Vulnerability to sexual and gender-based violence arises in many displacement contexts, whether related to armed conflict or natural disaster. Those fleeing an emergency situation may be susceptible to rape, sexual exploitation, or trafficking while attempting to secure transport, cross borders, or find lodging. Even once settled—whether in refugee camps, internal displacement camps, or urban centers—vulnerability to harm persists.
Background
L’ouragan Matthew qui a dévasté le grand sud et une partie du Nord-Ouest du pays n’a épargné personne. Les femmes n’ont pas été à l’abris des vent violent de l’ouragan.
The 2010 earthquake and cholera outbreak in Haiti have given a push to women’s migration to the Dominican Republic, and risk of being trafficked.
After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, over half of U.S. households donated to thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in that country. Yet we continue to hear stories of misery from Haiti. Why have NGOs failed at their mission?
In the wake of Haiti’s disastrous earthquake, international organizations have begun to recognize gender-based violence as a significant area of concern, particularly within Port-au-Prince’s internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. Other forms of gender-based violence include not only rape, but also sexual abuse. Sexual violence is often underreported or not reported at all. This lack of data can prevent accurate assessments of rates of violence or trends.
Thirsting for sensational stories about hunger, suffering, and violence, the world’s most prestigious news agencies—the Associated Press (AP), Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters, CNN, CBS, The Guardian—have for decades uncritically repeated anything NGOs, UN agencies, or pseudo-researchers claim about Haiti. No vetting of data. No critical review.
This paper describes the application of Killworth et al. (2006) Scaling-Up technique to estimate the number of rape victims in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the three years following the 2010 earthquake. The data comes from a 1,600 household random survey of the communes of Leogane and Carrefour, two communes (counties) near to Port-au-Prince that were among those most heavily impacted by the January 12th 2010 earthquake. The work was financed by Care International.
In this article I begin with the rape epidemic that supposedly shook Haiti following the 2010 earthquake and then trace back in time the role of international aid agencies, activists, foreign governments, Haitian politicians and Haitian opportunist aid entrepreneurs in creating what has become an industry of being “viktim.”
Crossing the Dominican–Haitian border in greater numbers than previously, Haitian women and girls, many of whom have been forcibly displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, make multiple decisions about where to go and whom to trust. Thus they are in contact with informal scouts and other agents, while seeking employment as vendors in the frontier market, domestic workers in private homes, and sex workers in brothels in the Dominican Republic.