Academic

Raped (7500 times)

By firstamendmentblogger

In March, outreach workers in Port au Prince documented 230 incidents of rape in 15 displacement camps.   There are more than 500 camps in and around PAP.  That's over 7500 rapes. 

And it's a month later. 

A spike in sexual violence always follows a natural disaster: New Orleans.  Sri Lanka.  Port au Prince.   Always.  And yet, time and again, reconstruction officials wantonly overlook ways to guard against it.  Take the layout of settlement camps, for example.  In PAP they're densely packed, and so dark at night you can hardly see your hand in front of you.  The women we talked to said they wanted flashlights and lanterns to carry to the toilet at night, but they weren't being distributed with their weekly rations of cooking oil and beans.  They had nowhere to get them on their own, and even if they did, there's no money.

There's more space outside of PAP, in places like Pettionville, and a bit more room to breathe in the camps.  But the toilets and medical tents (which, btw, we didn't see in any of the PAP camps we visited) are a ways up hill and some distance from the tarps where people sleep at night.  In refugee camps in Sudan and the Congo, camp organizers dramatically reduced incidents of sexual assault when they moved the water source and latrines to the center of the settlement so that women didn't have to walk long distances at night to access the facilities.  

It's not rocket science, and in the short term, plans to lay new settlements in anticipation of Haiti's rainy season should take these considerations into account.  For the long run, though, women must be empowered to stand on their own (think literacy, job training, and econommic opportunities specifically targeted towards women) since social and economic independence, to some degree at least, reduces the risk of sexual assault and exploitation.

For more check out the video below, and add your name to those demanding that international authorities follow through with promises to make the settlements safe for women.  
 

Haitian Women Testify from Adam Stofsky on Vimeo.

-Kathleen Bergin

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 25, 2010 (boomark / email).