The number of children fleeing violence in Haiti explodes

Henrique Dauphin, a 12-year-old Haitian boy whose house was burned down last year by gangs, has not been to school in almost a year.

He sleeps under a leaking tarpaulin in a makeshift shelter with nine people and uses a plastic water bottle to play soccer all day.

Henrique is one of 680,000 Haitian children forced to flee their communities in the face of escalating violence.

The number of Haitian children displaced by attacks by armed groups has almost doubled in the past year, according to a report by UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund. This time last year, 365,000 children were displaced.

And the picture for homeless children risks becoming even bleaker.

Faced with their growing numbers and the camps where they live in increasingly dire conditions, the main international organization that feeds them and their families announced it would cut food rations in half.