Nadia hushes the crying 3-month-old baby swaddled in her arms, gently planting kisses on her forehead.
She was 19, not ready to be a mother. But the young Haitian’s life changed when she was walking home from class on the dusty streets of a gang-controlled area of Haiti’s capital last year.
As Haiti’s toxic slate of gangs continue to plunder the crisis-stricken Caribbean nation, kidnapping, displacing and extorting civilians with nothing left to give, they are increasingly weaponizing women’s bodies in their war for control.“The most difficult part is that I have nothing to give her,” Nadia said of her daughter. “I’m scared because as she gets older to ask about her father, I won’t know what to tell her. ... But I will have to explain to her that I was raped.
Sexual violence has long been used as an instrument of war around the world, a barbaric way to sow terror in communities and assert control. For women especially, going outside the house is a risk. So is fleeing: Gangs use the threat of rape to stop communities from abandoning the areas they control. The U.N. documented 2,645 cases of sexual violence in 2022, a 45% increase from the year before. That figure is just a fraction of the real number of assaults.She struggled over if she would keep the baby when she learned that she was pregnant, but decided to give her daughter the best life that she could. In Port-au-Prince, a place already lacking in opportunity with high levels of poverty, it became impossible for the new mother to work or continue her studies.
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