En réponse à une demande de l'organisation populaire haïtienne KOFAVIV, des équipes de chercheurs de MADRE, de la International Women's Human Rights Clinic de la CUNY School of Law, de la NYU Global Justice Clinic et du UC Hastings Center for Gender & Refugee Studies ont mené une enquête en Haïti de novembre à décembre 2011.

In response to a request from the Haitian grassroots organization KOFAVIV, teams of researchers from MADRE, the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at CUNY School of Law, NYU Global Justice Clinic and the UC Hastings Center for Gender & Refugee Studies conducted a fact-finding investigation in Haiti from November to December 2011.

Haitian women and girls began last year bereaved, traumatized, injured and displaced by the January 12, 2010 earthquake. Over the past twelve months, as they have sought to begin to rebuild from the disaster and tend to the many vulnerable children, disabled and elderly people in their care, the women of Haiti have faced another catastrophe: an epidemic of sexual violence.

This article examines post-earthquake conditions in Haiti, which have left women and girls in a heightened state of vulnerability, as well as the ineffectiveness of the U.N. and government to uphold obligations under international law to include grassroots women’s leadership in the planning and implementation sessions to address sexual violence in displacement camps. It provides a brief overview of pre- and post-earthquake responses to sexual violence in Haiti, and then an overview of sexual violence and the vulnerability of women and girls since the earthquake.

Only in recent years has violence against women begun to receive international attention as both a public health and human rights concern. This article argues that the right to be free from sexual violence is a fundamental component of the right to health, and the need is particularly acute in post-disaster contexts. This article uses post-earthquake Haiti as a case study to illustrate conditions for women and girls who suffer daily threats of physical, emotional, economic, and social harm in ways that have no direct parallels for their mal counterparts.