UNICEF
By Roshan Khadivi
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 9 March 2010 – At the Automeca Hyundai lot, tents, tarpaulins and cloths slung across wooden sticks compete for space with the damaged shells of sedans, pick-up trucks and SUVs. What was once a car dealership is now an encampment for more than 15,000 Haitians, many of them children.
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Seven weeks after Haiti's earthquake, which affected more than a million children, UNICEF is working with partners to support and engage young children living in such makeshift settlements by supplying them with Early Childhood Development (ECD) kits.
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ECD kits take a holistic approach to child rights and needs. Each kit, which serves up to 50 children, contains supplies to set up safe play spaces; materials for age-appropriate early learning; basic items for hygiene; and an illustrated activity guide for caregivers.
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The kits, already in use in some 40 countries, are designed to provide children – primarily in emergency situations - with activities that address their specific social, emotional, physical, cognitive and developmental needs. In the aftermath of Haiti's 12 January earthquake, ECD kits have been distributed to residential care centres, child-friendly spaces and young child feeding centres, as well as paediatric centres, orphanages and preschools. UNICEF has also formed an ECD working group to coordinate early-childhood activities with other UNICEF programmes and with non-governmental partners.
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At the Automeca Hyndai camp, dozens of children formed a line as UNICEF Child Protection and Gender-Based Violence Specialist Catherine Maternowska opened the camp's first ECD kit. One by one, crayons, scribblers and brightly coloured building blocks appeared. The children clapped excitedly; the younger ones jumped up and down.
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UNICEF is working to distribute kits like these nationwide, and as quickly as possible. With most schools still closed, Ms. Maternowska said each kit both addresses a need and creates new opportunities.
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"These games help provide a secure space," she noted. "It offers us a chance to do informal education, to brush up on math skills or reading skills … or talk about issues such as gender-based violence, and how [children] can protect themselves."
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UNICEF is also working closely with the Haitian Ministries of Health and Education, the Institute of Social Welfare and Research, and others to keep children's needs at the centre of national recovery and development efforts.

3/9/2010
By Jennifer Bakody
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JACMEL, Haiti, 9 March, 2010 – Women have been hit hard by the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January. But they are not alone. As the world celebrated International Women's Day yesterday, Haitian authorities and leaders from the international community reiterated their support for the women of this quake-scarred country.
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Haiti's Ministry for the Status of Women and Women's Rights marked the day by honouring the tens of thousands of mothers, sisters, wives and activists who lost their lives in the disaster.
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On Sunday, 7 March, at least 500 supporters – many of them the members of small women's collectives from neighbouring communities - took to the narrow streets of the southern port city of Jacmel as part of a public march organized by Famn Deside (Women Decide), a locally based organization with a 20-year history of promoting women's health and human rights.
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Marie-Ange Noel, coordinator of Famn Deside, walked with a cardboard sign that read: '100 years we've been working to give the women's movement strength.' She noted that the devastation wrought by the earthquake will test the strength of Haitian women and girls as never before. "Women are engines of development in this country," said Ms. Noel. "They form a majority in many key sectors – in business, at the markets, as teachers and as health professionals."
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In addition to the march, Famn Deside organized what it called a 'pause for reflection.' One by one, participants who had gathered in a local hall offered testimony about their lives, losses and struggles following the earthquake. They shared messages of hope, as well as their ideas on advancing women's rights. UNICEF is working with Famn Deside to distribute emergency supplies for women and children in Jacmel, including cooking and hygiene kits, and tarpaulins for shelter. Along with its partners, UNICEF is also advocating for women's and girls' rights through improved access to health care, psycho-social counselling and legal assistance in cases of rape and sexual assault.
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"Supporting the women's movement in Haiti is essential to sustainable development," said UNICEF Gender-Based Violence Specialist Catherine Maternowska. "By doing this, UNICEF provides the funds needed to build strong gender-based violence prevention and treatment programmes." Providing support to women in the quake's aftermath gives a voice to more than a 100 years of social movement-building, she added, "but also to the girls and women of Haiti who are left to rebuild this shattered country."
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The government, the UN family and its partners, including many grassroots women's organizations, have also honoured the longstanding work of three prominent Haitian feminists – Anne-Marie Coriolan, Magalie Marcelin and Myriam Merlet – all of whom died in the earthquake.

By Liesl Gerntholtz
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NEW YORK – As Obama meets with Haiti's president, the aftershocks of the Port-au-Prince earthquake are hitting especially hard among displaced women, who face an outbreak of sexual violence. Liesl Gerntholtz on the awful toll—and how to help.
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Driving through Port-au-Prince’s Parc Jean Marie Vincent camp, the first thing I notice is how massive and congested it is. After that, the smell and the heat hit me. I had come to the camp to interview a young rape survivor, as part of a Human Rights Watch mission to Haiti to investigate sexual and other violence against women in the aftermath of the earthquake. Sexual violence often increases in emergencies, when normal structures have broken down and women struggle to meet basic needs for food, water, shelter and hygiene.
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As one emergency worker told me, referring to sexual violence, “You can just feel it when you walk into those camps.” In Parc Jean Marie Vincent, some 27,000 people had crammed themselves and their meager belongings into what was formerly a concrete sports park. Squalid shelters are built of sheets and other pieces of material slung over sticks and anything else that might hold them up. I wondered where women washed, changed sanitary pads and fed their babies, as these shelters so obviously provided no privacy. As we parked our car, my first question at least was answered: a young woman, naked from the waist down was trying to wash herself. I was conscious of many young men watching her.
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I met “Gentile” in an empty tent that had been left at the camp by one of the humanitarian groups, giving us at least a little privacy. We sat in the oppressive heat, and she quietly described how, a few nights earlier, she had been grabbed by five men and taken into a nearby house. There she was raped, forced to perform oral sex, and brutally beaten. When she finally managed to escape, the men chased her and beat her in the street, where a man finally rescued her and took her to his home. Later that morning, she returned to the streets, as she literally has nowhere else to go.
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Gentile, whose name I have changed for her protection, was lucky, if that is the right word, to meet up with a human rights advocate whose home had also been destroyed in the earthquake and who was now living in the camp. He took her to a hospital, where she received some medical treatment. She was not sure what medication she had been given, as the doctor who helped her did not speak Creole and there was no one to translate what he was saying. As Gentile told me, “I really need somebody to be with me in this suffering … I am not sleeping … I feel weak.”
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On top of the catastrophic earthquake that has left more than 200,000 dead and 1.2 million people homeless, the sexual violence felt to me like an unimaginable betrayal of humanity. But once you’ve seen the camps for Haiti’s displaced, it is easy to understand how the abuse of women and girls can happen. During our mission, we were in 15 of the largest camps for displaced Haitians, and we documented four gang rapes in Parc Jean Marie Vincent camp alone. The camps are unsafe places, and many women live with strangers, having lost contact with family members and friends. Their access to food and water is compromised. They bathe and wash children in public places. Although some latrines have been provided, there is no separation of facilities for women and men—and no lighting—so these are unsafe after dark. Three weeks after the quake, Parc Jean Marie Vincent camp had not received any food, contributing to an atmosphere of anger and anxiety. There were no police or U.N. forces patrolling. The camp is on open ground, allowing anyone to enter the camp and the shelters.
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Violence against women was a problem in Haiti long before the earthquake, with rape only recognized as a crime in 2005. The earthquake has only increased the dangers for women and girls, though, and they will live with that increased risk for many months, if not years, to come. No reliable data is available, in part because the quake has disrupted existing reporting and care systems for rape and gender-based violence, undermining the capacity of local organizations to help women and delaying access to essential medical and mental health services. But new reports from Human Rights Watch and Refugees International leave little doubt that the tide of sexual violence is rising—and the need for help is real.
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However, much can be done to protect women from sexual violence, both immediately and during the coming reconstruction of Haiti. Aid agencies have already taken some steps to address these concerns: highlighting the need for lighting and security in the camps, safe food distribution, private washing facilities and latrines, and access to health services for women who are assaulted and raped. All of these measures, if adequately implemented, will contribute to making women safer.
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In the longer term, we need to make sure that Haitian women’s rights are protected in the reconstruction phase. After security needs are met, it will be most essential to re-build the capacity of local women’s organizations that can lead the struggle against violence. Many have lost key activists and other staff members, and the remaining members have personal losses and their offices have been destroyed. Strengthening these groups and individuals will be key to protecting Haitian women and girls during rebuilding.
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While we were in Haiti, Human Rights Watch’s top objective was to press for greater safety for women and girls in the camps. This week we were advised by the UN mission in Haiti that at last there will be regular security patrols at camp Parc Jean Vincent. I hope that this means that Gentile and the thousands of women and girls in the camp will sleep a little better tonight.
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Plus: Check out more from Giving Beast, featuring news, video, and amazing photographs of people, places, and issues that need our support.
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Liesl Gerntholtz, the director of Human Rights Watch’s women’s rights division, has just returned from a research mission to Haiti.

