HAITI: Haitian Women Regroup, Rebuild

A loose-knit coalition of 106 organizations called Femmes Citoyennes Haiti Solidaire, or Women Citizens Haiti United, has emerged from the devastation of the January earthquake to lobby for women's advancement during the recovery efforts.

Part of their inspiration comes from wanting to carry on for three leaders lost in the disaster, according to phone interviews with Haitian women's advocates on the ground and experts who closely follow Haiti in the United States.

The activists have no office but are managing to reach each other through e-mail and text messages, according to Martine Fourcand, a sociologist and activist who handles the group's communication. The coalition formed on March 19, but continues to attract longstanding organizations to its membership.

Souerette Policar Montjoie is president of Lig Pouva Fanm, a women's leadership organization in Port-au-Prince that joined the coalition.

"We have a lot of things to say and Haitian women are very strong," she told Women's eNews in a phone interview. "But in Haiti, the position of men is higher than women. We want men to know that we can put our hands together. They don't have to fight us."

Women Citizens Haiti United members range from a collective of female university students to a network of women working in rural community organizations. Members represent an array of special projects: curbing domestic and sexual violence, as well as improving women's access to credit, job training and education.

In the past three months organizers have met with the prime minister of Haiti and helped members coordinate with U.N. aid officers in the country. They want women to participate in all major decision bodies--local governments, municipalities and ministries. They intend to build a Haiti where women no longer suffer high levels of sexual violence and marginalization at home and in the paid work force.

Women of Less Importance

In Haiti women have not been as important as men, said Montjoie. "Now we are living without electricity and water and wondering if we'll see the end of this."

One of the group's most urgent goals is pushing for women's security in the camps and streets. Organizers are preparing a guide for urban development that envisions spaces with well-lit streets and safe places for women to meet.

In the longer term, the activists hope to form partnerships with women's movements in other countries.

"There is an amazing initiative taking place by leading women in Haiti from all levels, from rural women to the regional and national level," said Caroyln Rose-Avila, vice president of policy and engagement at Plan USA, a nonprofit in Warick, R.I., and the third largest charity working in Haiti. "Haiti lost three well-known women in the earthquake and there is a massive grassroots movement in honor of them."

Magalie Marcelin opened Haiti's first shelter for battered women; she was among the roughly 300,000 killed in the earthquake.

Myriam Merlet, chief of staff for Haiti's Ministry for Gender and the Rights of Women, and Anne Marie Coriolan, who worked in the courts to criminalize rape, which was treated as a crime of passion before 2005, were also killed by the disaster.

"These women were trailblazers in many regards," said Marie Clotilde Charlot, a longtime women's rights activist who works as a lead portfolio monitoring specialist for the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C.

Maternal Mortality, Early Marriage Worsened

One in 16 Haitian women faces the chance of dying during childbirth during their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization, and almost a quarter of girls and teens are married before age 18.

The earthquake has worsened maternal mortality and early marriage, and the escape of prisoners from the national penitentiary has made women more vulnerable to sexual violence. More than a million people are now homeless in Haiti, according to the United Nations.

Women make up more than 75 percent of Haiti's informal economy and provide most of the labor for subsistence agriculture. They also often take responsibility for meeting the needs of the most vulnerable in society, such as orphaned children, the elderly and the disabled.

After the earthquake, these responsibilities have intensified, said Sarah Degnan Kambou, chief operating officer of the International Center for Research on Women in Washington, D.C.

"Women have already mobilized themselves in a hundred different ways--putting extra food in the pot . . . working in informal associations to provide for each other and their families," she said.

Kambou believes Haiti can draw lessons from Rwanda's reconstruction after the genocide in 1994. Rwanda's economy grew at a pace of over 11 percent in 2008, according to the World Bank, and has greatly expanded its health and education sectors since 1994. Fifty- six percent of parliamentarians in the country are women, according to the United Nations Fund for Women. Rwanda's 2003 constitution requires that at least 30 percent of parliamentary and cabinet seats go to women.

After the genocide, women created institutions to reconstruct Rwanda and to prosecute perpetrators of the genocide. Rwanda was the first country to have a parliament where women outnumber men.

"There was still so much tension, but women were willing to sit down and struggle with how do we move forward," Kambou said. "They put aside deep, personal pain and fear. This is one of the reasons why Rwanda is so successful now. There is inclusion of women from the bottom-up, and it is built into the constitution and political leadership."

Worry Over Women's Needs

During a large donor conference in March, representatives from almost 140 countries came to the United Nations to raise over $5 billion for the country's reconstruction.

But across the street, advocates from international agencies and community organizations worried aloud that women's special needs were being left out.

"Women should not be an afterthought," said Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American writer, at the meeting. "We hope the reconstruction will have opportunities for women and girls at all levels. If we stay silent, too many voices will be left out of this conversation."

Women from the diaspora, such as 24-year-old Antoineta Beltifi, are also joining the effort to make Haiti better for women in the reconstruction process.

In New York City, Beltifi runs workshops for young and elderly Haitian women in the Beltifi Empowerment Committee, a local community organization. Since the earthquake, it has partnered with the nearby Haitian Cultural Exchange to aid traumatized children who have left Haiti after the earthquake by providing art therapy programs, such as theater and dance.

"The diaspora can start changing the lives of women abroad immediately," said Beltifi. "Women are at the center of this. And women need to take a firmer stance to rebuild from within themselves."

Charlot, from the Inter-Development American Bank, worries however about the odds facing resurgent women's rights activism.

"The earthquake and chaos that it has caused have propelled women and their issues to the forefront of Haiti's recovery and reconstruction debate," she said, but added that the country's woes may be too great for any movement, particularly one whose members are traumatized.

"I have friends--activists, professionals--who are still sleeping in their cars," she said.