HAITI The Year of Living Dangerously – Part 1 By Ansel Herz* Dieula Rosemond (right) leads a protest outside the prime minister's office on the nine-month anniversary of the earthquake. Credit:Ansel Herz/IPS PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 6, 2011 (IPS) - Dieula Rosemond is tired. A lone swaying palm tree yields a little shade over her plastic chair. Her hands are folded in the lap of her white dress. Little girls play with a ragged, pale-faced doll behind her. Another day in Camp Imakile Deplase. "I want to see change in 2011 in Haiti. And I want to see change from those who say they are helping Haiti too. Because we, the people under tarps, have suffered a horrible year. I feel like..." She stops and takes a long breath, looking up. "I can't live this any longer." Almost a year after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, Dieula is one of over a million people living in scattered makeshift camps 'anba pwela' - under tarps, or tents - in Haiti's bustling capital city. She and her husband Joseph lost their livelihoods with the collapse of their tiny house in Cite Soleil, which doubled as an electronics repair shop and store.     Haiti by the Numbers 230,000 – the number of people believed to have died in the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake 1,000,000 – the number of people still living in tents one year later 5 – the percent of rubble that has been cleared one year later 3,481 – the number of cholera deaths as of Jan. 5, 2011 5,700,000,000 – the amount pledged by the international community in March 2010 to rebuild Haiti over two years 6.3 percent – the amount of money pledged that had been delivered as of December 2010 4,000,000,000 – the amount raised by private charities for earthquake relief, according to CBS 14,000,000 – the U.S. contribution to Haiti's highly criticised election *all currency in U.S. dollars                 Until last July, they and at least 50 other families lived in Plas Imakile, a public square. They endured nighttime attacks for weeks by a gang trying to force them off the property. Joseph went to a nearby joint U.N. peacekeeper and Haitian police base to ask for help. But the few jeep patrols that came by never stopped. The gang simply waited until they were gone to enter the camp and terrorise the people, slashing tarps with machetes. At the U.N. base, Brazilian Lieutenant Edison Campista told IPS he was aware of the reality but could effectively do nothing about it except to increase the frequency of patrols. He admitted the gang could elude authorities if they communicated by cell phone. Haitian police officers dismissed Joseph, claiming he was exaggerating the threats the camp faced. The attacks continued. One man's phone was stolen and he was struck in the head. The International Organisation for Migration, a U.N.-affiliated relief agency, told them to wait until a new piece of land could be found. Finally, Dieula and the others left, moving a half-mile down the road to a clearing next to a foul-smelling canal. Goats bleat as they clamber over small mounds of trash. The camp is called Imakile Deplase to remind visitors of how the people there were displaced against their will. Deaths from a raging cholera epidemic have surged in recent days to nearly 3,500. In early November, a young man in Dieula's camp contracted the virulent disease and was rushed to a Doctors Without Borders hospital. By the time he came back, his wife and children were infected. His family was the first of several to fall ill. Doctors Without Borders says it has treated about 63 percent of all cholera patients since the outbreak began in October. The head of the organisation recently slammed the U.N. and other aid groups for the rash of preventable deaths, calling their response "the latest failure of the humanitarian relief system". Autumn polls deepen popular anger Dieula did not vote in the election weeks later. Since the summer, she has led protests outside the prime minister's office and at her camp as families banged pots and pans, yelling, "We won't vote until they give us houses!" "The NGOs and the government are continuing to give minimal levels of aid. But that's not what we need. We need houses, as it says in the Haitian Constitution," said Sanon Renel, an activist with a newly-formed committee to stop forced expulsions. "The prime minister is not here," staff politely told Joseph, when he and other camp leaders delivered a letter outlining their needs to the office of Jean-Max Bellerive. Joseph received assurances the prime minister would read it and furnish a response, but none ever came. An expo to showcase designs of houses to be built for earthquake victims was scheduled for October 2010. It was delayed to this month, and then again to March. The November election launched the country into yet another crisis, with leading candidates calling for the vote to be annulled or disputing preliminary results. Thousands were unable to vote. "I voted for [René] Préval in 2006. I thought he would change things. I thought his mind was with the mass pep [the masses]. I thought he would return Aristide," Dieula said. "It's the blan who are holding him in place. He works for them!" she said, using the Kreyol word for foreigners. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former president, was whisked out of the country in February 2004 on a U.S. jet in what his supporters say was a modern-day coup d'etat. The United States says he asked to be taken into exile. An OAS official speaks out – and gets fired In an explosive interview last week, a Brazilian diplomat representing the Organisation of American States in Haiti said the "core group" of the international community met on Nov. 28, 2010, the day of the chaotic election. They discussed removing Préval from the country by plane. "I heard that and I was horrified," Ricardo Seitenfus told Folha, a Brazilian newspaper. Prime Minister Bellerive arrived at the meeting, which included the OAS, U.N. and donor countries. "He asked if President Préval's mandate was being negotiated. And there was silence in the room," Seitenfus said, adding that OAS Assistant Secretary-General Albert Ramdin did not say anything. "But faced with his silence and that of the others, I asked to be able to speak and reminded them of the existence of the Inter-American Democratic Charter [of the OAS] and that I thought any discussion of President Préval's mandate would be a coup." The U.S. Embassy told IPS it supported free, fair and transparent elections in Haiti and "we have no comment to make on Ambassador Seitenfus's descriptions of what he heard at such a meeting." Haiti's electoral council announced Tuesday that the second runoff round cannot take place until late February. According to the Constitution, Préval's mandate should end on Feb. 7 to make way for his successor. OAS observers arrived in-country after the holidays to recount ballots, a process endorsed by the Haitian government and international community. The OAS observer mission said there were only isolated "irregularities" on election day. However, a new study of more than 11,000 voter tally sheets by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, found fraud and inconsistencies rising far beyond levels acknowledged by the OAS. "If the Organisation of American States certifies this election, this would be a political decision, having nothing to do with election monitoring," said the group's co- director Mark Weisbrot in a statement. An OAS spokesperson did not return calls or email messages seeking comment. The Brazilian newspaper Estadão reported Monday that Seitenfus says he was dismissed by the OAS on Christmas Day, shortly after he first spoke out in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Le Temps. "There was an immense repercussion and it surpassed everything I was thinking or imagining," Seitenfus said. He condemned the international community's engagement in Haiti, saying the country had suffered for its proximity to the United States. "Haiti has to be at the centre of its history. These are generous reflections made from the heart," he added, "but that depict the perception of many people who do not have a voice. I was a spokesman for those who do not have a voice." *Ansel Herz blogs at http://mediahacker.org. This is the first of a two-part series on the political and human rights struggles of Haitians one year after the country's devastating earthquake. (END)

