When men without a noble cause take up arms

The The news coming out of our Caribbean sister country Haiti is becoming more depressing by the day.

On Friday we learned that JetBlue and Spirit Airlines suspended flights to Haiti last week. While neither airline has publicly stated why flights were suspended, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that the new spike in gang violence has influenced these decisions.

On Thursday, a World Food Program (WFP) helicopter was hit by gunfire while flying over the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. Fortunately, the plane was able to land safely without injuring the 18 people on board.

Last Wednesday, the United Nations said more than 10,000 people had been displaced by violent attacks over the past week around the capital, killing at least two women, one of whom was eight months pregnant.

According to news service reports, the new violence followed a major gang attack in the central city of Pont-Sonde in early October that killed 115 civilians and injured dozens.

On Friday, WFP Director for Haiti, Ms Waanja Kaaria, told journalists at a UN press conference that insecurity in the country persists, while violence by armed groups and food insecurity “continue to push Haiti into a spiraling crisis that requires urgent attention.”

According to a recent WFP report, 5.4 million Haitians – about half the population – are suffering from acute hunger.

According to Ms. Kaaria, approximately 6,000 of these Haitians are categorized as internally displaced persons as they are now in shelters.

Even more depressing is the WFP report that 270,000 children across the country are acutely malnourished.

The result is that “hunger significantly increases the likelihood of adverse coping mechanisms, and especially for young people, the risk of being recruited by armed groups and slipping into crime is significantly higher.”

As it stands, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported that children make up 30 to 50 percent of the members of armed groups in Haiti. These children are used as informants, cooks, sex slaves and forced into armed violence.

Mr. Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General, who lamented that children affiliated with gangs can become victims of mafia justice, pointed to the murder of a ten-year-old boy in July. The boy, he said, was shot dead and his body burned by a vigilante group in Port-au-Prince after he was accused of being a gang informant.

There can be no cause so great or noble that would inspire men to subject their fellow human beings to such cruel conditions. The gangsters wreaking havoc in Haiti are nothing more than barbarians who clearly take a sick form of pleasure from starving, murdering and raping people.

When men take up arms, without any ideology or desire to influence change for the better in their country, no amount of negotiation will convince them to disarm.

Mr Guterres tells us that since the arrival of the Kenyan-led security mission in Haiti, they have launched large-scale anti-gang operations in several districts of the capital. However, they “still face challenges in maintaining control of these areas due to the lack of personnel and other resources,” he said.

Clearly, a key ingredient to resolving the crisis is for the Mission to be strengthened with more personnel and, more importantly, for law-abiding Haitians, with the support of the Mission, to unite against the scum destroying the world. country.