They argued that the cost of not investing in these programs would be paid in reduced human capital for a generation, with consequences for Haiti’s development that would extend far beyond the immediate crisis period.