Haitian children jailed for years without facing judge, UN official says

By Sarah Morland

July 20 (Reuters) – Children in Haiti have reported being jailed for years without appearing before a judge, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Vanessa Frazier told a Security Council meeting on Monday.    

• Frazier said some children reported they had been jailed eight years without seeing a judge, and many were housed in overcrowded prison cells intended for minors, but that were mostly holding adult detainees.

• “This is not acceptable,” Frazier said. “The situation of children in Haiti is amongst the most alarming anywhere in the world.”

• Frazier called on children associated with armed gangs in Haiti to be treated as victims first, as well as a review to release detained children and practical measures to reintegrate them.

• Last year, the U.N. confirmed 2,088 grave violations against children, including killing, maiming, abductions, recruitment by gangs and sexual violence.

• Deaths and injuries of children resulted mainly from armed gangs as well as the Haitian police, crossfire between the two and drone strikes, according to the U.N.

• U.S. Representative to the U.N. Mike Waltz said the U.S. would work to crack down gangs members’ monetization of social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, which he said were used to recruit children into the groups.

• Waltz urged countries to help Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Ivory Coast with airlifts to speed up deployments to the U.N.-backed security force in Haiti, made up notably of soldiers from Chad and Sri Lanka after Kenya withdrew.

• “Haiti’s armed gangs are no longer simply seeking to capture territory,” Monica Juma, executive director of U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told the council. “They are seeking to capture the systems of governance and the economic lifelines on which communities and institutions depend.”

(Reporting by Sarah Morland, Editing by Natalia Siniawski)