By Saman­tha Dia­mond, MPH Can­di­date Yale University

Daniel Tardif a vol­un­teer attor­ney from the Inter­na­tional Senior Lawyer’s Project picked me up from the air­port: Per­haps Mario (Man­ag­ing Attor­ney of my orga­ni­za­tional host, the BAI) fig­ured that since this was my first time in Haiti, my Kreyol would be less than per­fect. (Photo to the right of me and Hait­ian Attor­ney Ouvens Jean Louis)

On the news, we often see Hilary or Bill Clin­ton stand­ing on top of a pile of rub­ble.  How­ever, with­out see­ing the whole city it is hard to have any under­stand­ing of the inequal­i­ties that became so clear in the earth­quake: The wealth­ier neigh­bor­hoods have either been rebuilt, or were built care­fully the first time, and they remain stand­ing.  In con­trast, the poorer areas have been flat­tened and pub­lic areas have been replaced with dis­place­ment camps.  Daniel told me that Haitians refer to the earth­quake as “Le Douzieme.” This reminded him of the way that Amer­i­cans refer to 9/11.

We were soon caught in a tor­ren­tial down­pour: a reminder that today was the first day of hur­ri­cane sea­son. We passed one of the many camps in Port-au-Prince.  In con­trast to oth­ers I had seen, this camp had tents from USAID. When there was no longer enough room for tents, aid agen­cies began to pass out tarps. When there were no more tarps, fam­i­lies began to use t-shirts and sheets, stretched across sticks.   The efforts to build hous­ing for refugees are piece meal and may be too lit­tle too late.  In 2008 about 800,000 were affected by sea­sonal flood­ing begin­ning in June and last­ing through Octo­ber.  With­out proper shel­ters, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have long been pre­dict­ing that Malaria and Typhoid will plague the city in the com­ing months.

That night we drove by a camp near the National Palace.  There were many street lamps but all had been turned off.  One man told me this was the government’s way of “ask­ing them” to leave.  I won­dered where the gov­ern­ment wanted these peo­ple to go. I couldn’t imag­ine walk­ing to the latrines at night and I thought of the women who had been attacked in these camps.

Even if there were con­crete build­ings avail­able, it is unlikely that any­one who had been trapped under a roof would live in such a build­ing again.  If there is a for­mal build­ing code in Haiti, I could not find it eas­ily online and I won­dered if any code would be enforced in attempts to build shel­ters before the rainy season.

The BAI office is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When I arrived at 7:00 AM a reporter from the Mon­treal Gazette was wait­ing to speak to Mario Joseph, the BAI’s man­ag­ing attor­ney, about a case involv­ing a Cana­dian mis­sion­ary.  Within the hour of his fin­ish­ing the meet­ing, Mario received an email from a Span­ish speak­ing lawyer in the US who was work­ing on a Tem­po­rary Pro­tected Sta­tus case.  He trans­lated her Eng­lish inter­pre­ta­tion of the woman’s state­ment into Cre­ole and then French, and finally wrote a response in Eng­lish.  Before 9:00 am, Mario’s had spo­ken more lan­guages than I could ever hope to learn and his words had reached sev­eral countries.

Over the next few days, I accom­pa­nied Mario to visit each on-site lawyer for the Health and Human Rights in Pris­ons Project (HHRPP). At each site – St. Marc, Mire­bal­ais and Hinche – he met with the judge where he dis­cussed the con­cept of Habeas Cor­pus.  Dis­cus­sion may be an under­state­ment as the whole build­ing could hear them.  In Mire­bal­ais I was intro­duced to one of the only female judges.  When told about my study on the social cost of pre­trial deten­tion she asked what BAI could do about the pre­trial deten­tion prob­lem.  Would I sug­gest bail?.…Mario pointed out that “we already have a bail sys­tem in Haiti: if you’re rich you can pay to get a trial faster or even get out of jail, and if you can’t pay, you must stay in jail.”

After they debated whether an ille­gal arrest made the deten­tion ille­gal, Mario explained that by giv­ing the judges the resources and ask­ing them to think about these issues, he could make the “slow but steady change.”
Haitians may not be arbi­trar­ily arrested, pros­e­cuted or detained (Arti­cle 24–1, Hait­ian Con­sti­tu­tion).  If arrested, they may only be held 48 hours before see­ing a judge, who must rule on the legal­ity of their arrest (Arti­cle 26). In Sep­tem­ber 2009, the HHRPP inter­viewed 389 pris­on­ers and detainees in St. Marc, Mire­bal­ais, and Hinche, and found that the aver­age length of pre­trial deten­tion was 280 days.  If their arrest is deemed legal and they are detained, indi­vid­u­als await­ing trial must be held sep­a­rately from indi­vid­u­als serv­ing sen­tence (Arti­cle 44).  Though the judges under­stand the impor­tance of this arti­cle, all three I met, said their juris­dic­tions did not have the means for such facilities.

The Con­sti­tu­tion also requires the gov­ern­ment to oper­ate pris­ons in accor­dance with stan­dards reflect­ing respect for human dig­nity accord­ing to the law (Arti­cle 44–1).  Over the next three months I will visit each prison, work with the HHRPP, and research the social cost of pro­longed pre­trial deten­tion on the fam­i­lies of detainees.  I hope to dis­cuss prison con­di­tions in Haiti and its effects on soci­ety in this forum.

Hinche Prison 06/18/2010

HD: Detained Men (53)

HC : Con­victed Men (84)

FD: Detained Women (01)

FC: Con­victed Women (03)

GMD: Detained Male Minors (04)

GMC: Con­victed Male Minors (02)

FMD: Detained Female Minors (01)