THERE is so much strife in the world these days it would not surprise us to learn that many people missed a gut-wrenching report from United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on developments in Haiti just over a week ago.

Sexual violence against children in Haiti soared tenfold last year as gangs who control most of the capital upped their recruitment of children, UNICEF spokesman Mr James Elder told journalists in Geneva.

“A staggering 1,000 per cent increase in sexual violence against children in Haiti has turned their bodies into battlegrounds,” Mr Elder is reported as saying.

“The tenfold rise, recorded from 2023 to last year, comes as armed groups inflict unimaginable horrors on children,” he added.

Mr Elder then highlighted the harrowing case of a 16-year-old girl, whom he identified as Rosaline, who was abducted by armed men.

“She was placed in a van with other young girls and taken to a warehouse. There she was extensively beaten. She was then drugged and, over the course of what she believes to be a month, she was relentlessly raped. When the armed group realised Rosaline had no one to pay her kidnapping ransom, she was released,” he said.

That report was like a bullet to the heart. It highlights the villainous nature of the beasts who have captured much of the Haitian capital and have subjected defenceless people to sheer terror.

These gangsters, we are told, now control as much as 85 per cent of Port-au-Prince, and children — some as young as eight years old — now make up to half of all armed groups.

The UNICEF report was corroborated by Amnesty International, which last Wednesday said it had interviewed 10 Haitian girls who had been victims of gang rape. Several of them, the rights group said, became pregnant and resorted to unsafe methods to terminate their pregnancies, given that abortion is illegal in Haiti.

“Gang-related violence has become such a daily reality that it is not uncommon to find several victims within the same family, or even sometimes the same victim having suffered several attacks,” Amnesty International said in its report.

An Agence France Presse report also told us that Amnesty identified attacks on schools and hospitals, as well as the blocking of humanitarian aid, as examples of “grave violations” suffered by children.

No human being should be subjected to such barbarity.

A number of countries have made good on their promise to assist the Haitian authorities with security personnel. Others have provided funding for the international security mission.

As we have said before, it is extremely important that all efforts be made to ensure that the assistance from outside the country is seen by law-abiding Haitians as friendly to their cause, not hostile.

But at some point the Haitian people who want good for their country and their children have to decide that it is in their interest to reclaim their State from the barbarians who are obviously intoxicated by their lust for blood and power.

Also, we in this region have an interest in ensuring that stability is returned to Haiti. For, as a former prime minister of that country, Mr Garry Conille, told the United Nations last September: “If we fail, it will not only be Haiti that will sink, but the entire region that will bear the scars.”