By Amie New­man, RH Real­ity Check

A small group of women in col­or­ful shirts, jeans and skirts stands in a cir­cle, singing and clap­ping. Some are smil­ing. All are danc­ing, shak­ing their bod­ies to the sound of their voices strong and loud. One woman dances in the mid­dle, spin­ning. They are singing in French and it could be a cel­e­bra­tion of some sort. In a way, it is. It’s a cel­e­bra­tion of their power, as they unify to pro­tect them­selves and all women who live in post-earthquake Hati­ian dis­place­ment camps from sex­ual assault, rape and other gender-based vio­lence. Some are mem­bers of KOFAVIV (being filmed [14] by rep­re­sen­tives of sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion Madre), a Hati­ian women’s orga­ni­za­tion work­ing to end sex­ual vio­lence and seek jus­tice for rape sur­vivors. In con­junc­tion with other women’s orga­ni­za­tions on the ground, and U.S.-based sis­ter orga­ni­za­tions, they are com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing the women and girls liv­ing in the dis­place­ment camps from gender-based vio­lence, from which the gov­ern­ment has been unable or unwill­ing to do so. As RH Real­ity Check reported [15] on in July of this year, women and girls have been the tar­get of “sky­rock­et­ing” inci­dences “of rape in the camps” and are suf­fer­ing from “the lack of a coor­di­nated or effec­tive response to these per­sis­tent threats.” Up until recently, KOFAVIV and other women’s advo­cates have been effec­tively shut out of the dis­cus­sions between aid agen­cies and the gov­ern­ment on how best to pro­tect them­selves, in the camps. Slowly, how­ever, things may be changing.

In late July, a group of orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the Insti­tute for Jus­tice and Democ­racy in Haiti, and Madre, issued a report on the sex­ual vio­lence against women in Haiti enti­tled Our Bod­ies Are Still Trem­bling: Hait­ian Women Fight Against Rape [16] detail­ing the cur­rent con­di­tions for women and girls in the camps and the lack of an ade­quate response from gov­ern­ment and aid agencies:

Con­di­tions in the IDP camps in Port‐au‐Prince are bleak. Over­crowd­ing, lack of pri­vacy, and weak­ened fam­ily and com­mu­nity struc­tures, among other things, ren­der women and girls par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to rape and other sex­ual vio­lence. Women and girls live in inad­e­quate shel­ter, often sleep­ing on the ground under noth­ing more than a tarp or blan­ket, with no means of pro­tec­tion and no friends close by. They bathe in pub­lic, in view of men and boys. Many young girls live alone or with friends, with no adults look­ing after them.

Women and girls are most often attacked at night. One woman reported hav­ing been kid­napped from her tent, in the dark of night, gang-raped and beaten. Sur­vivors of the sex­ual vio­lence are suf­fer­ing from post-traumatic stress dis­or­der, and a range of phys­i­cal dis­com­fort including:

“…stom­ach pain, headaches, dif­fi­culty walk­ing, and vagi­nal infec­tion and bleed­ing. At least one woman became preg­nant as a result of the rape. Only one woman reported that her attacker wore a con­dom. Of the few women that had been tested for HIV, results were neg­a­tive. In addi­tion to the rapes, many women and girls inter­viewed suf­fered beat­ings, stab­bings and other injuries in the course of the attacks and had scars and other vis­i­ble injuries to show.”

Most of the women and girls inter­viewed for the report had not sought med­ical care not only because they were unaware of where to locate or how to access ser­vices but because rape car­ries tremen­dous stigma in Hait­ian soci­ety and women are “embar­rassed or…felt uncom­fort­able. When vic­tims did reach out, they were often shunned or ignored.” The report also dis­closes that some clin­ics did not offer ser­vices such as HIV pro­phy­laxis or emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion to women seek­ing care, effec­tively leav­ing them with no recourse to pro­tect against infec­tion or pregnancy.

Women who are vic­tims of sex­ual vio­lence in the camps see vir­tu­ally no jus­tice, either. Not only has the loss of police offi­cers and police sta­tions affected report­ing of rape, but the lack of female police offi­cers has also con­tributed to the silence around rape. Though each sta­tion is sup­posed to have female offi­cers to whom women can report a crime, that hasn’t been the case and it’s hav­ing a “cas­cade effect”:

“…in some instances, [law enforce­ment] offi­cials attrib­uted the prob­lem of rape to promis­cu­ity and domes­tic vio­lence. This antipa­thy has a cas­cad­ing effect; vic­tims per­ceive law enforce­ment as inef­fec­tive or unsym­pa­thetic and, con­se­quently, fail to report crimes. Gov­ern­ment offi­cials in turn insist that no such “epi­demic” of gender‐based vio­lence exists, and allo­cate even fewer resources to address it.”

This lack of an effi­cient track­ing sys­tem also con­tributes to crim­i­nal cases rarely being pur­sued, “result­ing in a cul­ture of total impunity for rapists and crim­i­nal gangs who con­tinue to prey on women and girls in the camps.”

In the absence of an ade­quate response from both the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment as well as aid agen­cies, KOFAVIV, Madre, and other women’s orga­ni­za­tions have col­lec­tively orga­nized to imple­ment strate­gies, on the ground, to keep women and girls safe from sex­ual vio­lence. And they are hav­ing an impact.