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>via: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2011/01/110106_outlook_haiti_rap...

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Haiti: Rape warning from human rights group

Hundred of women and girls have been sexually assaulted in Haiti in the chaos following last year's devastating earthquake, a human rights group has said.

A report by Amnesty International says armed gangs prowl the makeshift camps set up after the earthquake, preying on vulnerable women.

It says the camps lack security and that the police response is inadequate.

It has called on the government to do more to reduce the threat to women.

Amnesty International spoke to 50 survivors of sexual violence including a 14-year-old girl in the capital, Port-au-Prince, who was punched and then raped.

Another women said she and a friend were bound and gagged and sexually assaulted in front of their children.

Women and girls in the camps are especially vulnerable because their makeshift shelters provide no protection against attackers, the author of the report, Gerardo Ducos, told the BBC World Service.

"During the night armed youth gangs just go inside the tents or they rip through the tents with knives or rather blades, and they just rape the women they find," Mr Ducos said.

One young woman told the BBC's Mike Thomson in Haiti that she was raped in a camp soon after giving birth.

"I cried, I yelled, but nobody came, there was nobody," she said.

"After they finished, they beat me. They beat me so much that you can see scars on my skin and my knee."

Afterwards, she said she did not feel she could nurse her daughter.

"It felt like the milk inside had been poisoned," she said, "so I stopped breastfeeding. And each night was torture for me."

Kofaviv, a group that has been helping Amnesty International with its research, says it has reports of attacks on children as young as four or five.

The organisation found that "most of these crimes go unpunished," Mr Ducos said.

He added that sexual violence and impunity for rapists was widespread in Haiti before the earthquake.

But attackers were even more likely to get away with their crimes because the Haitian justice system broke down after the disaster and the police lacks manpower.

"Most of the women told us that they don't go to the police because they don't think it's worth it," Mr Ducos said.

In the first six months after the earthquake, at least 250 cases of rape were reported; a year on and serious sexual assault is still taking place.

Amnesty is calling on the new Haitian government to take a number of steps to reduce the threat to women and girls who are forced to live in the camps until Port-au-Prince has been re-built.

