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Press Release: Statement by the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kyung-wha Kang at the end of her mission to Haiti (UNCHR/UN)
IJDH: 7.7.11

Letter from Jeena Shah, BAI Legal Fellow, on Delmas forced evictions
IJDH: 7.7.11

Listen to Beatrice Lindstrom, BAI Legal Fellow, report from UN meetings in NYC
IJDH: 7.7.11

Ask Haitians whether voters or big business chose their singing president
The Guardian: 7.6.11

Witness to Broken Promises in Haiti
Indianapolis Star: 6.30.11

Displaced Women Demand Justice in Port au Prince
Huffington Post: 6.30.11

Haiti: Leaked Cables Expose U.S. Suppression of Min. Wage, Election Doubts and Elite’s Private Army
Democracy Now! 6.27.11

Recent Highlights

Relief Web
Haiti earthquake: One-year report—Panelists discuss working together to prevent sexual violence in Haiti
1.11.11

NEW YORK, USA, 11 January 2011 – Maricia Jean was raped and thrown into jail. Her son was brutally murdered, but she never made it to his funeral. She lived in hiding, fearing for her life and that of her remaining family members. And yet she is alive and taking action.

Ms. Jean is the co-founder of a grassroots Haitian organization called FAVILEK (the Creole acronym for 'Women Victims Stand Up'). Based in the capital, Port-au-Prince, the organization is composed of over 80 women advocating for justice on behalf of other women and girls who have been victims of gender-based violence, both before and since the earthquake in Haiti.

An end to impunity

A Thomson Reuters Foundation-sponsored event held in New York last night – entitled 'Justice Denied: Sexual violence against women in Haiti' – featured Ms. Jean on an expert panel organized to raise awareness about the issue and to seek an end to impunity.

The other panellists were Mendy Marsh, UNICEF Specialist on Gender-Based Violence in Emergencies; Yolette Mengual, head of cabinet at the Haitian Ministry for the Status of Women and Women's Rights; Lisa Davis, Madre Human Rights Advocacy Director; and Jayne Fleming, pro bono counsel from the Reed Smith law firm and human rights activist in Haiti.

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USA Today
Haiti camps no safe havens for women
12.22.10

By Lisa Armstrong, Pulitzer Center

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Living in a small blue tent at a sprawling camp for earthquake survivors, Venia Ellian says she sometimes looks down at her infant — his generous cheeks, tiny lips and small, dark eyes — and cries.

“The first time I looked into his eyes, it hurt,” says Ellian, 22. “When I look at Richard, I remember the rape.” Ellian was attacked two days after the Jan. 12 earthquake that left hundreds of thousands of Haitians homeless and living in camps to await the reconstruction of the shattered homes. She was dragged into an abandoned building where four men she did not know tied her up, beat her and raped her.

Afterward, Ellian staggered naked to a police station where she says an officer asked her why she hadn’t screamed more during the attack, implying she hadn’t done enough to stop the rape.

No one has been arrested in the case, and Ellian was forced to live in the camps after her father threw her out of the house when he saw that she was pregnant.

Rape was already a serious problem in Haiti even before the earthquake. The United Nations reported in 2008 that almost half of the girls and young women living in slums like Cité Soleil and Martissant had been raped.

Since the earthquake the situation for women has gotten even worse, rights groups say. Rapes have gone up threefold in Port-au-Prince, according to Refugees International, a Washington-based group. A report issued by the group this fall, “Haiti: Still Trapped in the Emergency Phase,” detailed that the camps had become dangerous places for women. It alleged that the camps are guarded poorly if at all.

“Living in squalid, overcrowded camps for a prolonged period has led to aggravated levels of violence and appalling standards of living,” the report states. “Despite these alarming conditions, the U.N. coordination system in Haiti is not prioritizing activities to protect people’s rights.”

Refugees International spokespersons say many of the camps had no police presence. The group said reports of gang rape were common. In some camps, security committees created to help camp residents watch over the camps were being run by members of a local gang.

Women and advocates say that the police typically ignore or shame women when they report attacks, so many rape victims choose not to. As a result, rapists typically go unpunished. Rape was not a crime in Haiti until 2005. Before then, it was characterized as a crime against a woman’s honor to be resolved with financial compensation.

Amnesty International reported that prior to the earthquake the Haitian National Police had 12 investigators devoted to rape of minors — for a country of 10 million.

“The police will say that if it is a girl, she was raped because she was promiscuous and curious about sex; if it is a woman, it’s because she was out late or dressed provocatively,” says human rights attorney Jayne Fleming, who is also pro bono counsel in the San Francisco office of the law firm Reed Smith.