Many women at the Jean-Marie Vincent site for displaced people (IDPs) in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince wash themselves inside their makeshift tents because the only alternative is to do so out in the open. Given the overcrowding and meagre security, this exposes them to the risk of attack or rape.
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Going to the site's latrines is also risky, especially at night, for there is no lighting and some toilets are isolated. “We have not yet reached a standard of organization that respects women’s rights,” Smith Maximé of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in Haiti told IRIN. “We have registered rape cases that occurred when women were in the latrines. When toilets are not secured – as in many of the camps – women are often attacked there,” he added.
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“We are not safe here,” one woman in the Jean-Marie Vincent camp told IRIN, holding her two-month-old baby. “Three men attacked me as I walked to a latrine. They covered my face and my mouth and raped me.” Initially she said nothing but her pain was so intense, after three days she told some relatives.
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The failure to meet established minimum disaster relief standards is “creating serious security, privacy and dignity concerns”, according to the Gender in Humanitarian Response Working Group*.
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“Increased lighting surrounding those latrines should be an immediate priority to ensure the safety of women and girls using sanitation facilities at night,” the Group said in a statement issued in late February. “Increased attention must be paid to the provision of dedicated and private bathing facilities to reduce women’s current vulnerability to sexual violence. Though many women and girls bathed outdoors prior to the earthquake, the nature of many IDP sites (crowded living conditions, living near strangers) is creating new vulnerabilities to violence and exploitation, in particular at night, that did not necessarily exist before,” it said.
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Overcrowding and lack of lighting in camps are part of the problem. In many camps there is no space between tents. Aid organizations and the government plan to move people from 21 of the most congested sites either back home, to host families or to land recently allotted by the authorities. In the meantime aid agencies are putting some security measures in place, such as installing lights.
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“Protection is one of the major issues of concern when sites are over-congested,” Sara Ribeiro, protection coordinator with the International Organization for Migration, told IRIN. IOM is the lead agency for the group of agencies collectively tasked with organizing the management of camps for displaced people.
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The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), a group of UN and non-UN organizations that since 1992 has worked to harmonize humanitarian best practice, stipulates that humanitarian actors must ensure that the route to water and sanitation facilities is safe and that latrines are well lit and lockable from the inside.
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Ribeiro said another major problem was a lack of camp management agencies. As of 4 March just one-fifth of the 400 camps for displaced families had such agencies in place, she said. “More agencies… need to take over site management,” she told IRIN. “That is the only way to prevent these things from happening. Because no amount of service delivery [medical care, food rations, water] is going to be able to respond to what happens when the sun sets.”
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Community watch groups are forming in many sites; OCHA states in a 4 March report that these groups will need training to increase the protection of women and girls. UNFPA is working with the authorities and local NGOs to revive a system of reporting sexual violence cases. “But our immediate focus is to disseminate information on available medical and psycho-social support, and to [put first] the rights and choices of the survivor,” Lina Abirafeh, GBV coordinator for UNFPA in Haiti, told IRIN.
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The agency is compiling a list of hospitals and NGOs that provide medical and counselling services for distribution in the camps. UN aid workers say no comprehensive statistics of rape in the camps are available but rape and impunity have long been widespread in Haiti, as IASC notes. In 2008 Amnesty International reported “shocking levels” of sexual violence against girls.
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* The group comprises representatives of MINUSTAH-Human Rights, MINUSTAH-Gender Unit, UNIFEM, UNFPA, World Food Programme, IOM, UN Children’s Fund, and several NGOs, including the International Rescue Committee, American Refugee Committee, and International Medical Corps.

3/9/2010
IRIN
By Nancy Palus
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Josephine*, 17, was living alone on the streets of Port-au-Prince when the earthquake hit. She lost the few belongings she had - mostly clothes. She now stays at the Jean-Marie Vincent camp for displaced families. She has no family members in the camp. One night around midnight, she told IRIN, she was looking for somewhere to sleep when two young men - one with a machete, the other with a wooden club - grabbed her.
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"They came towards me and then I realized there were four others with them. They dragged me into a tent. They held my mouth closed and blindfolded me. They took off my underwear. I was on the ground and one by one they raped me. "Each time I tried to scream they pressed even harder on my mouth. They hit me.
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"At about 2am they put me outside. A young man found me and helped me find somewhere to go. "Now whenever I see the youths who raped me they whisper and point at me. I avoid walking by the tent where they did this. "I want to leave this camp but before that I want to have these men arrested. The day I see policemen in the camp I will bring them to where these men live. I know about bringing people to justice because in cases of violence in my neighbourhood I have seen police come and arrest people. "I used to go to church but I no longer go because I don't have nice clothes to wear. I miss it a lot but one must look nice to go to church."

The Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) on Friday held a special session in the framework of the Inter-American Year of Women at OAS headquarters in Washington, DC, to welcome Marjorie Michel, Haiti’s Minister of Women's Affairs.
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During the meeting, the goal of which was to publicize the needs of women and girls in Haiti, the minister submitted a detailed report on the situation of women, emphasizing that after the earthquake “the living conditions have deteriorated significantly and it is women and girls who daily care for the injured and sick.”
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According to information from the Haitian government, violence against women has grown in the camps, there has been a rise in rapes, and prostitution is often the sole means of obtaining food. For his part the Secretary General of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, said that “we want to make real the idea that gender issues should be a priority in our organization, and Haiti is a real opportunity to show it, not only with words but with actions.”
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“Gender must be taken into account in all emergencies, what happens to women and girls cannot be left to chance. We must care for the most vulnerable and keep them in safe places,” Insulza said. CIM President Wanda Jones thanked the Secretary General for his quick response after the January 12 earthquake, “committing the OAS, taking its resources and working with other organizations for the reconstruction of Haiti.”
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“Our success at CIM has been in large part in your hands over the last couple of years and your presence here represents the commitment of the OAS to collaborate in the reconstruction of Haiti,” she said. It is worth noting that at the beginning of the meeting the President of the Permanent Council and Representative of Costa Rica to the OAS, Ambassador José Enrique Castillo, asked for a minute of silence in memory of women and girls who did not survive the earthquake and added that “we have the responsibility of making sure that our efforts of support and cooperation respond to the rights, needs and demands of the women of Haiti.”
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Information about the initiatives of various agencies in the reconstruction of Haiti was also presented during the meeting, including those of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF).

