Over One Million People Affected; Reports of Violence against Women on the Rise

Washington, DC – Nearly ten months after Haiti was devastated by the earthquake, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is still struggling to manage some 1,300 camps where over one million displaced people live in fear of hunger, rape, intimidation and forced eviction, Refugees International (RI) said today. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a mainly U.S. funded organization, is responsible for coordination and management of the camps in Haiti, and RI found on a recent field visit that less than 30 percent of the camps have managers. RI called for officials to be assigned duties to manage the camps, the establishment of a full time UN Humanitarian Coordinator who can prioritize protection activities, and an increase in police patrols to better protect people from harm.

“As the agency responsible for camp management, IOM needs to take its responsibilities to protect the Haitian people living in the camps more seriously,” said the President of Refugees International, Michel Gabaudan. “People are being threatened by gangs and women are getting raped. While coping with this crisis would be an enormous challenge for any agency, far more can be done to allocate camp managers and coordinate assistance. Practically no one is available to communicate with the people living in these squalid camps and find better ways to protect them.”

In its latest field report, “Haiti: Still Trapped in the Emergency Phase,” RI highlighted the chaos that still exists in the camps and noted that while IOM has around 700 staff in Haiti, only three of these are protection officers. Some local women have established their own groups in the camps to protect women from attack and have developed self-defense trainings, security patrols, and gender-based violence (GBV) awareness-raising sessions. This work has made some of these women a target for death threats. RI was told that local agencies working on GBV in the camps had received three times the number of reports of sexual violence than pre-quake. The teenage pregnancy rate is extremely high in the camps, and medical agencies told RI that they are receiving large numbers of cases of failed ‘street abortions,’ some from girls as young as ten years old.

During a research trip in Haiti, Refugees International advocate, Melanie Teff, met with women who had been raped and abused in the camps.

“In the absence of camp managers, self-appointed camp committees have sprung up. In some cases, these are beneficial. But in others, these committees are made up of gang members, presenting themselves to aid workers as camp committees and intimidating camp residents. Women do not feel safe in the camps. I was told of a case where a woman went to take her trash out and a group of armed men raped her and bit off her tongue,” said Teff.

“Another women’s group told me about a landowner who burnt down people’s tents because he didn’t want squatters on his land. One child died in the fire. When there are no camp managers or senior protection staff, camp residents have no one to turn to for help in these cases.”

In its field report, RI pointed out that the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has decades of experience in protecting the rights of displaced people and in coordinating camps and called for the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) to co-lead protection activities with UNHCR. In addition, RI called for the United Nations mission in Haiti to increase police patrols with officers that are properly trained, equipped, and have Creole translators.

Refugees International is a Washington, DC-based organization that advocates to end refugee crises and receives no government or UN funding. RI researchers Melanie Teff and Emilie Parry traveled to Haiti in September to assess the significant needs still facing displaced Haitian people after the earthquake. To read the field report, go to www.refugeesinternational.org/policy/field-report/haiti-still-trapped-em....

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