Contacts:
Barbara Fallon, barbarafallonpr@gmail.com, (703) 489‑0880 or
Patricia Brooks, ActionAid, patricia.brooks@actionaid.org, (202) 351‑1757

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On Heels of Two-Year Commemoration of Haiti’s Earthquake,
U.S. Representatives, Haitian Delegation and NGOs Focus on Reconstruction,
U.S. Aid Efforts Jan. 23–25
Briefings to Examine Land and Housing, Cholera, Women, Accountability and a Just Reconstruction in Haiti

Washington, D.C. (Jan. 20, 2012) – The Haiti Advocacy Working Group (HAWG), comprised of leading U.S. organizations devoted to a fair and more effective reconstruction process in Haiti, is promoting a “Haiti Advocacy Week” Jan. 23–25 on Capitol Hill. The status of U.S. aid to Haiti will be fully examined as will signs of progress in the poorest country in the hemisphere. The Haitian government estimates that 316,000 people were lost in the Jan. 2010 earthquake.

Haitians, Haitian-Americans and Haitian development and human rights experts will bring their voice to Washington next week for the three days of briefings. They will be in sessions with HAWG members and government officials, sponsored by five Members of Congress: Representatives Yvette Clarke (NY), Barbara Lee (CA), Donald Payne (NJ), Maxine Waters (CA) and Frederica Wilson (FL). Additionally, there will be a reception in the Capitol Building (House Visitors Center 215), sponsored by HAWG, where Members of Congress, Haitian grassroots, civil society and Diaspora leaders will convene at 6:00 p.m. Monday.

“Haiti’s reconstruction process will only be a success when the Haitian government and international donors begin to listen to the real needs of the Haitian people,” said Pierre DouDou, National Coordinator of RENHASSA (Network for Food Sovereignty and Food Security), who works closely with ActionAid as a member of the growing “Je nan Je” or “Eye to Eye” land and housing rights platform. “Expert farmers must be involved in the reconstruction. Women’s groups. Poor people living in the camps. Only then will we start to see sustainable results.”

The briefings will include candid looks at gender-based violence, the cholera epidemic, aid accountability, land and housing, and democracy in Haiti. (Briefing schedule on pgs. 3–4.)

The delegation from Haiti will include 10 political and civil rights leaders, such as Antonal Mortime, director of the Haitian Human Rights Platform (POHDH) a coalition of nine Haitian human rights organizations advocating for victims in Port-au-Prince’s 1,300-plus refugee camps. Also in attendance will be Marie Ange Noel, coordinator of Women Decide (“Fanm Deside”), a Haitian NGO based in the southern city of Jacmel with more than 20 years experience in women’s health and human rights. Former Justice Minister Rene Magloire will also be part of the Haitian delegation.

More than two years after the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010, conditions in Haiti remain dire. Today there are still over half a million displaced Haitians and the lack of food, clean water, and other necessities is an ongoing crisis throughout the country.  Cholera has claimed the lives of more than 6,700 Haitians and hospitalized more than a quarter of a million others. The ongoing plight of Haitians, their spirit of perseverance, and how Haitian grassroots and other civil society leaders are striving to create a more equitable Haiti will be examined at the briefings.

“The U.S. government has taken important steps in prioritizing the recovery and reconstruction process in Haiti, such as setting a clear housing strategy with quantifiable goals. Now, it must fully honor those commitments by meeting its number targets and supporting the Haitian government in its land reform and housing development efforts. Most importantly, this must be done through direct consultation with Haiti’s grassroots and civil society groups, listening to the people living in the camps, women’s groups and peasant movements in decentralized areas,” said Elise Young, Senior Policy Analyst, ActionAid USA.

HAWG has identified action items for all facets of the U.S. government that would help set a better course for U.S. involvement in Haiti, including:

• Secretary of State Clinton should publicly state her support for resolving Haiti’s many critical land issues in a way that prioritize the needs of vulnerable populations, and she should clearly oppose forced evictions.
• Support passage of the Assessing Progress in Haiti Act, S.1576, in the Senate, introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu.
• Set and report on specific targets for each USAID Haiti project, to make sure a certain percentage of funds are used for local contracting and subcontracting and for Haitian labor.
• Expedite disbursement of the nearly $1.2 billion in approved but mostly undisbursed post-earthquake multi-lateral grants, prioritizing aid that benefits the most vulnerable. (The World Bank is Trustee of the multi-donor Haiti Reconstruction Fund).
• Co-sponsor and support passage of a Congressional House Resolution on Gender-Based Violence in Haiti, to be introduced by Rep. Frederica Wilson of Miami, FL, on January 23, 2012.

