US aid cuts having dire impact on Haiti's children, says UNICEF

By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. aid cuts are having an extreme and immediate impact on thousands of children in Haiti as violence spirals and more young people are recruited by armed gangs, the U.N. children's agency warned on Friday.

More than 1 million Haitians, nearly 10% of the population, have been uprooted by years of conflict in which armed gangs have cemented control over much of the capital and surrounding areas.

Services that benefited from U.S. funding, such as malnutrition screening for babies, will be cut, UNICEF said.

"The United States has been a major supporter of UNICEF's work in Haiti," the agency's representative for Haiti, Geetanjali Narayan, told reporters in Geneva. "The impact in Haiti, a country that is so stricken by conflict and violence and poverty, is extreme and it's immediate."

President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid in January under his "America First" policy. On Wednesday, his administration said it was cutting more than 90% of aid contracts to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Half of Haiti's armed groups are children, with some as young as eight being recruited, UNICEF added.

It appealed for $38 million in funding for education programmes as it warned that one in seven children were out of school and said 47 schools were destroyed by gangs in the capital Port-au-Prince in January.

"Without access to education, children are more vulnerable to exploitation and recruitment by armed groups. Education is one of the most effective tools we have to break this cycle," Narayan added.

"Peace and stability are desperately needed but so are funds."

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

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