‘The world is failing the Haitian people’ warns UNICEF chief

Raped and burnt alive

Ms. Russell recounted some of the shocking testimony she had heard talking to women and girls at a centre for survivors of gender-based violence, which has now reached “staggering levels”.

“An 11-year-old girl told me in the softest of voices that five men had grabbed her off the street. Three of them raped her. She was eight months pregnant when we spoke – and gave birth just a few days later.

"One woman told me that armed men had barged into her house and raped her. She said her 20-year-old sister resisted so strongly that they killed her by setting her on fire. Then they burned down their house.”