Barbecue, Empire, And Haiti’s Child Soldiers – OpEd |
Haiti’s gang coalition Viv Ansanm is powered by thousands of child combatants drawn by hunger, displacement, and a century of foreign intervention.
A shaky video shot in the streets of Solino in October 2024 captures the reality unfolding in Haiti. In the clip, a contingent of young men and child soldiers wave guns in the air and chant triumphantly: “Take Solino! If you are not with Viv Ansanm, we will burn you all together.” It is a brief, jolting window into the growing power of the Viv Ansanm (Living Together) paramilitary coalition and the central role of children within its ranks.
As the group expands its control over the country, one glaring reality is that a significant portion of its armed members are under 18. Under the command of Jimmy Chérizier, known as “Barbecue,” and his former lieutenant, escaped kidnapper Kempès Sanon, Viv Ansanm deployed these armed youths to sack the sprawling neighborhoods of Solino. Their assault has displaced over 125,000 people across 24 different communities. “Viv Ansanm burned us out of our homes because we were one of the last bastions of peace and resistance left in Pòtoprens [Port-au-Prince],” said Ezayi Jules, a spokesperson for the community. “They reduced our neighborhoods to ashes. Now our families are homeless as Barbecue runs around everywhere talking about his “revolution.'”
Beginning in 2018, Viv Ansanm and its predecessor, the G-9 gang alliance, have targeted and invaded neighborhoods that had long been bulwarks of popular resistance agains the interests of big capital and foreign domination. The numbers speak for themselves. Armed groups murdered more than 5,600 civilians in 2024, and at least 4,026 in the first five months of 2025. The police are no better. The corrupt and fractured National Haitian Police (Police Nationale d’Haïti, PNH), aided by a contingent of U.S.-financed mercenaries, prey upon the same populations as Viv Ansanm. According to one UN study, the police were responsible for 64 percent of the violence in a three-month period between April and June of this year.
On September 30, the UN Security Council approved the deployment of a Gang Suppression Force to Haiti, replacing the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support Mission that had been in the country since June 2024. There are concerns that the latest mission will replicate the failures of the 2004 to 2018 UN Stabilization Mission, failing to address the root causes of the violence while targeting more ti solda (low-ranking soldiers) and civilians.
This dance of death is all these young “soldiers” have ever known. Traumatized and desensitized, they have been indoctrinated to believe they are fighting a formidable “enemy,”—one that often consists of peaceful communities like Solino, Kafou Fèy, or Nazon, neighborhoods that have long formed the social fabric of the capital.
UNICEF estimates that over half of the country’s gang members are children. Additionally, children represent half of........