Associated Press
By PAISLEY DODDS and JONATHAN M. KATZ
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A heavy downpour sent the throngs living beside Haiti's shattered national palace cowering under tarps early Thursday as the rush of water made much of the camp of earthquake victims impassable — an ominous foretaste of the rainy season to some.
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Amputees struggled to maneuver through mud on crutches and wheelchairs. Many in the makeshift tent cities housing nearly 600,000 people in Haiti's capital still live without even plastic tarps, which the international community is trying to get to everyone by May 1. So when the rain comes, bed sheets spread on sticks as protection from the sun quickly get soaked and people move in temporarily with neighbors who have waterproof tents. The lucky actually have beds off the ground.
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"It's hard to keep my kids clean. There's too much rain, too much dirt," said Joseph Dukens, 25, at the camp beside the national palace. He pointed to his baby daughter, who had her leg amputated below her hip. "It's only going to get worse."
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The government, aid groups and foreign governments have been wrangling for five weeks over how to housing earthquake survivors, but neither the weather nor the people are waiting. Makeshift camps have hardened into shantytowns, adding a new dimension to the capital's teeming slum life with an extra helping of disease, hunger and misery brought on by the Jan. 12 disaster, which killed more than 200,000 people.
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While the camps blossomed, officials debated what to do with the 1.2 million people left homeless by the disaster nationwide. In the meantime, people are planning to stay in some very dangerous places: at the bottom of hillsides they know will collapse in a heavy rain or near riverbeds that are bound to flood. They are crowded into polluted areas where sanitation is limited and disease is already starting to spread.
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"The government has said for weeks that they have identified sites, but time is getting short and there has been little progress," said Ian Bray, an Oxfam spokesman. And the delay has caused complications, as evident on a former landing strip-turned-boulevard called Route de Piste, where a cluster of ramshackle villages has taken root.
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Row upon row of corrugated tin and wood shacks stand against the wind as dusty men walk between them carrying saws and hammers. Children look for the snow cone man at the crossroads, near where a lottery dealer named Max has set up his booth. In a shack marked "Boulangerie Pep La" — the people's bakery — the smell of dough wafts from the oven.
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The new neighborhood is very densely packed; some 27,000 people live there, according to Haitian Red Cross workers. U.N., foreign and local officials are directing aid to the site, while also designating it a "priority for decongestion" — meaning some people must move out. The overcrowding is a chief reason officials say they don't want to give people the waterproof tents. But people in the shantytown are making their own space, pushing out neighbors who arrived later so as to expand their tarp-and-pole shelters into more permanent homes.
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And people simply do not want to go far from where they always lived and worked. With property hard to come by, aftershocks continuing and 38 percent of Port-au-Prince's buildings destroyed by the magnitude-7 quake, according to U.N. satellite imagery, their options are limited. On Thursday, a group of U.S. senators sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging the immediate relocation of displaced Haitians to higher ground before the rainy season begins in earnest.
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"Tragedy will strike again when the rain comes. We urge your administration to stress this point with President (Rene) Preval and Prime Minister (Jean-Max) Bellerive," they wrote. Senators George LeMieux and Bill Nelson of Florida, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also encouraged long-term investment, micro-loans for small businesses and seeding commerce outside Port-au-Prince.
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Meanwhile eight of the 10 American missionaries detained while trying to take 33 Haitian children into the Dominican Republic without adoption certificates arrived in Miami late Wednesday night. The two remaining detainees, Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter, went to a Port-au-Prince courthouse on Thursday to be questioned by the judge but Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said he had to cancel the session because the translator didn't show up.
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"Everything is going well," Silsby told reporters, though she added, "I don't know the exact day we are going to be free." Coulter, who has diabetes and was taken to a hospital the previous day, said she was feeling better. Defense lawyer Aviol Fleurant said the judge rescheduled the questioning for Friday and was seeking to arrange a visit to the orphanage that Silsby, the missionary group's leader, had hastily arranged in Cabarete in the Dominican Republic.
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Associated Press Writer Evens Sanon contributed to this report.

Associated Press
By M.J. Smith
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Heavy rain Thursday in Haiti's capital worsened squalid camps and highlighted the urgent need for shelter after last month's quake, as the UN called for a record 1.44 billion dollars in aid. More than a month after what some experts say could be the worst natural disaster in modern history, aid workers are racing against time to try to distribute enough tarpaulins to the more than one million left homeless. Even those will provide only basic protection when the rainy season begins around May, aid officials say.
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"Everything was wet," said Joseph Jean-Luc, 30, as he helped a friend build a shelter by nailing together branches at a massive tent city that used to be a country club golf course overlooking Port-au-Prince. Many spent Thursday washing mud-caked clothes, drying out mattresses and waiting in line for vaccinations. Others dug small trenches around makeshift tents in a bid to keep them from flooding again.
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Reflecting the massive needs in what was already the poorest country in the Americas before the quake, UN chief Ban Ki-moon launched the world body's largest ever appeal for humanitarian aid. The request for 1.44 billion dollars to assist earthquake victims, a year-long appeal, includes a 577-million-dollar request made in the aftermath of the devastating quake.
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"As the rainy season is coming to Haiti, it will be extremely important to provide on a priority basis shelters, sanitation and other necessary humanitarian assistance," Ban said in New York. He spoke at a ceremony attended by his special envoy for Haiti, former US president Bill Clinton, and UN humanitarian chief John Holmes.
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"We are with you," Ban said to the people of Haiti. "We will help you to recover and rebuild." Clinton stressed the need for donors to follow through with their commitments. "Pledge less and give it. And do it sooner than later," he said.
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The former US leader also vowed transparency in the use of donated funds by posting how the money is spent at the HaitiSpecialEnvoy.org website. Previously, the largest natural disaster appeal -- 1.41 billion dollars -- was issued in 2005 in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami. Distribution of shelter material got off to a slow start following the massive earthquake, in part due to debate over the best strategy, and aid workers are now rushing to hand out tarpaulins ahead of the heavy rains.
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UN officials say only about 272,000 people have been reached with shelter materials so far following the disaster that killed more than 217,000 people. Canadian Deputy Commanding General Nicolas Matern of the Haiti Joint Task Force said tarpaulin deliveries were being ramped up to try to reach all of the homeless with some form of shelter before the rainy season.
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Officials are hoping to carry out a similar effort being done with food distribution, though the problem is vastly more complicated because of camp conditions, among other issues. After a stumbling start, aid workers launched a major food distribution push at the end of January, and a total of more than two million people have now been reached with some kind of food, UN officials say.
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Many Haitians, however, still say they have received nothing, while some of those that have benefited from distributions say they have only been given a limited supply of rice. Matern acknowledged tarpaulins were only basic protection in the rainy season, but said it was the best strategy to try to reach everyone since the needs were so daunting. "There is an impression out there that we will be able to turn around and build transitional shelter with framing and all that by the rainy season. Forget it," he said.
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"It ain't going to happen. We don't have the resources nor the time to do it." In the case of 10 Americans charged with kidnapping in Haiti, the two still being held here were sent back to jail Thursday after the judge said he would visit the orphanage where they claimed they planned to take the kids. Related article: Judge sends two Americans back to jail
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The other eight were released Wednesday and returned home, but the charges have not been dropped. Haitian authorities arrested them three weeks ago as they tried to cross into the Dominican Republic with a busload of 33 children they said they believed to be orphans. It later emerged many of the children had parents.
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Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, who earlier said the Americans' case was distracting from his country's urgent needs, said he hoped the judge's decision to free eight of them would shift the focus. "We don't want to focus on the Americans' case," he said.

