By Nicole Phillips, Esq., IJDH Staff Attorney

The real dis­as­ter in Haiti is hap­pen­ing right now, as hun­dreds of thou­sands of Haitians con­tinue to live with­out food, water or safe shelter.

The peo­ple in dis­place­ment camps we spoke with thought that the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment was block­ing food aid in order to starve them to death. A leader in a camp a block from the crushed National Palace said that peo­ple in his com­mu­nity are lucky if they eat one meal a week, which is usu­ally on Sun­days. Eat­ing was the biggest con­cern for many peo­ple we spoke with.

Safety was the biggest con­cern for most of the women, as vio­lent rapes are on the rise. The vic­tims are of all ages and often gang raped. The youngest rape vic­tim we inter­viewed was 5 years old. Her mother had been raped in 2004 when mass vio­lence erupted after Aris­tide was deposed by the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity. This lit­tle girl before us had been the prod­uct of that rape. Her grand­mother had also been raped dur­ing that time.

Hous­ing is also at the fore­front of people’s con­cerns. When it rains hard, which has been every night since I arrived on Thurs­day, peo­ple have to stand as the water floods their tents and turns their beds into mud.

My col­league down here with me, Kathy Bergin from the dis­as­ter law orga­ni­za­tion You.Me.We., said that it feels like we are watch­ing peo­ple slowly die. We read the UN Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples on Inter­nal Dis­place­ment and the cor­re­spond­ing human rights laws. We strate­gized on hold­ing the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity and Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment account­able to national and inter­na­tional human rights stan­dards as they spend the $11 bil­lion of promised funds, so that poor peo­ple don’t starve to death in the camps. But right now we are over­whelmed by injus­tice and the lack of legal reme­dies to address this human rights disaster.

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