By Magdalee Brunache
Magdalee Brunache is from Haiti, and is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science with a focus on Development Studies and Comparative Politics at the University of Toronto
In Haiti, the security situation has reached an unprecedented level, with an estimated 1,554 people killed in the first three months of 2024. What has received far less attention, however, is the destruction that has befallen Haiti’s already fragile educational system. The systematic dismantling of Haiti’s educational infrastructure cannot be understated. The attack on February 29, 2024, when gangs under the name “Viv Ansanm” launched coordinated attacks on the country’s national airport and remaining institutions to prevent Prime Minister Henry’s return, exemplifies this pattern. These events, which began while students were still in school and included an attack on the all-boys Catholic school, Petit Séminaire Collège Saint-Martial, set off a targeted assault on Haiti’s intellectual lifeblood. Since the surge in violence, numerous attacks on schools, universities, and cultural centers have been reported. These include damage or destruction to several schools, three of the 19 faculties of Haiti’s State University (UEH), Haiti’s oldest art school, the 36-year-old ARAKA cultural center in Port-au-Prince, and the country’s national library (BNH).
The scale of the devastation is deeply troubling. For example, on the afternoon of March 25, heavily armed groups entered a school in Port-au-Prince and set fire to 23 classrooms, according to UNICEF. Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. From October 2022 to February 2023, 72 schools were targeted, a sharp rise from just eight during the same period the previous year. UNICEF’s February 2023 reports painted a harrowing picture: at least 13 schools targeted by armed groups, one school set on fire, one student killed, and at least two staff members abducted. Moreover, since at least late 2018, students in Haiti have been unable to complete a full school year. The escalation of violence in Port-au-Prince leading up to the current situation has caused frequent school closures and disorientation for students.
One might be tempted to dismiss such school destruction as collateral damage—an unintentional byproduct of conflict. However, the patterns observed in Haiti suggest a troubling intent to extinguish the intellectual and cultural future of the nation. Drawing parallels between attacks on educational infrastructure in Gaza and Haiti reveals a disturbing trend, where the deliberate targeting of schools and cultural institutions undermines the very foundation of a society. This targeted violence not only disrupts the education of children and young adults, but also erodes the fabric of their communities and the prospects for a brighter future.
The recent trends of destruction aimed at schools and universities in Gaza have resurfaced a term previously used in reference to earlier Israeli attacks on Palestinians. “Scholasticide” was coined by Professor Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian affairs scholar at Oxford University, in response to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in 2009. Intended to highlight a systematic effort by Israel to dismantle Palestinian education, Nabulsi argues that the objective of “scholasticide” is to eradicate the Palestinian tradition of learning and the potential for revolutionary thought that it cultivates. A member of Scholars Against the War on Palestine (SAWP), a group dedicated to exposing the patterns of “scholasticide” in Gaza, argued that Israel’s goal is not only to physically eliminate individuals but also to erase the knowledge they possess. This dual process that often coincides with genocide, aims to make the territory uninhabitable and to obliterate the cultural and intellectual heritage of the population.
“Scholasticide” encompasses a variety of actions, including killings, assaults, and psychological harm inflicted on educators, students, and educational personnel. It also includes arbitrary arrests, detention, imprisonment, and systematic intimidation, harassment, and bullying of educational staff and students. Moreover, it involves the intentional bombing and destruction of
educational facilities and the looting of resources such as libraries and laboratories. Lastly, the occupation of educational institutions amidst other forms of actions impeding the (re) building and proper functioning of spaces dedicated to educational pursuits, also fall under this term.
The term immediately resonated with me upon first hearing it, as it seemed to align closely with the news emerging from Haiti in recent weeks. It is clear that a “scholasticide” has been happening in Haiti. But I believe it is the culmination of a more sustained pattern of “slow death” of education in the country. The concept of “slow death” was popularized by cultural theorist and scholar Lauren Berlant in her 2007 essay Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency). Berlant explores how certain populations face prolonged harm due to systemic inequalities, economic instability, and ongoing exposure to challenging living conditions. This image of a protracted “wearing” can be applied to the fate of the Haitian educational system in recent decades.
Just a few weeks before the events of February 29, 2024, I was speaking with my teenage godson, a student in Haiti. When asked about school, he told me, “I don’t like school.” Assuming he meant a specific teacher or subject, I offered to help, but he clarified that he was disinterested in school altogether. He struggled to understand his classes and was just beginning to grasp the material in preparation for the national exam in June when schools closed again due to an alleged “revolution.”
