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United Nations
Haiti: UN mission alarmed as another child kidnapping victim is killed
19 August 2008 - Officials with the United Nations peacekeeping
mission in Haiti have voiced alarm at the continuing spate of
kidnappings of children in the impoverished country, days after
abductors killed a boy apparently because his family could not pay the
ransom.
The body of the 12-year-old boy was found in Grande Ravine on
Saturday, four days after he had been kidnapped, the mission (known as
MINUSTAH) reported today. He was the third child kidnapping victim to
be killed this year.
UN Police (UNPOL) announced that a 10-year-old boy was kidnapped last
week in a separate incident in the Martissant neighbourhood of the
capital, Port-au-Prince.
Massimo Toschi, a child protection adviser with MINUSTAH, told the UN
News Centre that children are increasingly the favoured kidnapping
target of criminal gangs, especially in Port-au-Prince and the
northern city of Cap-Haïtien.
The latest statistics indicate that 69 children have been kidnapped
this year, with over four months remaining, compared to 80 for all of
2007. Around half of all victims are now children, Mr. Toschi added.
The kidnappers are also becoming more vicious and depraved in their
attacks, he noted, with child victims often tortured, and some killed
despite their family paying part or all of the demanded ransom. Girls,
who account for almost half of all under-age victims, are frequently
raped or sexually abused.
Mr. Toschi said criminal gangs tend to abduct children on their way to
or from school, choosing victims from both affluent and poor families
with the expectation that even families with little money will be able
to draw from the Haitian diaspora to pay the ransom.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and kidnappers
can demand as much as $25,000 for the return of a child, compared to
the roughly $200 a month that they could earn in many regular jobs.
Kidnapping is a business, Mr. Toschi said, noting that public
awareness campaigns have had more success in tackling the problems of
sexual violence and restavek, or the local term for the practice of
using children as slave labour. The authors of kidnappings are not the
same as those of restavek.
He said MINUSTAH is considering introducing a quick impact project
that would provide psychological counselling and support to kidnapping
victims and their families.
But the adviser stressed that the missions ongoing efforts to improve
security and establish the rule of law across the country, working
alongside the military and Haitian National Police, would have the
greatest effect on curbing kidnappings.
He said the overall recent improvement in security had actually worked
to reduce the number of adult kidnappings, and may have led criminal
gangs to target children more.
Why such an atrocity against children all the time? he asked,
referring to the killing of the boy at Grande Ravine. If you kill
anyone, you are killing a human being. No one should be killed. But
the kidnapping victims {who have been} killed have all been children.
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