By Martha Mendoza
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Washcloths arrived before water, and senators before surgeons. In the first chaotic days after Haiti's earthquake, some vital aid was forced to wait because the U.S. military took relief flights at the Port-au-Prince airport on a first-come, first-served basis, according to landing logs.
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The logs, reviewed exclusively by The Associated Press, document who flew in before and after the U.S. Air Force assumed control of the landing strip that was the sole lifeline for relief. They largely disprove accusations from some humanitarian groups that the U.S. held up aid in favor of military flights. The Air Force did initially give priority to military units that were sent to secure the airport, distribute aid and keep the peace. But then it started taking flights according to a reservation system open to anyone.
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Because of that, key aid was delayed in some cases while less-critical flights got in. Nearly all the groups sending in aid insisted their load was urgent, said Air Force Capt. Justin Longmire, who has been coordinating the flight schedules and is helping prepare the airport to reopen for commercial flights on Friday. "Could I take the list of all the flights and put it in order of most important to least important? Water? Food? Digging equipment? Doctors? I don't think so," Longmire said.
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The result: Church of Scientology ministers landed, as did AP reporters, CNN's Anderson Cooper and diapers from Canada. But a French portable hospital and planeloads of doctors with medical supplies were diverted to the Dominican Republic.Planes carrying half of a Norwegian field hospital landed in Port-au-Prince, while those carrying the other half were diverted to the Dominican Republic and had to be trucked in over the mountains, delaying the opening of one of Haiti's first post-quake field hospitals.
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"It was extremely frustrating," said Norwegian Red Cross spokesman Jon Martin Larsen. When the quake hit, the global crush of compassion turned the Haitian capital's airport into a virtual baseball catcher with "pitchers throwing balls from all directions all at the same time," as Air Force Lt. Gen. Glenn F. Spears put it.
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Before the quake, the single, 10,000-foot runway had handled 20 flights a day without radar, with pilots landing visually with the help of controllers on radios. Afterward, traffic on the runway soon rivaled that of any at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on a busy afternoon, with planes landing or taking off every two minutes. With the seaport in ruins, hundreds of planes loaded with missionaries, medical teams and military forces dashed to Haiti without designated landing times and only 10 spaces for large planes to park. There was no room on ramps for planes to unload their cargo, and some planes didn't have enough fuel to leave.
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The traffic snarls in the air were exceeded by utter chaos on the ground. For days the airport was packed with aid workers, journalists, airport employees and others with nowhere else to go. They slept on luggage carousels, fought over space for their equipment and dodged rats. "It was a madhouse," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Bob Millmann, an adviser on airlift operations in Haiti. "We saw a situation that was untenable, like stuffing 5 pounds of sand into a 3-pound sack."
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Air Force controllers started guiding air traffic a day after the quake and assumed official control from Haitian authorities three days later. They used a system developed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It requires pilots to dial an Air Force telephone bank to get an assigned landing time.
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"When the Air Force took over the tower, things made a marked turn," said Jon Fussle, a pilot for the nonprofit coalition Haiti Relief Group. Rescuers, countries and aid groups complained early on of a bottleneck that kept lifesaving equipment, medical care and supplies from Haitians who were trapped, injured or made homeless by the quake.
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They blamed the Air Force as five planes carrying 85 tons of medical and relief supplies from Doctors Without Borders were diverted to the Dominican Republic, and three charter planes carrying water and tarps from the Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse were turned back. Doctors Without Borders claimed that the diversions cost lives and forced the organization to buy hardware-store saws in Port-au-Prince for amputations. However, most of the problems occurred before the Air Force took full control. And the AP review found that at least one Doctors Without Borders plane headed for Haiti without a landing slot, and circled as controllers unsuccessfully tried to squeeze it in.
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U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes commended the U.S. for the system it set up. "The Americans taking over the Port-au-Prince airport was absolutely crucial," he said in an interview Wednesday. "Clearly there were some glitches. But I don't think there was any intention to favor military flights over humanitarian flights. It was simply quite difficult to set up a system that included genuine real-time priorities."
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The waiting list for a daylight landing slot is now about a month long, with about 1,000 planes in line, although those willing to land between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. can get in much sooner. Pilots said the phone lines are frequently tied up. The AP reviewed restricted federal logs from Jan. 16, when the Air Force began managing air traffic, to Feb. 8. It also had exclusive access to logs from Jan. 12 to Jan. 16 through FlightAware, a Houston- and New York-based company that tracks air traffic in the United States.
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Those logs show that on the first day of Air Force management, 48 flights from the U.S. and 25 from other countries landed. More than half of the American flights were military or government. But the Air Force defends that decision in the name of security, adding that many of the flights also carried aid. "No one knew what the response of the Haitian people would be to this terrible event, but we knew we had to secure the airport to save lives," Spears said. "So yes, we did send in men and women with guns, and we have not needed to use them."
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In the days that followed, the balance shifted toward aid: Logs show that 52 percent of planes that landed were from U.S and international non-governmental agencies, primarily the World Food Program but also such organizations as the Mormon Church and the American Red Cross; 22 percent were from the U.S. military, including security personnel and medical teams, and 18 percent were requested by the Haitian government, which gave access to cell phone companies and private planes carrying the president and his wife.
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As of Jan. 18, the U.N. World Food Program was put in charge of assigning landing times for non-governmental organizations. While countless flights were diverted early on, only 17 - including six from the U.S. Defense Department and one from Doctors Without Borders - were diverted between Jan. 16 and Feb. 8, according to the logs. That is less than 1 percent of the 2,318 flights allowed to land during those weeks. Meanwhile, 336 aircraft failed to show up for their assigned slots.
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Even as the Air Force required pilots to book landing slots, many worked around the system and flew in without them, the AP review showed. On Feb. 8, only 140 flights had landing slots. As many as 400 - from helicopters to Pipers - arrived in Port-au-Prince. "I'm not going to sit there and turn anybody in, or turn myself in, but they told us, 'If you guys come in and can park in the grass, just identify yourselves and land,'" said Carlos Gomez, whose Miami charter company shuttles medical supplies, food and other relief for $28,000 a trip.
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The system has had its glitches: Controllers recently lost track of a Learjet they thought was circling while waiting to land. They stopped all landings before discovering the jet was already on the ground. At night, when a runway bulb goes out, the whole string of lights goes dead, forcing crews to stop all landings until they can figure out which bulb blew. But Air Force officials note that there have been no accidents.
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In an interview, Millmann, the brigadier general, gazed at an electronic board showing hundreds of planes heading toward Haiti from all directions, and said proudly: "We want people to know how we've done this - the good, the bad and the ugly. In the end, this is the whole world coming together to help those in dire need of help."
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Associated Press news researcher Julie Reed and AP Writers Jonathan M. Katz in Haiti and Charles J. Hanley in New York contributed to this report.