According to advocates, including Haitian women in the rebuilding process is very important. Another problem is unfair trade and agriculture restrictions, which have created severe food insecurity in Haiti. HAWG members are requesting that the U.S. government consult with and meet the needs of peasant farmers in the overall plans. They are also calling for the U.S. to support more aid accountability and prioritization in land and housing development.

“The Haiti Advocacy Working Group (HAWG) has sought to build relationships with Haitian organizations and ensure their voice reaches the halls of power in Washington,” said Ian Schwab, Associate Director, Advocacy at American Jewish World Service. “Through greater dialogue and partnership, the U.S. can ensure resources are maximized and their plans fit the needs of the Haitian people. The range of perspectives that will be presented this week only occurs when a diversity of people and organizations are committed to working together.”

The Haiti Action Working Group includes: ActionAid USA, Alternative Change/Chans Altenativ, American Jewish World Service, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies-University of California Hasting College of Law, Church World Service, Environmental Justice Initiative for Haiti, Fonkoze USA, Gender Action, Grassroots International, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, International Rescue Committee, Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, Latin America Working Group, Li, Li, Li, Read, MADRE, Mennonite Central Committee U.S.-Washington Office, National Lawyers Guild-Environmental Justice Center, Oxfam America, Partners in Health, The Andora Project, The Haiti Fund at the Boston Foundation, TransAfrica Forum, United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, University of Miami School of Law-Human Rights Clinic.

Schedule & Panelists for Haiti Earthquake 2-Year Public Briefings
Jan. 23–25, 2012

Monday, January 23

4-6pm, House Rayburn Building — B-369 Briefing: Gender-Based Violence
Sponsors: Reps. Frederica Wilson, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters.
Panelists: Marie Ange Noel, Fanm Deside
Emmania Duchard, Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV)
Marguerite Salomon, GCFV
Margaret L. Satterthwaite, NYU
Ambassador Melanie Verveer, State Dept (invited)

6-8pm, Capitol House Visitor Center — 215: Haiti Reception, sponsored by HAWG.

Tuesday, January 24

9am-10:30am, House Rayburn Gold Room Briefing: Cholera
Sponsors: Reps. Barbara Lee, Yvette Clarke, Donald Payne, Frederica Wilson,
Maxine Waters.
Panelists: Dr. Louise Ivers, Senior Health and Policy Advisor, Partners In Health
Ralph Ternier, Director, Community Health, Zanmi Lasante/Partners In Health
Jordon Tappero, Director, Health Systems, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
Dr. Mirta Roses, Director, Pan American Health Organization

Noon-2pm, House Rayburn – 2103 Briefing/Documentary: ‘Where did the money go?’
Sponsors: Reps. Yvette Clarke, Barbara Lee, Donald Payne.
Panelists: Mark Schuller, CUNY
Manolia Charlotin, Boston Haitian Reporter
Ben Smilowitz, Disaster Accountability Project
Michele Mitchell, News at 11
Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)
Nicole Lee, TransAfrica Forum

2-4pm, House Rayburn – 2103
Briefing: Land and Housing Rights
Sponsors: Reps. Barbara Lee, Frederica Wilson, Yvette Clarke, Donald Payne,
Maxine Waters.
Panelists: Pierre DouDou, Network for Food Sovereignty & Food Security (RENHASSA)
Colette Lespinasse, Support Group for Refugees and Repatriated Persons (GARR)
Atonal Mortime, , Haitian Human Rights Platform (POHDH)
Brian Concannon, Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH)
Dominique Toussaint, Mobilize for Haiti
Michelle Karshan, Li, Li, Li, Read

6:30–8:30pm: TransAfrica Forum and CEPR hosting book event for “Tectonics Shift: Haiti Since the Earthquake, at Busboys and Poets, 14th and V St NW

Wednesday, January 25

9:00am-10:30am, House Rayburn – 2103
Media room for interviews with Members, Haitian delegation, HAWG members.
Sponsors: Reps. Barbara Lee, Frederica Wilson, Yvette Clarke, Donald Payne,
Maxine Waters.