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CNN
Jayne Fleming Haiti Interview
[TRANSCRIPT]
December 12, 2010

The following is a transcript of Jayne Fleming's interview about Haiti with CNN correspondent Deborah Feyerick, aired Sunday, December 12, 2010. The words “Reed Smith” were prominently on screen during a good portion of the interview.

FEYERICK: Haiti is also fighting a massive cholera outbreak and protests over the recent presidential election. Jayne Fleming has been helping some of Haiti's most vulnerable victims get to the United States. She's a lawyer with the Global Law Firm Reed Smith. She joins us now from New York. Miss Fleming thank you so much for being here with us. The situation right now is really devastating, especially to women in Haiti who have fallen prey to the situation there.

JAYNE FLEMING, PRO BONO COUNSEL, REED SMITH: That's right, Deborah. I've been to Haiti four times since March, and I think it's fair to say that conditions for women and girls in Haiti have gotten dramatically worse since the earthquake, and conditions there have deteriorated rather than improved. I work with two grassroots women's organizations in Haiti in Port-au-Prince and both of them represent women who are really living in the most dangerous conditions in Haiti, in the worst camps in Haiti. For them, nothing has gotten better. It's gotten much, much worse.

FEYERICK: You've met a number of these women and you have spoken to them. What are some of the most tragic stories that you've heard?

FLEMING: Well, I think one of the problems with the situation in Haiti is that the earthquake is merely one in a continuing series of human tragedies that Haiti has experienced and women have really experienced the worst tragedies of all. Some of our clients, the clients that my law firm Reed Smith is representing, have some of those histories of violence against them. And I think probably the worst, worst case that I have right now is a woman who experienced violence during the political coup in 1991. She was raped, her husband was disappeared, and her house was burned down. She was then raped again in 2004 during another period of political violence and she then lost family members during the earthquake. And then when she was trying to come to the rescue of a girl who was being attacked after the earthquake she herself was raped and now a few weeks ago her daughter was raped.

So I think it's an ongoing tragedy, one tragedy after another of violence against women. That's one case. We have since the earthquake I have interviewed more than 50 women who have been raped. It's a complete humanitarian disaster.

FEYERICK: I want to talk about the work you're doing in just a moment, but what is the Haitian government doing in all of this? What are they doing to help these women?

FLEMING: Well, I think that's one of the fundamental problems and one of the reasons there is so much violence against women, is the answer is almost nothing. I mean, the problem is that a woman who is attacked and raped really has no remedy, no law enforcement remedy, no help from the police and no judicial remedy and it's not taken seriously in the country.

When you don't have rule of law and you don't offer legal protection to women who are victimized, it creates an atmosphere of impunity that just encourages more violence against women. I have had cases where women have gone to the police and they have been blamed for the crime. I've had cases where women have gone to the police and they were told to go find the perpetrator and bring him back. Have cases where women have gone and they have been told they have to pay cash in order to have a police officer go find the perpetrator. Really, this is one of the most basic fundamental problems that's creating an increase in violence against women.

FEYERICK: It almost sounds as if there's a war against women going on in that country. You're a humanitarian parole lawyer. Basically, you are trying to get the most needy, if there's a possible way to determine who is more needy than the next. Who are those you're trying to help? Are you getting the help you need to do it?

FLEMING: That's right. It's- there's a process in the United States called Humanitarian Parole, which was the process that was used immediately after the earthquake to help children in the adoption pipeline to come to the United States and for people with extreme medical needs. So, we have piggybacked on that concept of humanitarian parole and we have gone to Haiti. I led delegations of medical doctors and lawyers and we have identified about 100 cases where we are trying to get women evacuated from Haiti and they are the worst, worst cases we have identified.

We're not trying to get Humanitarian Parole for everyone in Haiti but just for people who are so severely psychologically damaged and reeling from violence that we're trying to get them to the United States. My law firm, Reed Smith, has about 40 lawyers working on this project where we are representing individual women and trying to get them parole.

FEYERICK: Do you have enough sponsors? One of the things that you're trying to get them is sponsors. They have to have somebody in the U.S. to help them. Are those people here?

FLEMING: Right. That's the biggest hurdle. The biggest roadblock to this representation. Typically a lawyer who takes the case does legal work and the case is finished. With this project what we have to do is get not only fiscal sponsors, somebody who is willing to provide financial support to the women to come to the United States. But we also need to make sure that the medical services and psychological services and social welfare services are in place so that when they get here they're not just lost in another community. Yes, we have about 20 percent of our faces have financial sponsors and about 80 percent do not.

FEYERICK: OK. Well Jayne Fleming, certainly important work but by no stretch of the imagination easy work. We wish you good luck on your trip to Haiti which is coming up soon. Thank you.

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More News

Pro bono lawyer fights sexual violence in Haiti

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