>via: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12125810

HAITI Women Wonder if They'll Ever Feel Safe Again By Jane Regan and Kanya D'Almeida PORT-AU-PRINCE/NEW YORK, Jan 6, 2011 (IPS) - Up a rubble-strewn street, turn right past a crumbled house, and 60 men and women are in the yard and parlor of the offices of the Commission of Women Victim-to-Victim (Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim, KOFAVIV) association. The women are members of KOFAVIV, and they live in the squalid refugee camps and some of the capital's toughest and poorest neighbourhoods. Today, they each brought along a male friend for a workshop on how to prevent violence.  Dressed in their Sunday best, the participants joked and jostled as they broke into groups.  "Happy New Year!" said one young woman with huge hoop earrings, but then she corrected herself - "No, I won't say 'happy,' but I'll say, 'good health to you.'"  As the discussions started up, smiles melted away.    MINUSTAH – Too Little, Too Late? While a few pockets of international and local activists are stretching themselves thin, powerful bodies like the U.N. have been accused of doing too little, too late.  "There is definitely a lot more that MINUSTAH can be doing," Amnesty International's Kerrie Howard told IPS, referring to the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti.  "Their policing function needs to have a much stronger gender focus," she said. "They also need to help the Haitian government to train their security forces and build the capacity of the forces to address gender violence if they are to ever deliver a solution for the women."  Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, is highly critical of the way MINUSTAH has handled the situation.  "The U.N. announced last summer that it would bring in a special all-women's police unit from Bangladesh to provide protection for the women," he told IPS.  "The unit arrived, but is patrolling U.N. facilities, not camps. It's been reported that this is because of a lack of translators, but it seems that a force spending 2.5 million dollars per day could afford to pay for translators to make one of its priority projects work."  "As we mentioned in our petition to the IACHR, U.N. officials in charge of gender violence have been downplaying the reports of rape coming from poor women's groups, and marginalising the grassroots groups – which are much more effective – in favour of the traditional women's organisations," Concannon added.  "The woman in charge of the Gender Violence Subcluster wrote a blog post a month after she arrived in Haiti, saying that she had not yet met a rape victim. She took this as evidence that the rapes were not happening as reported. In fact, it was evidence that the U.N. subcluster did not have access to the information about rapes that was readily available from poor women." "Okay, let's make a list. What do we have at the Runway Camp?" asked an older woman who lives in a tent on the runway of Haiti's former military airport. "Okay, robbery, youth prostitution, rape, domestic violence and verbal abuse."  "Well, that's what we have in our camp too," said a young girl in blue jeans and a spaghetti strap top.  A man wearing a perfectly ironed white shirt interjected, "Okay, but what are we going to do about it?"  A full year after a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti obliterated 230,000 lives, injured 300,000 and rendered a quarter of the population homeless, Haitian women are now weathering a second catastrophe.  In the 2,000 makeshift displaced persons camps clustered across the country, women and girls are caught in the midst of an onslaught of sexual abuse, savage beatings and heinous crimes against humanity. Two million people are still crammed into enclosures, which have become microcosms of pre-earthquake patterns of the gross income inequality, social exclusion and abject poverty that has plagued Haiti for centuries.  A report released Thursday by Amnesty International lays bare the appalling conditions in which Haitian women are forced to live - the paltry shelters in the open-air camps seldom comprise anything more than flimsy tents, or tarps stretched over a patch of earth.  