Indeed, schools in Haiti’s capital had been closed since the end of January in response to opposition member Guy Philippe’s call for a “revolution” to start on February 7, a significant date marking the end of the brutal Duvalier dictatorship and the beginning of Haiti’s long and violent transition toward democracy. Philippe, who returned to Haiti after serving time in the U.S. for money laundering linked to drug trafficking during his tenure as a public servant in Haiti, expressed his intention to become president and threatened to attack the capital to oust the unpopular and illegitimate Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
I immediately tried to persuade my godson that education had been the key to my journey and could offer him the same opportunities. I found myself repeating the same rehearsed speech my father gave me growing up, emphasizing that education was the only path forward for people like us in Haiti. However, as I spoke these words, they seemed hollow and unconvincing. When my godson didn’t respond, I found myself grappling with difficult questions. Did this advice still hold true in the Haiti he now lived in? Was it even true back then?
I realized I was more of an exception than the rule, having been fortunate enough to be one of the 30 people selected in Haiti in 2018 to pursue a post-secondary education in Taiwan, out of an estimated 30,837 students who passed the state baccalaureate exam in the 2017-2018 school year. The UEH, the main public university, could only accommodate between 4,000 and 5,000 new students, according to a July 2018 Le Nouvelliste article. In a country where, that year, 4.4 million people faced acute food insecurity, including 1.3 million experiencing severe food insecurity, and where 57.5% of the population lived below the poverty line of $2.15 per day, affording the country’s costly private universities presented an enormous challenge for most families.
Haiti’s education system has long been marred by deep-rooted inequality and exclusion, reinforcing divisions along racial, gender, and rural-urban lines. This situation has only worsened since the devastating January 2010 earthquake, which forced many to live in makeshift, neglected camps on the outskirts of the capital. When the government announced the reopening of schools a few months later, it brought a sense of renewed hope for many. Media reports highlighted how returning to school lifted the spirits of Haitian pupils after the trauma of the earthquake. However, the reality was quite different for children living in the camps; most were unable to return to their education immediately, and some never managed to do so.
Though concerns about the decline in schooling emerged in late 2018, with students missing more and more days, the reality was that many had been out of school for years. Last year, as the number of attacks on schools increased significantly, the UNICEF and many of us Haitians started to lament the fact that schools in Haiti, which have always been regarded as safe and respected spaces, were now being shamelessly targeted. Education has always been valued within Haitian families, often illustrated by the lengths uneducated mothers would go to, working tirelessly in the informal sector to provide their children with access to the most esteemed private schools. Growing up, major protests were often scheduled for weekends or holidays, and when strikes extended for too long, there was a communal urgency to protect the school year, and life would quickly resume thereafter. The idea that “education was our only way out” was akin to a national motto.
It might be convenient to blame the recent events for the educational decline in Haiti, but the reality is that the Haitian State has never fully respected, protected, or fulfilled the right to education, despite the 1987 Haitian Constitution guaranteeing access to free, quality education. According to a 2017 UNICEF report, 116,463 children had never attended school, and an estimated 331,984 had received some schooling before dropping out, largely due to economic challenges and academic failure. Furthermore, poor infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, absent and underpaid teachers, and language barriers all contribute to the systemic issues within public education in Haiti. The tale of the uneducated Haitian mother who sacrifices immensely to secure her children’s access to education should not be romanticized. It serves as a stark reminder of the State’s gradual withdrawal from and failure at its duty to guarantee the right to education for the Haitian people.
For instance, Michel Martelly’s Universal, Free, and Compulsory Schooling Program (PSUGO) allegedly sought to provide education to approximately 1.5 million children aged 6 to 12 by 2016. However, this program has been widely criticized as a national scheme of administrative mismanagement, corruption, and misuse of public funds for the benefit of the PHTK party and its allies. Despite reports suggesting otherwise, the program remained largely underfunded during the president’s mandate. This occurred even though the government had access to significant sums of embezzled PetroCaribe funds, which could have been allocated to achieve the program’s goals. In short, education in Haiti was slowly dying long before the violence of the last six years.
As the ongoing wave of violence in Haiti persists, a troubling reality has become evident: gangs have been deliberately targeting educational and cultural facilities, causing severe devastation to the poorest segments of the population who rely on an already limited public education. Meanwhile, children of the wealthy elite and members of the political class attend high-end American schools that provide online education or are sent abroad to study. Despite widespread anger and grief expressed on social media about these attacks, the exact motivations behind this trend remain unclear, though both the means and agenda behind the violence suggest influences and manipulation beyond the motivations and capabilities of individual gang leaders. Some have also pointed out that the gangs may not hold schools in high regard since many of the gang members never had access to quality education themselves.
In a climate where there are fears that gang members may be seeking amnesty for their crimes and the terror they have inflicted, attempts to understand their psychology or pathways into a life of violence are sometimes interpreted as excusing their actions. However, in building the Haiti we want, it will be crucial to dedicate equal attention to the two pillars on which the country stands: impunity and social inequality, as described by members of Nou Pap Domi, a popular anti-corruption group. Reforming our educational system to be more equitable and just must be a priority to create meaningful change and address the root causes of the current crisis.
