The last time Faida Pierre, 10, went to school, her mother found her stranded on the roof of the school building, barefoot and crying, as a gang ransacked the surrounding downtown Port-Au-Prince.
The principal and teachers called for parents to pick up their children as the sound of gunfire grew louder and armed men approached. Then everyone ran for their lives. Faida finished alone.
“There was panic,” Faida recalled, “and people were running out of buildings. People were saying that bandits had attacked the neighborhood, so children were trying to get to the roof.”
That was a year ago, and like about 300,000 other children in Haiti, Faida, who was in the third grade, stopped going to school.
Stripped of their education and their future prospects, legions of Haitian children are overlooked victims of the gang violence that has crippled the country: homeless, hungry, and often targeted for employment by the armed groups they have fled.
Many schools remain closed because they are in areas occupied by gangs. Others have become de facto shelters, as more than a million people — roughly 10 percent of the country’s population — have fled their homes as gangs take over their communities.
After a surge of violence crippled Port-au-Prince, the capital, last February, nearly 15,000 households descended on government and school buildings for protection, according to UNICEF, the United Nations advocacy organization, which also tracked the number of out-of-school children.
Even families whose schools remained open said they were unable to enroll their children because they lack money for school fees, uniforms and supplies. Most children in Haiti attend private schools, but public schools also charge modest fees that many families whose homes and businesses have been burned to the ground can no longer afford.
At the same time, tens of thousands of children left Port-au-Prince for safer places in Haiti, underwhelming schools in several communities.
Schools have also had to deal with the number of teachers and staff, many of whom have either been killed or left the country. Haiti’s schools have lost about a quarter of their teachers, according to government officials.
In addition to educational losses, being out of school makes them vulnerable to join the highly armed groups that wreak havoc in their lives. Experts assess it up to half of the gang members are minors.
In the province that includes Port-Au-Prince, 77,000 ninth-graders took the statewide final exam at the end of the 2023-24 school year, a drop of 10,000 from the previous year, the Education Ministry said. As a result, officials estimate that around 130,000 students in the capital withdrew from the 13-grade school system last academic year.
Officials said they were unable to fully estimate how many students dropped out this year.
Faida may not go to school, but she lives in one. Faida’s father was killed in a gang attack, her mother said, so she and Faida joined the nearly 5,000 people living at the Lycée Marie Jeanne school in Port-Au-Prince.
When a New York Times reporter and photographer visited the school in the fall, Faida and her mother, Faroline Parice, were sleeping outside in the courtyard, drenched in mosquitoes and rainwater.
“He sometimes wakes up at night and cries,” said Mrs. Parice. “He’s asking when he’s going back to school.”
Wudley Beauge, 17, and his 15-year-old sister, Sadora Damus, were also there and missed more than a year of school.
Sadora dreams of becoming a police chief, but she needs to pass the ninth grade exams to enter the police academy, and she dropped out of school after the eighth grade. Wudley, who missed the 10th grade, wants to be an auto mechanic.
They sleep on the classroom floor with a dozen other people.
“My first priority would be to go back to school, because when I share my goals with people who are older than me, they say, ‘If you want to be a mechanic, you have to go back to school,'” Wudley said. “My family doesn’t have the money to send me to mechanical school.”
His mother, Soirilia Elpenord, 38, wants her children in school, but with a beauty shop and house set on fire by gang members, the mother-of-four said finding shelter ranked higher than studying.
“School? It’s not a priority,” she said. “My priority is to survive. The main priority for all parents in Haiti right now is how to survive.”
UNICEF has been working with the Haitian government to provide cash assistance to needy families, but is prioritizing those whose children are enrolled in school, and many parents said they did not qualify for aid.
Bruno Maes, who recently stepped down as head of UNICEF in Haiti, acknowledged that there are not enough funds to help all families, but said that more children will drop out of school without help.
The educational situation was complicated by more than 100,000 students, primarily from the capital, who moved to the south, where life is relatively calm.
But the schools had no place for them. Many students fled with only the clothes on their backs and showed up without birth certificates, school transcripts or any other documentation to prove their grades.
“You have a lack of documents, you have the impact of violence forcing them to flee, and then you don’t have places in schools, and then you don’t have money and you can’t pay,” Mr Maes said. “The range of problems affecting most children is huge.”
The stakes are high: UNICEF said the number of children recruited by gangs last year increased by 70 percent. It’s common to see seven-year-olds working as gang lookouts, experts say.
Janine Morna, who researches children in armed conflict for Amnesty International, said young gang members in Haiti she interviewed for an upcoming report told her they joined either under threat or out of financial desperation. Gangs often provide either a small monthly payment or allow younger members to keep change after the order, she said.
None of the minors he spoke to were in school.
“We know that schools can prevent employment by keeping children active and engaged,” Ms Morna said. “The children we spoke to were left idle – sometimes confined to their homes or resettlement sites without opportunities for enrichment and play.”
“The prospect of joining a gang,” she added, “becomes more attractive the longer you’re out of school.”
Haitian officials have said they are committed to improving the education system as a key step in stabilizing the country. The aim is to make schools more affordable by ensuring early grades are free and providing families with scholarships and books.
The government also rented buildings to house students whose schools had become de facto shelters.
“Haiti has invested a lot in education,” said the country’s education minister, Augustin Antoine.
Some schools in the western department, which includes Port-Au-Prince, reopened in the fall, but with fewer students, said Etienne Louisseul France, an education ministry official who oversees schools in the region.
Haiti has been in turmoil since 2021, when its last elected president was assassinated. Last year gangs joined together in coordinated attacks on police stations, hospitals and entire neighborhoods. With a depleted police force – many officers took advantage of US conditional humanitarian visas – the government struggled to contain the violence.
The Port-Au-Prince airport has been closed since November after gang members shot at a US commercial airliner. The international force, funded by the Biden administration and made up mostly of Kenyan police, has done little to loosen the gangs’ grip on the capital.
The UN said at least 5,600 people were killed in 2024, which is almost 25 percent compared to the year before.
“The situation now is that many schools have had to close, even private schools,” Mr. France said, adding that officials must “think about a plan B.”
Mrs. Elpenord’s safety plan is to eventually send her son to live with family far from his neighborhood so he can attend school. Her daughter tried to go back to school a few weeks ago, but the gang confronted her.
“I feel like it’s destroying me,” said her son, Wudley, who still hopes to start 10th grade. “And that makes me sad.”
André Paultre Contributing to reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