2/17/2010
Yes! Magazine
By Beveral Bell
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http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/beverly-bell-in-haiti/gender-and-justic...
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"A loss for the whole nation.” That is how one of Magalie Marcelin’s friends described the death of this women’s rights leader in Haiti’s earthquake January 12. Magalie was at the forefront of the birth of the contemporary women’s movement in Haiti in the 1980s ("contemporary" because recorded actions for gender equity go back as far as 1820). She started Kay Fanm, or Women’s House, Haiti’s first shelter for battered women, which was also a hub of feminist and anti-violent activities. She was instrumental in passing laws to recognize women’s equal rights in marriage, and to criminalize rape and domestic violence.
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Magalie’s political activism started as a teenager during the rule of Jean-Claude Duvalier. She was arrested along with others in a group that used grassroots theater to raise political consciousness. The government then expelled her, and she settled in Canada and studied law. After the dictator fell in 1986, she returned to Haiti and began advocating for women and for political rights. During the 1991-94 military coup, Magalie lived in hiding. Even then she never stopped organizing, hosting secret Kay Fanm meetings at her underground residence.
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Though she was a lawyer, Magalie didn’t argue cases herself, but helped women in trouble find lawyers and create defenses. She managed to get a fair trial for a woman who, after having been beaten for many years, killed her husband. On another occasion, according to the feminist sociologist Carolle Charles, Magalie organized women to pack the courtroom during the trial of a man who battered his wife, to offset the man’s political influence. The woman won.
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Magalie lived at Kay Fanm, sleeping on a thin foam mat on the floor. That way she was available 24 hours for the needs of the domestic violence survivors taking shelter there, though she sometimes stepped away for a night when she was too worn down. She was not paid for any of this work. It was all volunteer; she supported herself through doing sociological investigations in the countryside as a consultant for an international NGO.
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Magalie was also an actress and free spirit. When she was very young, she appeared in the full-length film Anita, about a rèstavek, a child slave. She always hoped to get back into theater, but never found the time; there were too many women to defend and support. Her email moniker was tilangdeng, or "mischief." Part of her philosophy was that, to do this work decade in and decade out, she had to keep her spirit nourished. She spoke of how her hometown of Jacmel provided that nourishment for her.
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Magalie wouldn’t play political games and told it like it was. She alienated some people as a result, but she didn’t care. She particularly angered people with a statement she made on the radio: “A penis is not a weapon.” In Haiti, synonyms for penis are ‘machete’ and ‘baton’, and having sex is sometimes called ‘to crush’ or ‘to cut’. One extended study in Cite Soleil found that, for 100 percent of surveyed women, their first sexual experience was rape. This was the context in which Magalie chose not to worry about others’ opinions.
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Many of her gestures were quiet and unseen. She continually helped people find jobs, money, or whatever they needed to survive and be safe. She also helped women who wanted to start grassroots women’s groups. This is where she died, in a meeting with a woman in Port-au-Prince who wanted to launch a women’s organization. She was in the woman’s home when it collapsed during the earthquake. Three others who were inside were rescued, but Magalie was not.
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Jacques Bartoli, a close friend of Magalie, tells the rest of the story. “The morning after the earthquake, Delano Morel, another of Magalie’s good friends, found out where she was. I got together a sledgehammer, other hammers, and heavy picks they use for construction, and we headed down. The street was blocked so we walked and walked until we reached the house. Magalie’s daughter Maïle and her husband Andy met us there. We got together a couple of volunteers and some other people I paid. We extracted her five hours later but she was already dead.
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“Two other women that Magalie had just helped the day before, women who were having trouble with their mates, joined us to go to the morgue. But the morgue had collapsed. There were people trapped there, too. So Magalie’s daughter said, ‘Let’s take things into our own hands.’ We took her body back to Kay Fanm and we laid it out there with ice. We knew she wanted to be buried in her land in Jacmel, on the other side of the river, but the road was broken. I said, ‘Let’s exhume her body in a year and take her to her land.’ So Magalie’s daughter found a place in Port-au-Prince and buried her the next day.”
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Three other founders and shapers of Haiti’s women's movement died in the earthquake: Anne-Marie Coriolan, Mireille Neptune Anglade, and Myriam Merlet. So, too, did an untold number of women who worked every day without professional title, office, or resources to make Haiti a more just and equitable place. They were all part of a thriving tradition of women’s activism to bring about social, economic, and gender justice. Their work does not appear in the media depiction of Haiti, in which the reports of sporadic street violence have been blown up until Haiti looks like a nation of barbarians. (Curiously, this reporting has largely left out one form of violence which is prevalent today: rapes against women and girls who, since the earthquake, have been forced to sleep in the streets.)
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No one will ever know how many women activists died in the earthquake. Many of the bodies were quickly dropped from bulldozer scoops into shallow mass graves, or remain in the buildings that are crushed like sandwiches throughout Port-au-Prince and its environs. Nor will anyone ever know how many of them died needlessly, not from the quake itself but from not receiving the medical care, food, and water that the U.S. government repeatedly turned away from the tarmac so that its soldiers and weapons could land instead. For those women who died in this way, it was the final injustice in a lifetime of injustices.
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The battle against more lifetimes of injustice will require everyone. It will require Magalie, too. Good thing she’s on the case, present and accounted for, inside all who care about rights and justice.
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- Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She authored the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives, and is associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Miami Herald
By KATHLEEN McGRORY
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Gina Pierre laid on her back in the dusty tent, crying out in pain and clenching her older sister's hand. She was about to give birth to triplets.
Two days earlier, the concrete walls of Pierre's home had collapsed around her. Now, there was no place to deliver her babies -- only the tent made from scrap metal and bed linens where she and her family were sleeping. ``Please, God,' she prayed. ``Let my babies live.' Pierre is among the hundreds of Haitian women who have gone into labor following the Jan. 12 earthquake.
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Many, like Pierre, are giving birth in the tent cities that have come to dominate the Port-au-Prince landscape. The women have almost no privacy, and doctors and midwives are scarce. Garbage and human waste are everywhere. Other pregnant women are crowding the hospitals and medical clinics that were established by the international aid community. It's putting a strain on the relief organizations, many of which did not bring obstetricians or the proper equipment for delivering babies.
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Earlier this month, the University of Miami field hospital had to turn away pregnant women. There weren't enough doctors or supplies. ``We came here with earthquake specialists -- orthopedics and surgeons,' said Cristian Morales of the World Health Organization.
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``In an emergency, they can deliver babies. But we need to replace adequate facilities for obstetrics and gynecology. . . . If we don't act, we are foreseeing an increase in the already obscene maternal mortality rate.'
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Maternal mortality has long been a pressing issue in Haiti. Roughly 670 of 100,000 mothers die in childbirth -- compared with 150 in the neighboring Dominican Republic and 11 in the United States, according to the most recent figures from UNICEF and the World Health Organization.
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There are new concerns for the 63,000 pregnant women now living in Port-au-Prince. More than 7,000 are expected to give birth this month.``People here are giving birth under the absolute worst conditions,' said Dr. Jonathan Evans, a pediatric gastroenterologist volunteering at the University of Miami field hospital. ``They can't find access to midwives. Little problems become big problems.'
In the sprawling camp at the city center of Champs de Mars, where the fruit flies are unrelenting and the stench of human waste inescapable, Antoine Toussaint worries about the health of her unborn child.
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Toussaint, 27, is nine months into her pregnancy. She lost her last baby, a son, in childbirth two years ago. This time, Toussaint will have only the help of her family if complications arise.
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``This is where I am, this is where I am going to give birth,' she said, sitting outside the cream-colored tent that houses the seven members of her family. ``It's not going to be good for the baby. It's cold at night. It's not an appropriate place to give birth.' Before the quake, most Haitian women gave birth at home. About one in five delivered in the hospital -- and often only when there were complications, said Dr. Jean-Edouard Viala, the chief of staff in obstetrics at the Port-au-Prince General Hospital.
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In the month since the quake, the general hospital has delivered more than 100 babies in its maternity tent, Viala said. The surgeons have performed more than 27 Cesarean sections. Joanne Désir, 26, rushed to the hospital in a rented red pickup truck when her water broke in a nearby tent city. She gave birth to a baby girl in the truck bed, just outside the hospital.
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``I'm glad I came [to the hospital],' she said, lying on a cot inside the maternity tent with her baby in her arms. ``I want the doctors to look at her.' Still, doctors say even the hospitals and clinics are far from ideal for delivering babies.
At the University of Miami field hospital near the Port-au-Prnce airport, doctors didn't have access to a baby incubator.
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They were able to deliver one preemie by emergency Cesarean section. But when the baby's temperature dropped -- a potentially life-threatening condition -- there was no way to warm her. Thinking quickly, the doctors used ready-to-eat meals to raise the child's body temperature. She was later transferred to a hospital in Haiti with an available incubator.
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Marjorie Michel, the Haitian minister in charge of women's affairs, said her office is working to address some of the concerns. She said the government will set up special tents where pregnant women can give birth in sanitary conditions. Her office is also trying to provide pregnant women with nutritious food, and new mothers with diapers, sheets and blankets.
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Additionally, the World Health Organization is sending more obstetricians into Haiti, a spokesman said. But even despite the challenges, there is a silver lining: These women are bringing life into a city where death has ruled since Jan. 12. Miriam Seguie, 23, went into labor in the street two days after the quake. Her aunt, her only female relative to survive the disaster, dragged a tattered gray carpet and a fraying blue-and-white blanket into the street and assisted with the delivery.
Still, Seguie said she felt blessed.
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``I did not die,' she said. ``I made life.' Gina Pierre gave birth to triplets Carline, Carlheinz and Carly in a makeshift tent two days after the quake. The mother swaddled her 8-pound babies in stained bath towels, and kept them warm by pressing them against her chest.
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Five days later, the newborns stopped taking fluids. They looked weak, and their cries were labored. Pierre took the babies in her arms and walked a mile to the UM field hospital, where doctors nursed the babies to health. The afternoon before the babies were discharged, Pierre rocked the smallest of the three in her arms. Her older sister Guerbine Pierre cooed over the other two, who wore tiny hats and rested quietly in baby blankets and bath towels. ``They're miracle babies from the earthquake,' said Nicole Kalinowski, a pediatric nurse from New Jersey volunteering at the field hospital. Said Guerbine: ``It's God's work.'
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Miami Herald staff writer Frances Robles contributed to this report

Thought you'd be interested in this Op-Ed about the need to focus on the
immediate and long-term needs of Haiti's children: http://bit.ly/bog2zz.

