Among the most invisible victims of Haiti’s compounding crises in 2020 were the thousands of children living and working on the streets of Port-au-Prince and other Haitian cities — children who had slipped through every social safety net and were surviving in an environment of extreme danger, exploitation, and deprivation. The political crisis, COVID, and gang violence had all made the situation of street children worse, while reducing the capacity of organizations that worked with them.
Street children in Haiti ended up in this situation through multiple pathways: family breakdown driven by poverty, the death of one or both parents, flight from abusive household situations, restavek arrangements gone wrong, or migration to the city in search of work or opportunity. Once on the streets, children faced exploitation by adults who used them for begging, petty crime, or worse; recruitment by gang networks that offered food and protection in exchange for criminal activity; and the daily physical dangers of street life in a city with escalating violence.
Organizations that had been working to provide safe spaces, food, education, and family reunification services for street children found their capacity severely constrained in 2020. Several were forced to reduce services due to COVID, funding shortfalls, and security concerns that limited their ability to operate in affected neighborhoods.
Child rights advocates called for street children to be recognized as victims of systemic failure rather than personal pathology, and for emergency services to maintain outreach to this population regardless of other crisis demands. They argued that the children on Haiti’s streets were the most visible human result of the governance failures that protest movements had been demanding accountability for.