“Voices like mine are often not heard in forums like these,” Malya Villard-Appolon tes­ti­fied before the 47 mem­ber states of the United Nations Human Rights Coun­cil in Geneva on Mon­day this week. In fact, Malya almost did not make it to Geneva. It took four lawyers, sev­eral interns and vol­un­teers, in Haiti and the U.S. work­ing nearly full-time for two weeks to get her there. Although she was even­tu­ally granted a visa to visit Switzer­land, she could not secure a tran­sit visa through the U.S. in time. MADRE, spon­sor of Malya’s trip, had to pur­chase a sec­ond plane ticket fly­ing through Guadalupe. I can think of sev­eral bet­ter uses for the money.

I accom­pa­nied Malya to Geneva with lawyers from MADRE and the law firm Mor­ri­son & Foer­ster (both of whom had accom­pa­nied me in May on an IJDH-led inves­tiga­tive del­e­ga­tion look­ing at the issue of rape in the dis­place­ment camps; the sub­ject of my pre­vi­ous blog posts). Malya urged the Coun­cil to “remind donors that the ‘UN Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples on Inter­nal Dis­place­ment’ implore gov­ern­ment to con­sult with Hait­ian women and ensure their par­tic­i­pa­tion in deci­sions in that impact their lives.” Our role was to make sure that Malya’s voice was heard and follow-up on her demands – lob­by­ing the Coun­cil to pres­sure for increased secu­rity in the dis­place­ment camps and involve­ment of grass­roots women at every stage. The trip pre­sented strate­gic oppor­tu­ni­ties for advo­cacy and engage­ment with donor nations, the Gov­ern­ment of Haiti and the UN that will hope­fully lead to con­crete results on the ground — .

Malya is a leader of KOFAVIV, a grass­roots women’s orga­ni­za­tion in Haiti that has worked with vic­tims of sex­ual vio­lence since 2004. Through their com­mu­nity out­reach work­ers, KOFAVIV has doc­u­mented at least 242 cases of rape in Port-au-Prince since the Jan­u­ary 12 earth­quake. Malya believes their work is only scratch­ing the sur­face of the prob­lem. KOFAVIV’s work is quite extra­or­di­nary. All of the mem­bers, includ­ing the lead­er­ship, have been raped. Some, includ­ing Malya, have been raped on mul­ti­ple occa­sions. Some, includ­ing Malya, have wit­nessed their daugh­ters being raped.

In addi­tion to the larger Coun­cil ses­sion on Mon­day, Malya shared her con­cerns in a pri­vate meet­ing with the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Vio­lence Against Women. Rap­por­teur Rashida Man­joo, and her Chief of Staff who hap­pens to have lived in Haiti for 3 years in the past and is mar­ried to a Hait­ian, lis­tened to Malya and offered their assis­tance within the con­fines of the Rapporteur’s man­date. Among the most impor­tant, she will for­ward our mate­ri­als to Michel Forst, the UN Inde­pen­dent Expert on Haiti and make sure that con­cerns about vio­lence against women are included in his forth­com­ing report and recommendations.

On Tues­day, we hosted a Press Meet­ing at the UN. Malya spoke in more detail about the severe suf­fer­ing of women and girls post-earthquake, inad­e­quacy of the gov­ern­ment response and fail­ure of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to engage with poor women and groups like KOFAVIV. Later that after­noon, we attended a side-event dis­cussing the issue of repa­ra­tions for vio­la­tions of women’s human rights. The dis­cus­sion was the­o­ret­i­cal, focus­ing on frame­works, applic­a­ble prin­ci­ples and best prac­tices for gender-sensitive schemes. At some point a pan­elist men­tioned the impor­tance of involv­ing a grass­roots per­spec­tive in the dis­cus­sions. Malya’s pres­ence was under­uti­lized within the for­mal struc­ture of the dia­logue, but sig­nif­i­cant. It showed that it is not impos­si­ble to engage.

In a sep­a­rate con­ver­sa­tion, Malya shared her frus­tra­tions with me. “Blaine, we have met with so many for­eign­ers and shared our sto­ries. Noth­ing has changed. We are tired.” I could see it in her eyes. The trip to Geneva was Malya’s first trip out­side of Haiti since the earth­quake (sec­ond in her life), out­side of the camp where she shares a sin­gle tent with 20 fam­ily mem­bers. She con­fided that she slept more dur­ing the three days in Geneva than in the last five months. We slept no more than 4 hours a night if that gives you any indi­ca­tion. The heat alone is enough to keep her up, but it’s more the fear. Fear that she or one of her daugh­ters or her neigh­bors will be attacked, again.

We have much work to do, fol­low­ing up on our work at the Coun­cil, to make sure Malya’s efforts were not for naught. Mak­ing sure Malya’s voice – and that of the 1,500+ mem­bers of KOFAVIV – was heard was only a first step in our cam­paign to press the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to act to reduce gender-based vio­lence in the camps. Securing funds to hire a Hait­ian woman lawyer to push for­ward domes­tic cases seek­ing jus­tice and help orga­nize grass­roots orga­niz­ing and advo­cacy is among one of our high­est priorities.

At least one woman got to leave the hell of Haiti’s camps for 3 days to give her the much needed energy to con­tinue the fight and make sure Haiti’s women pap kase or don’t break, some­thing Malya assured me time again.

You can fol­low the Rape Account­abil­ity and Pre­ven­tion Project (RAPP) here and help join us in our efforts to help Haiti’s women fight against rape and the under­ly­ing social struc­tures that keep them poor and vul­ner­a­ble by con­tribut­ing your time and money here.

Read more about the del­e­ga­tion on MADRE’s blog here.