According to the report, "Aftershocks: Women Speak Out Against Sexual Violence in Haiti's Camps", over 250 rapes, in various camps, were reported a mere 100 days after the earthquake first struck. Many women and girls have been raped multiple times, often by several different men at once. Virtually every victim has also been beaten and tortured.  Medical and sanitary conditions in the camps are appalling; women and girls are forced to bathe in public and walk long distances to communal toilets at night. A total absence of privacy, lighting or solid barriers against perpetrators leaves even girls as young as 12 and 13 years old entirely vulnerable to the wave of sexual violence, most of which occurs after dark, the report says.  "Women's organisations on the ground helped us access the victims," Kerrie Howard, a Haiti expert at Amnesty International, told IPS. "Because the camps are a very closed community, it's extremely difficult for women and girls to speak out."  One of Amnesty's key local partners, and arguably the most active organisation working through the crisis, is KOFAVIV.  "At KOFAVIV we believe in education and we believe in preventing violence before it happens," Jocie Philistin, KOFAVIV's project coordinator, told IPS. "All of our members are survivors who are rehabilitated, and we are now trying to help others. And the solution doesn't lie with women only. We need men and women to work together."  But neighbourhood watch patrols and training sessions aren't the only answer, Philistin admits.  "Violence has two aspects – one is poverty, meaning it's economic. The other is politics," she said.  Whenever there is political turmoil or the economy worsens, violence against women increases. Rape has been used as a political weapon. Young people, especially girls, trade sex for a meal or a roof over their heads.  Now, one year after the quake, KOFAVIV admits a sense of hopelessness.  "In the camps, in the communities, things have gotten worse," Philistin said. "We have a completely absent state, we have NGOs who are in the camps mostly for public relations and they aren't even allowed to work in the 'red zone' areas, which are the most dangerous neighbourhoods."  A ray of hope  In early October, a coalition of prominent legal and social justice groups, including MADRE, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and the Bureaux des Advocats Internationaux filed a formal request with the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of 13 Haitian women and girls.  On Tuesday, the IACHR accepted the request and issued unprecedented recommendations to the Haitian government, which are binding under Haitian national law.  The measures include providing medical and psychological care such as emergency contraception and culturally sensitive female medical staff members; implementing effective security measures like street lighting and increased patrolling by security forces; and, perhaps most importantly, ensuring the full participation and leadership of grassroots women's groups in planning and implementing policies to combat the sexual violence.  Lisa Davis, the human rights advocacy director of MADRE, was the primary author of the request.  "We have been working with women's groups in Haiti since the rape crisis in the 1990s," Davis told IPS. "And we consult with our local partners every step of the way."  While Haitian women are of course concerned with long-term political changes that address the root causes of sexual violence and the blows of patriarchy, the need for immediate safety now trumps all, she said.  In a report entitled "Our Bodies Are Still Trembling: Haitians Women's Fight Against Rape", the parties of the IACHR request record in chilling detail testimony from women and girls in the camp. Women as old as 60 and as young as eight or nine have all been subjected to unspeakable cruelty which has increased sharply since the 2010 elections.  "We have reports of men going into camps and randomly shooting women who were wearing politically-charged t- shirts," Davis said.  "Every single woman I talked to said what she wants more than anything is housing," she stressed. "And if they can't get that - because it's not being offered to them right now - then they want to feel safe."  *Jane Regan reported from Haiti.  (END)