Washington Post
By PAISLEY DODDS
The Associated Press
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Bernice Chamblain keeps a machete under her frayed mattress to ward off sexual predators and one leg wrapped around a bag of rice to stop nighttime thieves from stealing her daughters' food. She's barely slept since Haiti's catastrophic earthquake Jan. 12 forced her and other homeless women and children into tent camps, where they are easy targets for gangs of men.
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Women have always had it bad in Haiti. Now things are worse. "I try not to sleep," says Chamblain, 22, who lost her father and now lives in a squalid camp with her mother and aunts near the Port-au-Prince airport. "Some of the men who escaped from prison are coming around to the camps and causing problems for the women. We're all scared but what can we do? Many of our husbands, boyfriends and fathers are dead."
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Reports of attacks are increasing: Women are robbed of coupons needed to obtain food at distribution points. Others relay rumors of rape and sexual intimidation at the outdoor camps, now home to more than a half million earthquake victims. A curtain of darkness drops on most of the encampments at night. Only flickering candles or the glow of cell phones provide light. Families huddle under plastic tarps because there aren't enough tents. With no showers and scant sanitation, men often lurk around places where women or young girls bathe out of buckets. Clusters of teenage girls sleep in the open streets while others wander the camps alone.
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The government's communications minister, Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, recently acknowledged the vulnerability of women and children but said the government was pressed to prioritize food, shelter and debris removal. Aid groups offer special shelters for women and provide women-only food distribution points to deter men from bullying them. But challenges are rife more than three weeks after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed an estimated 200,000 people and left as many as 3 million in need of food, shelter and medicine.
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Women who lined up for food before dawn Saturday said they were attacked by knife-wielding men who stole their coupons. "At 4 a.m. we were coming and a group of men came out from an alley," said Paquet Marly, 28, who was waiting for rice to feed her two daughters, mother and extended family. "They came out with knives and said, 'Give me your coupons.' We were obliged to give them. Now we have nothing - no coupons and no food."
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Aid organizations set up women-only distribution schemes because they trust the primary caregivers to get that food to extended family, not resell it.
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"We've targeted the women because we think it's the best way to get to families," said Jacques Montouroy, a Catholic Relief Services worker helping out Saturday.
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"In other distributions when we've opened it up to men, we found that only half of the men would do what they were supposed to with the food."
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Men watch from the distance to women lined up during a food distribution operation near the slum of Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010. Since the Jan. 12 earthquake ravaged much of Haiti's capital, women say gangs of men have been stealing their food coupons used at distribution points in the outdoor camps, now home to more than half a million earthquake survivors.
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Soldiers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, guard many of the streets around the distribution points, but they can't be everywhere all the time. Aid workers say they've been staging elaborate decoy operations to draw men to one area while food coupons are given to women in another. Each of the 16 daily distributions throughout Port-au-Prince presents its own security challenges, Montouroy said.
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"The coupon distribution has been hellish," he said, explaining how crowds of men swarm around the women.
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Even if the women successfully make it back to the camps with their 55-pound (25-kilogram) bags of rice, that doesn't mean their worries are over. Some camps are even providing special protection for women, with tents where they can receive trauma counseling or be alone to breast-feed and care for young children.
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"My sister died in the earthquake, so now I have to take care of my three daughters and my sister's two," said Magda Cayo, 42. "I try to keep them close but I see lots of hoodlums looking at them. We're all nervous. It's no good." Women have long been second-class citizens in Haiti.
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According to the United Nations, the Haitian Constitution does not specifically prohibit sexual discrimination. Under Haitian law, the minimum legal age for marriage is 15 years for women and 18 years for men, and early marriage is common. A 2004 U.N. report estimated 19 percent of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 were married, divorced or widowed.
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Rape was only made a criminal offense in Haiti in 2005. In the months after a violent uprising ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, thousands of women were raped or sexually abused, the British medical journal Lancet reported. The coup set off a bloody wave of clashes among Haiti's national police, pro- and anti-Aristide gangs, U.N. peacekeepers and rebels.
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Because so many police stations and government offices were destroyed in the earthquake, some women may have no place to go to report assaults, according to Melanie Brooks of CARE, which is working to protect women while providing disaster relief. She said women recovering from quake-related injuries are even more vulnerable because many are not mobile. An additional threat is HIV; Haiti has the highest infection rate in the Caribbean.
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"The women whom we've talked to tell stories of rape, assaults or men following them around when they're bathing," Brooks said. "These stories are becoming the new bogeymen now. Everyone is looking over their shoulder." Before the earthquake, the government set up a panel to look at ways of empowering Haitian women. But the Women's Ministry was among the government buildings destroyed.
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Three Haitian women working on important judiciary reforms to protect women against sexual violence - Myriam Merlet, Anne Marie Coriolan and Magalie Marcelin - died in the earthquake. Many view their deaths as setbacks for all Haitian women.
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As women lined up for food at the National Palace on Saturday, U.S. soldiers kept the men behind a cordon.
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"It's discrimination!" said Thomas Louis, 40. "We've all lost mothers, sisters, wives. Without women we can't get coupons. They're treating men like we are animals."
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(This version CORRECTS that several camps are providing shelter for women, rather than one.)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8499679.stm
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BBC
2/5/2010
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The Haitian prime minister has warned that the case of 10 US missionaries charged with child abduction is a "distraction" from earthquake recovery. Jean-Max Bellerive said more than 200,000 people had died in the quake and one million still needed help.
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The missionaries have been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy. They deny allegations they tried to smuggle 33 children across the border to the Dominican Republic. When stopped on the border last Friday, the group said they were taking the children to an orphanage. But it has since emerged some of the youngsters' parents were still alive. Mr Bellerive said the case of the missionaries risked diverting international attention from the plight of Haitians who had lost their homes and livelihoods.
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"I believe it's a distraction for the Haitian people because they are talking more now about 10 people than they are about one million people suffering in the streets," he said. The missionaries' lawyer, Edwin Coq, said his clients were "naive" but not malicious in their actions.
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"They had no idea they were violating the law. They were acting in good faith and they just wanted to help," he said. But he reiterated the group's leader, Laura Silsby, knew that documentation would be needed to remove the children from Haiti.
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"I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine [other missionaries] out. They were naive. "They had no idea what was going on, and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border. But Silsby did," Mr Coq said, according to Associated Press. In Washington, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the two governments were discussing the diplomatically sensitive case. "It was unfortunate, whatever their motivation, that this group of Americans took matters into their own hands," Mrs Clinton added. Haitian officials have said that the cases of the 10 US citizens will now be sent to an investigating judge who will decide how to proceed. If convicted they face lengthy jail terms, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.
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After Thursday's hearing the 10 missionaries were taken back to the jail where they have been kept since last Friday. Amid chaotic scenes, the group was bundled into a van outside the court. "I feel good," Ms Silsby told reporters. "I trust in God."
The five men and five women, most of them from Idaho, were due to have a hearing earlier in the week. The case was postponed because of a lack of interpreters.
US media reported that Ms Silsby also faces court cases in Boise, Idaho, relating to unpaid wages and legal bills.
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Former employees from her shopping website business filed 14 claims for unpaid wages in the past two years. Some have been resolved, but Ms Silsby is due on court next week for one case, and another is set to begin in March, the Idaho Statesman
newspaper reported.
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Mr Bellerive has labelled the Americans "kidnappers". Justice Minister Paul Denis has said that the missionaries should be tried in Haiti, despite the damage to the country's judicial infrastructure and casualties among judges and court staff. There had been suggestions that the 10 could be tried in the US. But Mr Denis told the AFP news agency: "It is Haitian law that has been violated, it is up to the Haitian authorities to hear and judge the
case.
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"I don't see any reason why they should be tried in the United States." The US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, said that the US would do all
it could to ensure the missionaries were treated fairly and in accordance with Haitian law. The children, who are from aged from two to 12, are now in the care of the Austrian-run SOS Children's Village in Port-au-Prince.
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Twenty-one of the children were from a single village outside the capital and were handed over willingly by their parents, our correspondent says. Residents in the village of Callebas told an Associated Press news agency reporter that they had handed their children over through a local orphanage worker who said he was acting on the Americans' behalf.
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The worker is said to have promised the families that the missionaries could educate their children in neighbouring Dominican Republic. A number of parents in the badly-damaged village said they would find it difficult to provide for their children if they came back. Ms Silsby has said her group had met a Haitian pastor by chance when it arrived last week, and that he had helped them gather the children. She also admitted that the missionaries did not have the proper paperwork. "Our intent was to help only those children that needed us most, that had lost either both their mother and father, or had lost one of their parents and the other had abandoned them," she said from her jail cell on Wednesday.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/1459849.html
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Miami Herald
By KATHLEEN McGRORY
kmcgrory@MiamiHerald.com
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CARREFOUR -- Children gather on street corners playing improvised games. They make toy cars and kites from trash and play hide-and-seek among the rows of shabby makeshift tents. But even while they play, thoughts of the Jan. 12 earthquake are never far from their minds. Many, like 14-year-old Pierre Feedenly, fear the ground will shake again. Pierre prefers to spend his time in a wide alleyway between two streets, so he won't be trapped under a building in the event of another earthquake. He won't enter any buildings.
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``Whenever I go inside a house, I think about what happened that day,'' Pierre said. ``My heart starts beating fast. I get really scared.'' The earthquake has taken a clear emotional toll on the children of Haiti. Families have been broken. Children remain afraid. They feel the strain of lacking food and shelter. And while adults labor to rebuild
the country -- and to cope with the tragedy themselves -- they are looking for ways to provide counseling services to the earthquake's youngest survivors.
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Many children are coping with death for the first time -- a challenge even under the best of circumstances. There's also survivor's guilt. `Some children are overreacting; others have blocked it completely from their minds,'' said Norah Salnave of the Haitian Association of Psychologists. ``It's not only the trauma, but a lot have lost their
parents, brothers and sisters. That's a tremendous thing for a child to process.''
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Kenson Jean, 16, lost his uncle and his cousin when their house collapsed in the Port-au-Prince tent city known as Maïs-Gaté.``I'm thinking about them and knowing that I'm alive,'' Kenson said from his bed at the University of Miami field hospital, where he was recovering from injuries to his left leg. ``It's difficult for me.''
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Inside the children's tent at the field hospital, the kids talk constantly about the earthquake. Where they were. Where their parents were. What they were doing. They tell their stories over and over again, said Carmen Diaz, a clinical psychologist volunteering at the hospital.
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The doctors are also providing specialized counseling services for the children who lost limbs. In Haiti, a county in which manual labor is king, amputees struggle to find work. ``For the most part, those children are just glad to be alive,'' said
Burton Goldstein, a University of Miami psychiatrist at the field hospital. ``The consequences of the amputation will come later, when they are dealing with day-to-day life.''
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Although schools in the outlying areas reopened Monday, more than 5,000 schools in Port-au-Prince were destroyed or significantly damaged.
Haiti's minister of education has yet to announce when schools within the capital city will reopen Across the city, more than one million people are living in tent cities. Some, such as the camp in the city center of Chann-Mar, are home to more than 2,500 children. There, the children play games to pass the time. This week, nurses handed out fliers with colorful cartoons, warning the children to stay away from the piles of garbage and not urinate in the street. At the tent camp at Saint-Louis de Gonzague, a prestigious parochial school, little boys constructed a soccer goal from pieces of scrap metal and red twine. U.S. military from the 82nd Airborne personnel played basketball with the older children.
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Across the camp, 8-year-old Junior Alexis, his skinny arms and legs covered in dust, pulled a toy car fashioned from an old milk bottle. He had collected four orange bottle caps for the wheels, which he kept taking off and putting back on.
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``It's not bad,'' the budding mechanic said of his new life in the tent city. ``I play most of the time. I have friends.'' But at night, Junior said he thinks about what has happened to his country. He struggles to understand what it means. ``People are dying,'' he said. This past weekend, first lady Elisabeth Delatour Préval convened a group of psychologists, educators, politicians and artists to determine how to get mental-health services to children before school starts again. The team will soon be establishing children's therapy centers in the tent cities.
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The therapy centers will be called Plas Timoun, the Children's Place, and will provide free counseling services, said Fabienne Elie, the executive assistant to the first lady. There will also be art and music therapy, sports and make-believe ctivities available to any children who show up. More than 60 psychologists and 80 psychology students are ready to help out.
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Amanda Melville, a UNICEF child protection specialist who is coordinating mental health and psychological support services with the Haitian government, said regular access to food, water, shelter and the family unit is key to a child's mental health.
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``In these kinds of situations, we have to understand that the biggest stress on children is the lack of basic services and normality,'' Melville said. ``The sooner we can get these children good, water and shelter, the better.''
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Many of the children say their bellies ache from not having enough food. They wonder when their next meal will come. ``When the people come with food, not everybody gets enough,'' said Berthony Azor, 13. ``We wait and wait, but sometimes we don't get
anything.''
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Joanne Pierre worries about the affect the earthquake has had on her 10-year-old daughter. Jonise Francois was playing outside when the earthquake hit. A wall fell and crushed her right leg. Since the earthquake, Jonise has become quiet, reserved. She doesn't like to talk about what happened. She cries only when the doctors change her bandages.
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``It's horrible,'' said Pierre, who sleeps beside Jonise in her hospital bed at night to comfort her. ``You don't want your child to go through something like this.'' The stay at the field hospital has had another effect on the girl. Jonise, like the little girls lying in either of the hospital beds next to her and the bed directly behind her, wants to become a nurse when she grows up.
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Said her mother: ``She wants to help people.''