10:30am to 12:30pm, House Rayburn – 2456
Briefing: Who Runs Haiti? Governance, Political Power, and Democracy in Haiti
Sponsors: Reps. Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee.
Panelists: Thomas C. Adams, Haiti Special Coordinator, U.S. Department of State
Rene Magloire, USIPS, Previous Haitian Justice Minister
Brian Concannon, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH)
Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)
Peter Sollis, Inter-American Development Bank
Marguerite Salomon, Groupe Concertation des Femmes Victimes (GCFV)

For more info or to RSVP for the reception, email: hawgtwoyear@yahoo.com

To arrange an interview, please contact Barbara Fallon, (703) 489‑0880, barbarafallonpr@gmail.com

###

download original document: Haiti.mainPRESS RELEASE.FINAL.1.21.12.pdf

On the second anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti that killed roughly 300,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless, we speak with Randall Robinson, author of “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.” The United Nations estimates international donors gave Haiti over $1.6 billion in relief aid since the earthquake and more than $2 billion in recovery aid over the last two years. But critics say little of the funding made it directly to the Haitian people, instead going to international non-governmental organizations and private companies involved in the relief effort. “I’m not surprised that the reconstruction efforts are not going well,” Robinson says, “because I don’t think the United States, officially, ever wanted anything to go well in Haiti.” [includes rush transcript]

Randall Robinson, founder and past president of TransAfrica and a law professor at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of several books, including An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. His most recent book is Makeda, his second novel.

See The Original Post: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/13/2_years_after_devastating_earthquake_haitis

PORT-AU-PRINCE — They prayed in the streets Thursday, in church pews and in the ruins of a once-majestic cathedral.

For Haiti’s 10 million surviving souls, the second anniversary of its devastating 7.0 earthquake, the hemisphere’s worst natural disaster, was a day Nou pap janm bliye — never to be forgotten. It also was a day of reflection and prayer.

“I don’t know when I will stop crying,” said Jean Ose Abellard, who lost his wife and 9– and 7-year-old sons when a school wall fell on them. “I am crying for my wife and children, the priests, the monsignor.”

Monsignor Serge Miot was Haiti’s top Roman Catholic Bishop. He was among the 316,000 killed on Jan. 12, 2010, including leading personalities, United Nations diplomats, aid workers and everyday Haitians. All were remembered Thursday — in Haiti and South Florida.

“If you are here today, you have to say ‘Thank you,’ to God,” said Enid Pierre, 42, dressed in white and standing in what was once the National Cathedral, a hollow shadow of its former grandeur. “Today is a day of sadness, of problems. When you look at the situation your heart is heavy. It’s a day of reflection, a day of pain for mothers and fathers for the state of the country.”

In Miami, where the emotional aftershocks of the quake continue to stir, Haitians marked the day with a vigil, discussions about the future and a march to honor those who have died.

“I came because I am Haitian and I think it’s important that we remember all of the victims of the earthquake,” Hulya Miclisse, 18, of Homestead, said during a vigil in Little Haiti.

Marleine Bastien, executive director of the Haitian Women of Miami, said the world should not forget the tragedy.

“We want to honor those 250,000-plus who died in the earthquake,” Bastien said. “Also to remember those who are still living in tents.”

Homeless Haitians said Thursday that they have grown frustrated with the slow pace of recovery and reconstruction. In a country where rich and poor were united in death, and the community notables joined the unknown in unmarked graves, Pierre is among the lucky few. She did not lose any close relatives, and lived under a tent for only four months. Family members in the province sent money to help her rent a place in the capital and rebuild her life.

“It’s not much, but it’s a place to live,” she said about her $375 a year dwelling.

But there are some moments of hope.

Some 32,000 objects — art works, documents, paintings — have been saved and even restored with the help of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Art experts even managed to salvage three murals of a destroyed Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. The work of the Haitian masters, they are now in 142 pieces, ready for the new building that is in the planning and fundraising stages.

“When you save people’s lives, it is one thing,” said Olsen Jean Julian, project manager for the arts project. “But when you are living, the most important things is your reason for living. Culture is our reason for living. When we are trying to save our culture, we are trying to give more reason to survive.’’

Officially, Thursday was declared a national holiday by President Michel Martelly, who began the morning by traveling north to the rural town of Limonade, where he and Dominican President Leonel Fernandez inaugurated a new university. The modern building, a gift from the Dominican people to their long suffering neighbor, can educate up to 10,000 students.