For exam­ple, most recently, notes Madre, “we deliv­ered a pack­age of dona­tions — includ­ing med­ical sup­plies, flash­lights and whis­tles — to our part­ners in Haiti, KOFAVIV [17]. Using these sup­plies, gath­ered through MADRE’s Help­ing Hands pro­gram [18], they have been able to cre­ate local secu­rity mea­sures that help pre­vent rapes in the camps for dis­placed peo­ple in Haiti. They have also been able to pro­vide for the basic needs of women and fam­i­lies.” When rape sur­vivors are in need of med­ical atten­tion or legal aid, KOFAVIV steps in as best they can to facil­i­tate refer­rals and pro­vide support.

Photo of Hait­ian women accept­ing whis­tles and flash­lights cour­tesy of Madre

Inad­e­quate light­ing in the camps is one fac­tor in the con­tin­ued sex­ual vio­lence. The report notes that UN agen­cies dis­trib­uted thou­sands of solar lamps to “ensure proper light­ing of latrines and camp facil­i­ties.” The United Nations “sub-cluster” on gender-based vio­lence offered that the Hait­ian National Police (HNP) were patrolling camps on foot to improve secu­rity mea­sures as a response to the sex­ual vio­lence. How­ever, this does not jibe with what women and girls in the camps report as a “con­sis­tent lack of secu­rity and light­ing.” So, once again, the women of KOFAVIV have orga­nized vol­un­teer secu­rity patrols [19] escort­ing women to bath­rooms and show­ers at night.

Diana Duarte of Madre told RH Real­ity Check that the UN gender-based vio­lence sub-cluster, in addi­tion to more foot patrols, has most recently “com­mit­ted to installing light­ing in the camps that are cur­rently with­out and that are report­ing high lev­els of rape.” Given what many have said about a lack of fol­low through or sign­f­i­cant impact of some of these promises, Duarte is cau­tiously opti­mistic, “We’re work­ing right now with KOFAVIV to track whether that com­mit­ment becomes real­ity and to demand account­abil­ity if it does not.”

It’s not only the imme­di­ate com­mitt­ment to improv­ing con­di­tions that are a pri­or­ity. Hait­ian women who live in the camps and have been the vic­tims of sex­ual vio­lence them­selves have tes­ti­fied in front of the UN about their expe­ri­ences and the crit­i­cal impor­tance of includ­ing women’s groups in the efforts to pre­vent and end the vio­lence. Duarte told RH Real­ity Check that when she was in Haiti, at the end of July, her orga­ni­za­tion was work­ing with the women of KOFAVIV to also “demand inclu­sion in the processes tak­ing place, guided by the UN, to address sex­ual vio­lence in the camps.”

“Up until that point, they had been very much excluded from meet­ings that had first taken place at a UN base at some dis­tance from the city. Then, when the meet­ings were recently moved to a closer loca­tion, they were still held in French, when most of the grass­roots women’s groups are most com­fort­able in Kreyol,” says Duarte.

Women’s orga­ni­za­tions — Hait­ian women’s advo­cates on the ground — have been “shunted to the side” when it comes to agenda set­ting, in response to the diaster. As RH Real­ity Check pre­vi­ously reported,

“In March, the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity came together in a “land­mark” donor con­fer­ence [20] to set an agenda for rebuild­ing Haiti and women’s groups in Haiti, women’s voices, were nowhere to be seen or heard [21].”

In response, the women of KOFAVIV and their allies have made it their busi­ness to con­tinue to speak up about remain­ing a part of the plan­ning. Duarte says that when they [the women of KOFAVIV] were finally able to attend the UN meet­ing on gender-based vio­lence in Haiti:

“one of the KOFAVIV lead­ers (a woman named Eramithe Delva) stood up and made a really strong inter­ven­tion, in which she spoke about the tem­po­rary secu­rity mea­sures that women have set up in the camps (includ­ing dis­trib­ut­ing whis­tles and flash­lights and set­ting up com­mu­nity watch groups) and about the scale of sex­ual vio­lence these groups have been doc­u­ment­ing. In that meet­ing, she was able to secure an invi­ta­tion from one of the orga­niz­ers of the UN group (called a sub-cluster) on gender-based vio­lence to include KOFAVIV and other grass­roots groups in future meet­ings.” [empha­sis added]

Whether that will hap­pen remains to be seen but it is a step for­ward. In the mean­time, there are still con­flict­ing reports about just what and how much is actu­ally being done on the part of UN aid agen­cies, the United Nations sub-cluster on gender-based vio­lence, and the Hait­ian National Police to pre­vent more rape and other sex­ual vio­lence from occurring.

Women liv­ing in the camps and women’s advo­cacy orga­ni­za­tions con­tinue to do their part — dis­trib­ut­ing whis­tles and flash­lights, and med­ical sup­plies. [22] When the sup­plies arrive the women sit, in a cir­cle, on plas­tic buck­ets which rest on the dusty ground of the camps, shar­ing sto­ries and offer­ing sup­port in their efforts to pro­tect them­selves from the sex­ual vio­lence; and they dance, sing and clap in recog­ni­tion that they are and they have no other choice but to be pow­er­ful sources of strength for each other, in the absence of an ade­quate inter­na­tional response to the unac­cept­able con­di­tions under which they survive.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/14162