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
2/3/2010
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NEW YORK — Even before the catastrophic earthquake, being a pregnant woman in Haiti was a perilous endeavor. With 1 in 44 women dying in pregnancy or childbirth, it is the most dangerous country to give birth in the Western Hemisphere. In the aftermath of the earthquake, UNFPA is prioritizing providing maternal health services for the approximately 63,000 pregnant women in the affected area, 7000 of who will give birth in the next month. The challenges in quality health care, transportation, education, nutrition that contributed to country's poor maternal health situation have only been exacerbated by the earthquake and must be addressed with even greater urgency.
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A film crew from the Public Broadcasting Service was investigating this ongoing emergency when the earthquake struck, disrupting the entire health sector. Their report, which aired last week on NOW, explores how Haiti had been working to make motherhood safer and the obstacles it faced even before the massive destruction. Key among them are three delays faced by pregnant women: delays in seeking obstetric care, delays in reaching a facility where they can receive proper care, and delays in getting treated one they arrive.
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Support for midwives' training has been a key role for UNFPA in Haiti, which is one of 15 countries with high maternal mortality that receive priority under the Maternal Health Thematic Fund. However, the country's only midwifery school sustained structural damage that has put it out of commission for the time being. The school was graduating 38 much-needed midwives each year.
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Although the challenge of keeping mothers alive, and keeping their newborns safe, has never been more daunting, UNFPA believes that with adequate funding, public support, and wider application of basic interventions, maternal deaths can be reduced by 70 per cent. Some 200,000 Haitian women are estimated to be pregnant, and 63,000 of them were affected by the earthquake.