Back in the capital, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson joined Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille in unveiling the first government building that will be constructed post-quake: the building will house the state-run University of Haiti’s faculty of science. Local businesses funded half the costs. The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund chipped in $2 million.
“Haiti needs more engineers,” Clinton told the small crowd. “The means for you to build your own future, a broader, better future.”

Titanyen, the vast mountain area outside of the capital where most of those who died in the quake and the later cholera epidemic rests in unmarked graves nearby, has become home to a few new residents. The black crosses on the barren hillside constructed in memory of the dead are nearly all gone, and shacks have been built nearby.

A round monument decorated in black tile now sits at the bottom of the hill, a rock on the top. On Thursday, Martelly and other government dignitaries commemorated the anniversary at the site. Guests included Clinton, various religious leaders and two former presidents, Prosper Avril and dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. Duvalier and Clinton shared an awkward moment when Duvalier walked on the stage and greeted Martelly. The entire stage stood, with Clinton being one of the last.

The moment was soon overshadowed as a school orchestra played classical Haitian arrangements on a stage draped in red and blue, colors of the Haitian flag. Written near the musicians: “Let’s remember so we can move forward.”

The solemn mood was later joined by spiritual hymns — Haitian and old Negro spirituals — and uplifting songs as speakers urged Haitians to rebuild Haiti with a new sense of responsibility, and a change in mentality.

“If we are alive today, it’s not because we are better off. We still have work to do,” said Monsignor Alexandre Dumas of the Roman Catholic Church. “We owe to reconstruct otherwise, to build a new nation-state in unity and peace with stronger institutions, public buildings, places of worship and hospitals, schools and houses that are not graves.’’

Martelly echoed the sentiments saying that in 35 seconds “everything tumbled down, taking with it lots of human lives, leaving destroyed cities transformed into huge fields of rubble.”

At 4:56 p.m., three minutes after the quake struck two years ago, the crowd stood silent. Martelly and his wife, Sophia, then planted 10 trees, each representing the country’s 10 departments, to symbolize a rebirth.

Staff writer Paradise Afshar in Miami contributed to this report.

See The Original Post :
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/13/v-fullstory/2587302/haiti-south-florida-remember-quake.html

Jan. 12 marks two years since Haiti’s devastating earthquake. Though the tragedy was billed a “natural disaster,” an earthquake is not enough to explain the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the destruction of millions of homes. It isn’t enough to explain the acute food shortage immediately following the quake or the humanitarian crisis that continues today, with more than half a million Haitian people tented in over-crowded, sweltering IDP camps without access to basic services, and the cholera epidemic that has infected more than 500,000 people in the past 15 months. What has happened in Haiti is better termed an “unnatural disaster.”

To place blame solely on the earthquake is to miss the political and historical underpinnings of poverty in Haiti.. The damage was far worse than it should have been because Port-au-Prince was home to hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers whose fragile shanty homes folded like cards. The slums existed in part because the collapse of the farming sector led rural poor to the city in search of nonexistent jobs. The farming sector collapse, in turn, was caused by factors including U.S. free trade and food aid policies that flooded Haiti’s market with cheap imported food for decades. And all of these problems were compounded by the fact that the institution charged with confronting and solving these challenges – the government – lacked the infrastructure and ability to respond and itself was decimated by the earthquake.

A country this fragile, whose citizens largely lived on less than $2 per day, lacked the resources to ride out a natural disaster. Unfortunately, the kind of aid Haiti has received in response to an acute problem didn’t address the country’s chronically underfunded sectors of health, education, and agriculture.

Haiti doesn’t only need short-term aid. Every aspect of Haiti’s recovery – from acquiring food security to providing health care – requires long-term support grounded in a rights-based approach to development. Only this approach can fix systemic inequalities in order to create a stronger and more self-sufficient society. American Jewish World Service and Partners In Health have used the rights-based approach for decades by empowering community groups and government institutions to build local capacity.

Haitian community groups like AJWS grantee Lambi Fund are at the helm of creating long-term, sustainable change. The Fund supports projects on rural development, crop diversification, grain storage and agricultural processing as well as organizational development. Over the past two years, Lambi Fund has helped rural women and peasant groups respond to the post-quake out-migration from cities to the countryside with food and essentials while also providing seeds, tools and equipment to plant crops to feed these communities into the future. It supports rebuilding of community enterprises central to the economic livelihoods of these areas that were lost in the earthquake such as grain mills, sugar cane mills and rainwater cisterns for safe drinking water. Additionally, Lambi Fund is recapitalizing micro-credit funds run by grassroots organizations so that people can replenish and continue their small businesses.

