by Juliana Rincón Parra, Translated by Gabriela Gar­cia Calderon Orbe

After the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in Haiti, women and girls con­tinue to face gen­der vio­lence, as some of them have not only been raped, but have also faced a judi­cial sys­tem absent and no ade­quate med­ical services.

Tent City of Edyta Materka under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion license .

The Ms. Blog Mag­a­zine, Gina Ulysse wrote Rape, part of daily life for women in Hait­ian refugee camps , which points to the report of rape in the camps of inter­nally dis­placed per­sons (IDP), the Insti­tute for Jus­tice and Democ­racy in Haiti ( IJDH , by its acronym in Eng­lish) and mother , as the source of the fright­en­ing sta­tis­tics on vio­lence against women.

Many women and girls have lost their sup­port net­works, and also par­ents, broth­ers and hus­bands or boyfriends that they could pro­tect them. Being cramped quar­ters on the field really lim­its your pri­vacy, many pub­lic should shower and sleep next to strangers or where they are vul­ner­a­ble to attack. Once the attacks occurred, which nuchos gang rape cases are even more ordeals they face: most have no way to receive med­ical care pro­fes­sional women and the jus­tice sys­tem is almost nonex­is­tent, leav­ing them from cor­rup­tion the police and the author­i­ties re vic­tim­ize, in addi­tion to car­ry­ing the stigma of hav­ing been attacked and know­ing that his attack­ers are still free. Ulysse writes:

Women’s access to jus­tice has been even worse. Women who report violations-and are already strug­gling with the stigma and the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of sex­ual assault, often get teased or ignored by the police. In some cases, these women have also been faced with police cor­rup­tion. More­over, cases have been pros­e­cuted in the Hait­ian judi­cial sys­tem. The sur­vivors are still vul­ner­a­ble because they still live in the same areas of the fields where they were attacked and their rapists remain free. Sev­eral women have reported being raped on sev­eral occa­sions since the earthquake.

The IJDH, Part­ners in Health and the Defense Pro­gram New Media released a video a few months ago with tes­ti­monies from vic­tims . The mate­r­ial was recorded by Sandy Berkowitz and edited by Har­riet Hirshorn.

While women strug­gle to get back to nor­mal, it is unlikely that their sit­u­a­tion will improve as the tem­po­rary camps appear to be becom­ing per­ma­nent hous­ing. In Jan­u­ary, C ARE USA inter­viewed Dr. Franck Généus , health pro­gram coor­di­na­tor of CARE in Haiti, and asked about the rea­sons why there is a greater risk of rape in these fields. The doc­tor men­tioned the fea­tures that make the camps of inter­nally dis­placed per­sons fer­tile ground for attacks: a lack of elec­tric­ity, which means that the fields are totally dark at night, badly orga­nized camps and instal­la­tions of bath­rooms and toi­lets are not sep­a­rated, pre­vent­ing men and women have their own.

Janet Mey­ers, Gen­der Advi­sory CARE also pro­vides ideas on how the fields should be estab­lished so that women are safer after the quake , not­ing many of the same prob­lems last Feb­ru­ary. I won­der how many of these issues remain unre­solved and if, as these fields become more per­ma­nent instal­la­tions, sim­ply pave the way for the occur­rence of more attacks.

http://en.wikinoticia.com/lifestyle/social-criticism/56373-haiti-women-and-girls-displaced-victims-of-gender-violence

http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/29542/73d32e00fa220362aadb30702f00d6b6.htm