The Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Wednes­day that on­go­ing vi­o­lence in Haiti is putting the ed­u­ca­tion of over 100,000 dis­placed chil­dren in the south at risk.

“The con­tin­ued surge in armed gang ac­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince, and sur­round­ing ar­eas, has put im­mense pres­sure on lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and their al­ready frag­ile so­cial ser­vices,” UNICEF said.

Bruno Maes, UNICEF Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Haiti, not­ed that more than 270,000 peo­ple have fled to the south of the coun­try.

With the start of the new school year, he said dis­placed fam­i­lies face the daunt­ing chal­lenge of se­cur­ing class­room place­ments for their chil­dren.

“Lo­cal ser­vices are strug­gling to ac­com­mo­date the in­flux of dis­placed school-aged chil­dren as well be­cause of the dis­rup­tions from on­go­ing vi­o­lence,” said Maes, who is cur­rent­ly vis­it­ing im­pact­ed fam­i­lies in the re­gion. “Chil­dren de­serve the right to a safe ed­u­ca­tion, so they can cre­ate a bright and thriv­ing fu­ture for Haiti.”

UNICEF said the ar­rival of 103,000 dis­placed school-aged chil­dren in the Grand South re­gion has placed a se­vere strain on ed­u­ca­tion­al ser­vices.

At the same time, near­ly 919 schools in the West and Art­i­bonite re­gions have been closed, UNICEF said.

As a re­sult, it said about 156,000 stu­dents have been af­fect­ed, and many chil­dren have lost a sub­stan­tial por­tion of their aca­d­e­m­ic year due to the school clo­sures and on­go­ing vi­o­lence.

UNICEF said it is work­ing in­ten­sive­ly with the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment to mit­i­gate the im­pact on ed­u­ca­tion, in­clud­ing by re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing dam­aged schools, set­ting up tem­po­rary learn­ing spaces, strength­en­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of teach­ers and oth­er per­son­nel and pro­vid­ing es­sen­tial ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­ri­als.

It is al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ing cash trans­fers to af­fect­ed fam­i­lies to help cov­er school-re­lat­ed ex­pens­es and al­le­vi­ate fi­nan­cial bur­dens.

How­ev­er, the UN agency said it ur­gent­ly needs US$87 mil­lion to con­tin­ue these ef­forts and is ap­peal­ing for greater fi­nan­cial sup­port as about on­ly US$5.4 mil­lion had been raised by Au­gust 1.

Maes urged the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty “to pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port to ad­dress these crit­i­cal needs and en­sure that every child has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­turn to school and con­tin­ue their learn­ing jour­ney.”

The UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) al­so high­light­ed the need for ur­gent fund­ing to as­sist more than half a mil­lion peo­ple in Haiti to pre­vent fur­ther star­va­tion and suf­fer­ing.

“Since Feb­ru­ary, es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence and in­creased dis­place­ment have sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and dis­rupt­ed mar­kets, leav­ing half the pop­u­la­tion, around five mil­lion peo­ple, in acute hunger,” said the FAO, call­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to se­cure US$48 mil­lion to as­sist 608,000 peo­ple with emer­gency agri­cul­ture ac­tiv­i­ties. —UNIT­ED NA­TIONS, (CMC)