Haiti: the plight of a family displaced by gang violence

As no end is in sight to the gang violence engulfing Haiti, many inhabitants, like Kettia Louis Charles and her family, wonder if they'll survive the spiraling crisis.

Kettia Jean Charles is unsure whether she is seven months pregnant or just days away from giving birth. The 34-year-old fled her home last year along with her husband and three other children, and the family has been on the run as gang violence consumes Haiti's capital and beyond.

Violence has already left more than one million people homeless and hungry.

"This is the face of Haiti today. A country at war, a modern-day Guernica," Laurent Saint Cyr, leader of Haiti's presidential transitional council, told the UN General Assembly in New York. "Just a four-hour plane ride from here, a human tragedy is unfolding," he said.

"Every day, innocent lives are extinguished. Entire neighborhoods are disappearing."

Mourning a past life

In early November, Charles and her family fled their home in Solino, one of the last communities in Port-au-Prince that successfully fought off gangs until it couldn't anymore.

"I used to sleep in a bed, had my own business, and my children went to school. Now, I am living this catastrophic life," Charles said. The family sleeps on plastic sheets padded by grey blankets provided by the UN. Their home is four plastic sheets that serve as walls with a plastic tarp for a roof. If it's sunny, they roast. If it rains, their shelter becomes overrun with nearby sewage.

"I am asking for help so I can get out of this situation," Charles said as she wiped away tears. "Since I have come here, it has been very humiliating because I have no money, so I have to beg."

In New York, Saint Cyr stressed the severity of the situation that Haitians like Charles and many others are facing. "Thousands of young people are condemned to despair. Hundreds of women and girls have been raped. Almost half the population is facing acute food insecurity. Haiti is experiencing war, a war between criminals that want to impose violence as a social order and an armed population that is fighting for human dignity and freedom."

Before gangs invaded her community, Charles had a small studio where she did nails, hair, and makeup. She also cooked spaghetti, eggs, and vegetables, and sold meals out of her home while her husband worked as a security guard and did masonry. All that is gone. Friends and family provide them with some food, but it's not enough.

Charles said that people sometimes donate cooked meals to the camp, but there's never enough to go around. "There is a fight to get it," she said. "I am pregnant, so I cannot get in the middle of it." Charles is one of 1.3 million people who have been displaced by gang violence across Haiti in recent years, marking the highest level of internal displacement ever recorded in the country.

No major successes for the international police mission

Earlier this month, Charles and her family decided it was safe enough to visit their old home and see if they could recover something.

"We didn't find anything. I lost my future. The only thing I saved was my husband's life, my life, and the lives of my children," she said. "All I dream about now is leaving this camp so that my children can go to school and contribute to society," said Charles.

Last year, a UN-backed mission led by Kenyan police officers launched operations in Haiti meant to help an understaffed and underfunded local police department fight back gangs. But more than a year has passed, and the mission still has less than 1,000 personnel, far below the 2,500 envisioned, and some $112 million in its trust fund — about 14% of the estimated $800 million needed a year.

The US and Panama have urged the UN Security Council to authorize a new force of 5,550 in Haiti with the power to detain suspected gang members, something that Saint Cyr and other backers have cited as a result of the struggles of the current mission.

As Saint Cyr met with several international leaders at UN headquarters in New York this week to talk about Haiti's needs, Charles and her family don't have many people they can turn to for help.