Haiti: Irish missionary among group kidnapped

Image NPH

Source: Vatican Media, NPH

Concern is growing for the plight of an Irish missionary and eight other people including a child, who have been kidnapped by gunmen in Haiti.

Gena Heraty, an Irish national from County Mayo, who currently serves as the Director of the Nos Petits Freres Et Soeurs (NPH) Haiti Special Needs Programmes and runs the St Helene Orphanage near Haiti's capital Port Au Prince, was kidnapped on Sunday, along with a three year old child and seven of her staff.

The orphanage cares for more than 200 children and is renowned for its kind, loving and dedicated work.

Authorities say that the kidnappers broke through an outer wall and then headed straight for the main building in the compound, executing what they believe was a carefully crafted plan.

Gena Heraty has been on mission in Haiti since 1993, helping young and often vulnerable children.

Aware for years of the deteriorating situation, the crisis and the risks involved, she has said in the past: ''The children are why I'm still here. I've no intention whatsoever of leaving, because we're all in this together.''

Lawlessness and gang violence plague Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. The country has been dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters, major earthquakes and hurricanes, which have strained its infrastructure. The assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 exacerbated the political crisis, leading to a power vacuum. Presidential elections aren't possible at the present time, because of the widespread instability.

The United Nations says that more than eighty percent of the Capital Port Au Prince is under the stranglehold control of the street gangs and organized crime.

Kidnapping is an everyday, commonplace crime in Haiti, often aimed at gaining large sums of cash for guns and other equipment.

Local countries, especially those from the Caribbean, have sent police officers to Haiti, to bolster its fragile security forces. But no major nation has yet offered it a troop reinforcement to form a peacekeeping operation.