Painting a grim landscape of the world’s war zones, Virginia Gamba, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, briefed ambassadors, citing grave concerns, from war-torn Gaza to gang-ravaged Haiti, where famine looms amid rampant violence and displacement.

Denying aid access has long-lasting effects on children’s wellbeing and development, she said.

Grave violations of international law

“Let me be very clear,” she said. “The Geneva Conventions and the Convention on the Rights of the Child contain key provisions requiring the facilitation of humanitarian relief to children in need. 

“The denial of humanitarian access to children and attacks against humanitarian workers assisting children are also prohibited under international humanitarian law.”

The UN’s engagement with combatants to end and prevent violations against children is critical, she said.

Unfortunately, data gathered for her forthcoming 2024 report shows “we are on target to witness a shocking increase of the incidents of the denial of humanitarian access globally,” she said, adding that “the blatant disregard for international humanitarian law continues to increase.”

“Without compliance by parties to conflict to allow safe, full and unhindered access for the timely delivery of humanitarian assistance, children’s survival, wellbeing and development are in jeopardy, and our calls are mere echoes in this Chamber,” she told the Council. 

“We cannot prevent denial of humanitarian access to children unless we understand it and reinforce our capacity to monitor and prevent its occurrence. We must get on with the job.”

A destroyed UN vehicle in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Gaza: Children facing ‘staggering’ conditions

Also briefing the Council, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban, said that as conflicts proliferate around the world, grave violations against children continue, including in Gaza, Sudan and Myanmar.

“The denial of humanitarian access is a particularly pervasive, multifaceted and complex grave violation,” he said. “These actions have devastating humanitarian consequences for children.”

Recalling his visit to Gaza in January, he said he witnessed a “staggering decline in conditions of children” amid widespread destruction, a “quasi blockage on the north of Gaza” and repeated denials for or delays in granted access of humanitarian convoys.

Ted Chaiban, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director for Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations, briefs the UN Security Council meeting on children and armed conflict.

Killing aid workers ‘trying to feed starving people’

“Attacks on humanitarian workers have also gravely affected humanitarian access with the highest UN staff death toll in our history, our UNRWA colleagues in particular, and new attacks this week with the death of our World Central Kitchen colleagues, killing humanitarian workers trying to feed starving people,” Mr. Chaiban said.

As a result of these constraints, children cannot access age-appropriate nutritious food or medical services and have less than two to three litres of water per day, he said. 

“The consequences have been clear,” he warned. “In March, we reported that one in three children under two years of age in the northern Gaza Strip suffer from acute malnutrition, a figure that has more than doubled in the last two months.”

Dozens of children in the northern Gaza Strip have reportedly died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks and half the population is facing catastrophic food insecurity, he stressed.

Every month, thousands of people in Sudan still migrate to nearby countries like South Sudan and Chad.

Sudan: ‘World’s worst child displacement crisis’

In Sudan, the world’s worst child displacement crisis, the violence and blatant disregard for permission to allow the delivery of humanitarian assistance essential to protect children from the impact of conflict in Darfur, in Kordofan, in Khartoum and beyond has greatly intensified their suffering, he said.

“We are seeing record levels of admissions for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) – the deadliest form of malnutrition,” the UN deputy chief explained, “but insecurity is preventing patients and health workers from reaching hospitals and other health facilities.”

Assets and staff attacked

Assets and staff are still being attacked, and the health system remains overwhelmed resulting in severe shortage of medicines and supplies, including lifesaving items, due to the severe interruption of the supply management system.

“Our inability to consistently access vulnerable children means protection by presence is simply not possible and that risks of other grave violations may escalate without an attendant rise in our ability to monitor or respond,” he said.

He called on the Security Council to use its influence to prevent and end the denial of humanitarian access to children, protect humanitarian workers and allow aid agencies to safely reach those in most need, across frontlines and across borders.

Watch the Security Council President for April, Vanessa Frazier of Malta, speak to reporters after the briefing on children and armed conflict.

Gangs reportedly control up to 90 per cent of Port-au-Prince, raising concerns that hunger is being used as a weapon to coerce local populations and hold sway over rival armed groups.

They control key routes to farming areas to the north and south and have disrupted the supply of goods, including food. 

This in a country which has a predominantly rural farming population which some believe could be self-sufficient in food. 

So, what’s gone wrong? 

Here are five things you need to know about the current food security situation in Haiti:

Are hunger levels rising?

There are some 11 million people in Haiti and according to the most recent UN-backed analysis of food security in the country around 4.97 million, almost half the population, needs some type of food assistance. 

