Five students, three of them from the same family, were abducted Friday morning in the Bois-Verna section of downtown Port-au-Prince as they headed to school, according to Haitian news outlets — the latest in a wave of kidnappings that is reaching into every corner of society and that the country’s security institutions appear unable to stop.
The children were seized between Camelo and Dufort streets, in the Lalue area, local media reported. Armed men intercepted them as they left home, forced them into a vehicle, and vanished. Days later, no information had emerged about the kidnappers, their motive, or where the children are being held, and the families remained without news.
The abduction landed barely two weeks after the government unveiled a special security plan for the 2026-2027 school year, promising to deploy 10,750 police officers nationwide to protect students, teachers and schools. On the ground, that pledge has not produced visible safety along school routes, particularly in the capital region, where the daily commute has become one of the most dangerous parts of a child’s day.
A crisis reaching every class
The Bois-Verna case is not isolated. It is part of a sharp rise in abductions across metropolitan Port-au-Prince. On Sept. 9, two other students were kidnapped in Delmas 75 on their way to school, along with their driver. The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) recorded at least 81 ransom kidnappings between April and June, a 42 percent jump over the previous quarter.
The victims now span every stratum of Haitian life. Also on Sept. 9, the journalist Wesly Renaud Jean was abducted in Delmas 31; Haiti’s Culture Ministry has publicly called for his release. Two days earlier, a lawyer, Caleb Jean-Baptiste, and the director general of the state pension office ONAPE, Stéphanie Paultre, were taken in Gros-Morne by armed men described by local media as members of the “Kokorat San Ras” coalition. And months earlier, James Boyard — chief of staff to the defense minister and a well-known figure in the security field — was seized in Bourdon, one of the capital’s supposedly safer neighborhoods. Students, journalists, lawyers, civil servants, senior officials: no one is beyond reach. School runs, in particular, have turned into high-risk journeys, and families are living in fear.
Police and the anti-gang force under scrutiny
As the abductions multiply, criticism of the security forces is growing louder. Despite the staffing announced for the school year, the Haitian National Police (PNH) has been unable to secure the routes students travel or head off kidnappings, and rescue operations are rare, often late, and seldom successful.
The Gang Suppression Force (GSF) — the UN-authorized multinational mission that succeeded the Kenya-led force and began deploying in 2026 — has been barely visible on the ground. Months after its troops began arriving, its contribution to day-to-day security is hard to identify, and on kidnappings, residents say, its role is effectively nonexistent.
That echoes the findings of the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), which in its Sept. 16 report on the Kenscoff massacres condemned “the passivity and lethargy” of the Superior Council of the National Police (CSPN), the “disinterest” of the PNH high command, and the “barely perceptible presence” of the Gang Suppression Force.
The silence at the top
At the center of the security apparatus, the CSPN has said strikingly little. The council is chaired by acting Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who has been Haiti’s sole executive authority since the transitional council dissolved in February and is the highest official responsible for security. Yet for weeks, as kidnappings have swept the country, the CSPN has offered no substantive response: no news conference, no emergency plan, no communication with victims’ families.
The contrast is sharp, given that the government has been vocal about election preparations and the need to “create the conditions” for a peaceful vote. In its Kenscoff report, RNDDH pointedly noted that the fundamental rights of the population are “continually violated without this seeming to disturb the sleep” of the council’s members.
An election calendar that eclipses the emergency
The surge in kidnappings is unfolding against a backdrop dominated by electoral logistics. On Sept. 17 — the eve of the Bois-Verna abduction — the CSPN met to announce a “new phase of territorial reconquest,” aimed at “creating the necessary conditions for the holding of the next elections,” now scheduled to begin Dec. 13. For many Haitians, that ordering of priorities is precisely the problem: citizens’ safety appears to have slipped behind the political calendar. How, critics ask, can a credible, inclusive vote be held in a country where children are taken on the way to school, journalists are seized in daylight, and even state officials are targets?
In Bois-Verna, as in Delmas, Bourdon and Gros-Morne, residents describe a sense of abandonment. The families of the five students wait for word, with no official communication. Parents hesitate to send their children to class. Journalists and lawyers wonder whether they are next.
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