But community groups cannot change the country on their own. They need capable, accountable government institutions as partners in this work. For Lambi Fund, that means a functional Ministry of Agriculture. For Partners in Health, it means working with the Haitian Ministry of Health in 12 health centers and hospitals for over a decade to improve infrastructure and train and support Ministry staff. This year, the doors will open to a national reference and teaching hospital in Mirebalais. PIH supported the Ministry in its development and construction because the hospital represents a long-term investment in access to state-of-the-art care in Haiti and in providing hands-on training for future generations of Haitian doctors, nurses and other health professionals.

From the outset, grassroots organizations have been marginalized and excluded from the most important decisions about Haiti’s future, with key meetings held almost exclusively in the capital or outside the country entirely and in English or French instead of Kreyol. Capacity building for Haitian institutions has been ignored by donors who have thrown up their hands at the idea of creating a robust, functional government. Instead, they prefer aid projects with outcomes measured in days or weeks, not months and years. This might be the easy choice for donors, but it’s not the right choice for Haiti.

International actors in Haiti including foreign governments and organizations like ours must not forget that our role is to support the aspirations of the Haitian people and help build the backbone for a sustainable society. Haitians are the true experts and leaders who should be charting the nation’s future. They are the ones who will need to hold their government accountable for its promises long after the international spotlight is gone.

Two years after the earthquake, Haiti’s needs remain acute but the resilience of the Haitian people remains unshakable. It is up to us to demand that international policy makers invest in Haiti for the long term. Haiti deserves an independent, bright future.

Dr. Joia Mukherjee is chief medical officer at Partners in Health, an associate professor at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School and an associate physician at the Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

Ruth W. Messinger is president of American Jewish World Service.

See The Original Post: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_podium/2012/01/hiaitis_unnatural_disaster.html

It is two years to the day since a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, leveling much of Port-au-Prince, killing tens of thousands, and displacing well over 500,000. (map credit)

As indicated in the post below by IntLawGrrls contributors Sarah Paoletti and Nicole Phillips, despite pledges of $10 billion in aid, many Haitians struggle to survive in the face of forced evictions, a raging cholera epidemic, and rampant gender-based violence.

For example, even after two years:
► Half a million people continue to live in camps, some without running water or electricity. Moreover, many of these people are fighting to remain in even these substandard conditions. In the year following the earthquake, 34% of people living in camps were forced to leave those shelters as the result of evictions.

The right to housing is guaranteed by several human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 25) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (art. 11). While these instruments often recognize that housing rights may be subject to State resources, they do proscribe the kinds of evictions – often by force and without adequate notice or compensation – seen in the years following the earthquake. Indeed, on November 15, 2010, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures for residents of camps located on private and public property in Haiti. The Commission called for the Government of Haiti to, inter alia, halt evictions pending the inauguration of a new government and ensure that those who had been evicted obtained remedies in court and were relocated to places with minimum sanitary and security.

► Fully 7,000 people have died and another 520,000 have become ill from cholera.
On November 3, 2011, 5,000 cholera victims filed a claim for reparations with the Claims Unit of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH. Represented by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, for which Nicole is a staff attorney, claimants alleged that the outbreak was triggered by the Mission’s negligent, reckless, and deliberately indifferent mismanagement of its own sanitation facilities, which were used by Nepalese peacekeepers who harbored the virus.

►Women and girls face a near-constant threat of sexual violence due to insecurity in camps and impunity from the criminal justice system.

These conditions implicate women’s rights to life, humane treatment, personal liberty and security as enshrined in human rights instruments such as the American Convention on Human Rights. Indeed, on December 22, 2010, the Inter-American Commission granted precautionary measures for all displaced women and girls living in Haiti’s camps. The Commission called upon the Government of Haiti to, inter alia, ensure the availability of adequate medical and mental health care to survivors of sexual violence, increase security in camps, and train law enforcement to investigate incidents of sexual violence. Despite this grant, women and girls in Haiti continued to suffer sexual and other forms of gender-based violence at alarming rates last year.