Some 1.64 million people are facing emergency levels of acute food insecurity.

Children are particularly impacted, with an alarming 19 per cent increase in the number estimated to suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2024.

On a more positive note, the 19,000 people who were recorded in February 2023 as facing starvation conditions in one vulnerable neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince have been taken of the critical list.

WFP is working with farmers to supply food for school-feeding programmes.

Why are people going hungry?

UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Catherine Russell said the current “malnutrition crisis is entirely human-made”. 

The key drivers of the current food insecurity are increased gang violence, rising prices and low agricultural production as well as political turmoil, civil unrest, crippling poverty and natural disasters.

An estimated 362,000 people are now internally displaced in Haiti and have difficulties feeding themselves. Some 17,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince for safer parts of the country, leaving behind their livelihoods and further reducing their ability to buy food as prices continue to increase.

According to the UN Security Council-mandated Panel of Experts on Haiti, gangs have “directly and indirectly threatened the nation’s food security”. 

Displaced people shelter in a boxing arena in downtown Port-au-Prince after fleeing their homes due to attacks by gangs.

The escalation of violence has resulted in economic crises, increased prices and exacerbated poverty. The gangs have disrupted food supplies by, at times, shutting down the economy by threatening people and mounting widespread roadblocks, known locally as peyi lok, as a deliberate and effective ploy to stifle all economic activity.

They have also blocked key transportation routes and levied extortionate, unofficial taxes on vehicles that attempt to pass between the capital and productive agricultural areas.    

In one case, a gang leader in Artibonite, the country’s main rice growing area and a relatively new focus for gang activity, issued multiple threats on social media, warning that any farmers returning to their fields would be killed. The World Food Programme (WFP) reported in 2022 that there had been a notable decrease in cultivated land in Artibonite.

Meanwhile, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that in 2023, agricultural production plummeted by around 39 per cent for maize, 34 per cent for rice and 22 per cent for sorghum compared to the five-year average.

How did we get to this point?

While the current hunger crisis in Haiti has been exacerbated by the control the gangs exert over the economy and daily life in Haiti, it has its roots in decades of underdevelopment as well as political and economic crises.

Deforestation partly due to poverty and natural disasters like flooding, drought and earthquakes, have also contributed to food insecurity. 

Trade liberalization policies introduced in the 1980s significantly reduced import taxes on agricultural products, including rice, maize and bananas, undercutting the competitiveness and viability of locally produced food.

What is the UN doing?

The UN humanitarian response continues in Haiti in coordination with the national authorities, despite the tense and volatile situation on the ground, especially in Port-au-Prince.

One of the key food-related activities is the distribution of hot meals to displaced people, food and cash to those in need and lunches for school children. In March, WFP said it reached over 460,000 people both in the capital and across the country through these programmes. UNICEF has also provided assistance, including school meals.

FAO has a long tradition of working with farmers and has been delivering essential support for the upcoming planting seasons, including cash transfers, vegetable seeds and tools to support agricultural livelihoods. 

The UN agency also continues to support Haitian-led national agricultural policies and the implementation of development programmes.

What about the long term?

Ultimately, the aim like in any underdeveloped country in crisis is to find the path towards long-term sustainable development which will include building resilient food systems. It’s a complicated situation in a country so dependent on humanitarian support provided by the UN and other organizations. 

The goal is to reduce import dependency on food and link humanitarian responses with long-term action on food security. 

So, for example, WFP’s home-grown school feeding programme, which provides lunches to students, is committed to buying all of its ingredients locally rather than importing them, an initiative which will support and encourage farmers to grow and sell crops that will improve their livelihoods and in turn boost the local economy. 

UN Haiti/Daniel Dickinson

Cacao fruit grow on a tree in Haiti.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has worked with farmers in the southwest of the country to grow highly nutritious breadfruit. Around 15 tonnes of flour have been milled, some of which is supplying WFP programmes.

ILO has also supported cacao farmers who have exported 25 tonnes of the valuable commodity in 2023. 

Both initiatives will boost famers’ incomes and improve their food security and according to the ILO’s country chief, Fabrice Leclercq, will help “to curb the rural exodus”.

Most agree, however, that without peace and a stable, secure society, there is little chance that Haiti will be able to significantly reduce its dependence on external aid while ensuring that Haitians get enough to eat.

Rokaya needed time to recover after illness forced her to quit as a live-in maid in Malaysia and return home to Indramayu, West Java. However, under pressure from her agent who claimed two million Rupiah for her initial placement, she accepted an offer of work in Erbil, Iraq.

There, Ms. Rokaya found herself responsible for taking care of a family’s sprawling compound—working from 6 a.m. until after midnight, seven days per week.

As exhaustion worsened the headaches and vision problems that had originally forced her to leave Malaysia, Ms. Rokaya’s host family refused to take her to a doctor and confiscated her mobile phone. “I was not given any day off. I barely had time for a break,” she said. “It felt like a prison.” 

Physical and sexual abuse

The hardships Ms. Rokaya endured will be familiar to the 544 Indonesian migrant workers the UN migration agency (IOM) assisted between 2019 and 2022, in association with the Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Union (SBMI). Many of them experienced physical, psychological and sexual abuse overseas. That caseload comes despite a moratorium Jakarta imposed on work in 21 countries in the Middle East and North Africa in 2015, following Saudi Arabia’s execution of two Indonesian maids. 

To mitigate the humanitarian impact of trafficking in person, IOM works with Indonesia’s Government to shore up the regulatory environment on labour migration; trains law enforcement to better respond to trafficking cases; and works with partners like SBMI to protect migrant workers from exploitation – and, if necessary, repatriate them.

“Cases like Ms. Rokaya’s underscore the need for victim-centric approaches and for strengthening the protection system to prevent migrant workers from falling prey to trafficking in persons,” says Jeffrey Labovitz, IOM’s Chief of Mission for Indonesia.

After a clandestinely recorded video of Ms. Rokaya went viral and reached SBMI, the government intervened to get her released. However, she says her agency illegally extracted the cost of her return airfare from her wages and—with a hand around her throat—forced her to sign a document absolving them of responsibility. She now knows better: “We need to really be careful about the information that is given to us, because when we miss key details, we pay the price.”

Ms. Rokaya is relieved to be back home, she adds, but has no recourse to claim the money extorted from her.

Indonesian fishers.

A fear of failure

It is an all-too-common situation, says SBMI’s chairman Hariyono Surwano, because victims are often reluctant to share details of their experience overseas: “They fear being seen as a failure because they went overseas to improve their financial situation but returned with money problems.”

It is not only victims’ shame that affects the slow progress of trafficking case prosecutions. Legal ambiguity and the difficulties authorities face prosecuting cases also pose obstacles, compounded by the police sometimes blaming victims for their situation. SBMI data shows around 3,335 Indonesian victims of trafficking in the Middle East between 2015 and the middle of 2023. While most have returned to Indonesia, only two per cent have been able to access justice. 

Around 3.3 million Indonesians were employed abroad in 2021, according to Bank Indonesia, on top of more than five million undocumented migrant workers the Indonesian agency for the protection of migrant workers (BP2MI) estimates are overseas. More than three quarters of Indonesian migrant labourers work low-skill jobs that can pay up to six times more than the rate at home, with some 70 per cent of returnees reporting that employment abroad was a positive experience that improved their welfare, according to the World Bank. 

“I’m willing to keep going, even if it takes forever,” says fisherman Mr. Saenudin, a trafficking survivor.

Unpaid 20-hour days

For those who become victims of trafficking, the experience is rarely positive. At SBMI’s Jakarta headquarters, fisherman Saenudin, from Java’s Thousand Islands, explained how in 2011 he signed a contract to work on a foreign fishing vessel, hoping to give his family a better life. Once at sea, he was forced to work 20-hour days hauling in nets and dividing catch and was only paid for the first three of his 24 months of gruelling labour.

In December 2013, South African authorities detained the vessel off Cape Town, where it had been fishing illegally, and held Mr. Saenudin for three months before IOM and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs helped him and 73 other Indonesian seafarers to repatriate. 

In the nine years since, Mr. Saenudin has been fighting to recover 21 months of missing pay, a legal battle that forced him to sell everything he owns except his house. “The struggle tore me from my family,” he says.

An IOM survey of more than 200 prospective Indonesian fishers provided actionable insights to the government for enhancing recruitment processes, associated fees, pre-departure training, and migration management. In 2022, IOM trained 89 judges, legal practitioners, and paralegals on adjudicating trafficking in persons cases, including the application of child victim and gender-sensitive approaches, as well as 162 members of anti-trafficking task forces in East Nusa Tenggara and North Kalimantan provinces. 

For Mr. Saenudin, improvements in case handling can’t come soon enough. Still, the resolve of the fisherman shows no cracks. “I’m willing to keep going, even if it takes forever,” he said.