Immediately following the earthquake, the international community vowed to help Haiti “build back better.“
Yet the spirit of generosity that prevailed in the first months of 2010 has, in many cases, failed to result in actual disbursements of promised support. To be sure, some aid that has reached Haiti is leading to some tangible progress in conditions there. Nonetheless, despite many generous promises, too many Haitians continue to fight tremendous odds in the form of homelessness, disease, and insecurity. (IntLawGrrls’ prior Haiti posts here.)

While the actual distribution of promised aid would certainly help alleviate some of the suffering in Haiti, long-term progress for the country’s poor hinges upon the respect, protection, and fulfillment of human rights guaranteed in numerous international and regional human rights instruments. That is a goal of the Universal Periodic Review process that Sarah and Nicole discuss below.

Fortunately, many grassroots organizations in Haiti also are working for precisely these aims, including:
► Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti/Bureau des Advocats Internationaux: litigating cases, as mentioned, and organizing civil society around issues such as accountability for gender-based violence, housing rights, improved prison conditions, and redress for the cholera epidemic.

► KOFAVIV (“Commission of Women Victims for Victims”): providing direct support to women who survive sexual assault and, together with MADRE, advocating for improved security in Haiti’s camps.

► Alternative Chance: working in Haiti’s prisons to provide health care, peer counseling, and advocacy to detainees who are routinely denied due process rights.

► FAVILEK (“Women Victims Get Up Stand Up”): representing women who survived political violence by mobilizing for justice and reparations.

These are just a few gros – comprised of Haitian lawyers, organizers and activists – who are working toward the realization for human rights in Haiti. Many worked for social justice in Haiti for years prior to the earthquake. In light of the continued suffering since 2010, their work is even more daunting – and crucial – today.

Introducing Sarah Paoletti & Nicole Phillips

It’s our great pleasure to welcome Sarah Paoletti and Nicole Phillips as IntLawGrrls contributors.

 

► Sarah (top right) directs the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia, where she’s also a Practice Associate Professor of Law. (prior posts) Before beginning work at this international human rights and immigration clinic, she taught at American University Washington College of Law – in the International Human Rights Law Clinic, as well as a seminar on the labor and employment rights of immigrant workers. As reflected in her numerous publications, Sarah’s areas of specialty include international human rights, migrant and immigrant rights, asylum law, and labor and employment. She has presented on the rights of migrant workers before the United Nations and the Organization of American States, and also works closely with advocates seeking application of international human rights norms in the United States. On behalf of the US Human Rights Network, Sarah coordinated civil society participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review of the United States.

 

► Nicole (middle right) is a Staff Attorney at the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, which, in a lawsuit against the United Nations, represents more than 5,000 victims of a cholera epidemic that has broke out since the January 12, 2010, earthquake in Port-au-Prince. Nicole joined the Institute after the earthquake; before that, she’d been a partner in a union labor firm, Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she served as general counsel to unions and employee benefit trust funds across the country, arbitrated collective bargaining disputes, and managed a caseload in federal and state courts involving labor, employment, health insurance, and environmental regulations.

 

An Adjunct Professor and Assistant Director for Haiti programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law, also the home institution of IntLawGrrls contributors Connie de la Vega and Michelle Leighton. Nicole is a member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Advocates, a Berkeley-based nongovernmental organization. She has appeared before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Counsel, Human Rights Committee, Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination, and Commission on the Status of Women on various human rights issues.

In their post below, which appears on the 2d anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti, Nicole and Sarah outline the Universal Periodic Review that the Human Rights Council is examining Haiti’s human rights record. Complementing it is Amy Senier’s post above on the quake’s aftermath.

Sarah and Nicole dedicate their post to Sonia Pierre (right), with whom Nicole had the pleasure of working both in the Dominican Republic and at the United Nations. Born 48 years ago in a “batey – the name given to settlements for sugar cane cutters working for the Dominican sugar industry” – Pierre was among 12 children in a family of Haitian descent. At age 13, Pierre led a march for workers’ rights, and so was arrested for the 1st time, jailed for a day and threatened with deportation to Haiti. Thus began a career of human rights activism that included the founding of the Movement of Dominican Women of Haitian Descent. Pierre died from a heart attack on December 4, 2011. In 2006, she had been honored as a Human Rights Laureate by the D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, which has established a Memorial Fund for her family.

Today Pierre joins other honorees on IntLawGrrls’ transnational foremothers page.

Heartfelt welcome!

 

See The Original Post : http://www.intlawgrrls.com/