CARE
2/3/2010
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CARE is working to prevent sexual and gender-based violence in the aftermath of Haiti's devastating earthquake.
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It is well documented that the risk of sexual violence and exploitation rises in crisis situations – like the one happening in Haiti now – when people are displaced from their homes and communities. And women and girls are the most vulnerable in these settings. In fact, a 2008 report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that after multiple tropical storms in Haiti, there were reports of "sexual violence in shelters, 'sex for food' and other forms of exploitation."
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"CARE is working to protect women, girls and other vulnerable populations in order to prevent sexual violence and to ensure that survivors of gender based violence get the help they need to recover from the trauma," said Janet Meyers, CARE's Senior Advisor for Sexual and Reproductive Health in Emergencies, who is on the ground in Haiti.
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Darkened streets due to lack of electricity, crowded makeshift camps with no walls of any sort, and unprotected bathing and toilet areas leave women and girls particularly vulnerable to harassment and sexual violence.
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"Women and girls are very much at risk of violence and of being forced into prostitution in exchange for money, food or shelter," said Sophie Perez, CARE's Country Director in Haiti. "CARE's activities work to keep that from happening. In the long term, it is important to help women become economically independent because this puts them in a stronger position in the community and makes it less likely that they will be taken advantage of."
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CARE is consulting with both men and women about the location of gender-specific latrines and showers so they are placed in safe, well-lit areas close to where displaced persons are clustered, but are clearly segregated.
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The damage to police and city services as a result of the earthquake means reporting lines have been destroyed, and some traditional community support systems have been disrupted, making it all the more important to set up a system to ensure protection and support for women and girls. "It is critical to ensure that confidential, quality services, including clinical management of rape, emergency contraception and psychosocial support, are available to treat survivors of rape and sexual violence," said Meyers.
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Women who suffer sexual abuse or ongoing psychological and physical violence also have more unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancies than other women, more sexually transmitted infections, and higher rates of HIV. CARE is taking this into account and is providing condoms to men and women as part of its emergency response.
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"More broadly speaking, we can also prevent gender-based violence, including sexual violence, by implementing the minimum initial service package for reproductive health. This set of emergency response activities includes providing pregnant women with clean delivery kits and establishing referral systems to functioning emergency obstetric care services to treat complications," said Meyers.
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There are an estimated 37,000 pregnant women in Port-au-Prince, including approximately 10,000 who are due to give birth in the next month. CARE is helping to address their needs by distributing clean delivery and newborn kits. The delivery kits include a towel, soap, a sterile razor and thread to cut and tie off the umbilical cord. The newborn kits come with a blanket, a layette gown, a hat and booties to keep the baby warm, plus diapers. Many health centers and hospitals were destroyed by the quake, making it critical to set up referral systems for women to access emergency obstetric care if they experience any complications
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"CARE also plans to provide displaced communities with a tent for women to give birth in privacy," said Meyers. For more information or to arrange interviews with staff in Haiti:
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Rick Perera (in Port-au-Prince, Haiti): rperera@care.org, +1 404-457-4649 (SMS)

2/3/2010
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The United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA) is providing medical kits to thousands of expectant mothers in Haiti in case they cannot get medical attention in time and give birth at home or on the streets where they are living after last month’s earthquake. A “clean delivery packet” for a pregnant woman comprises a clean piece of plastic sheet, a razor blade and string to cut and tie the umbilical cord, soap, a diaper cloth to dry the baby and gloves.
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UNFPA estimates that 15 percent of the 63,000 pregnant women in the earthquake-affected areas are likely to have potentially life-threatening complications. The estimated 7,000 who will give birth this month are at an even greater risk, with at least 1,000 predicted miscarriages. “People are delivering in the streets.
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There is not a lot of access to medical care for pregnant women,” Wilma Doedens, technical adviser on reproductive health at UNFPA, told the UN News Centre. “Most medical facilities are focused on those seriously injured during the earthquake. We are hearing more and more about women delivering at home. We want to make sure that they the have the basic equipment they need.” More advanced kits containing emergency Caesarean section equipment such as intravenous fluid and drugs to stop bleeding have been distributed to birthing tents at field hospitals.
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Clinics with midwives also receive instruments and medicines to stabilize a birthing woman before referring her to a hospital. “We have 173 kits at more than 80 centres in Port-au-Prince reaching more than 1.5 million people,” Ramiz Alakbarov, UNFPA Representative for Haiti, told the UN News Centre. Before the quake, Haiti had the highest rates of infant (under-five) and maternal mortality rate in the western hemisphere at 670 deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies.
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“Thank God we have this international aid to help us with this birth. For the moment at least, we are still alive, but who knows about tomorrow,” Sejouste Walkin, an expectant father, told UNIFEED in his native Creole at a makeshift clinic in Port-au-Prince. In addition to emergency care, UNFPA has distributed some 20,000 dignity kits. The kits contain sanitary napkins, underwear, anti-bacterial soap and other hygiene and cleaning supplies for women and young children.
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UNFPA is also passing out condoms and medicine for high blood pressure common in Haiti. There are also kits for post-rape care and treatment of complications from unsafe abortions. “Post-rape care is a problem. Not many clinics can provide that care. Before the earthquake, there were about five cases a week at GHESKIO. I don’t have information if that number has gone up or down, but people have a harder time accessing the clinic,” said Ms. Doedens.
GHESKIO (Group for the Study of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections) is known in Haiti for providing treatment and medical care for people with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
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The building is situated in Port-au-Prince near the national penitentiary, from which thousands of convicts escaped during the earthquake. Another challenge continues to be reaching outlaying areas of Haiti, which are left without access to medical support and supplies.
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In Jimani, a border town into the Dominican Republic where more and more people are arriving from Port-au-Prince, UNFPA provided four truckloads of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and equipment this week.
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“We are going to Jacmel tomorrow. There are centres there still under-serviced,” Ms. Doedens said, adding that the UNFPA has been working well with the Haitian Ministry of Health and other partners. “The Bureau of Family Health is a very dynamic bureau. They are sharing all the national protocols and assessing institutions outside of Port-au-Prince.”
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“The condition in Haiti was not good before. The rain season will start soon and we have to make sure that we are increasing capacities locally. That is the challenge. The important thing is to maintain the gravity of operations in Haiti. Needs have to be identified with the Haitians, and the Haitian community has to be actively involved in the planning and carrying out activities,” said Mr. Alakbarov.
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UNFPA has been involving local partners to spread the word of where and how to pick up the medical kits, and which clinics can be accessed by women in labour. In addition, the supplies used for the kits – such as sanitary napkins or gauze – are bought in Haiti whenever possible to boost the local economy, and assembled by local women’s groups.
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“The situation is improving very slowly. Some signs of life are coming back. Every place you go, people are trying to clean. I think the major challenge for the United Nations and for the international community is to support the local infrastructure,” said Mr. Alakbarov. “The response is more and more, with our assistance, in the hands of the Haitians.”

UNITED NATIONS - Women's rights and development activists working in Haiti say that greater attention must be paid to the immediate needs of women and girls, as well as their role in the long-term reconstruction of the devastated country. Ninaj Raul, director of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees (HWHR), an NGO based in Brooklyn, New York, is currently in Leogane, Haiti providing medical and nutritional aid for victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake at a grassroots level and trying to fill in the gaps larger organisations have failed to reach.
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"It's one of those situations no one could have been ready for," Raul told IPS in a telephone interview. "Right now I'm at this orphanage, and it's completely destroyed." "I have this girl sitting on my lap that had both of her legs amputated, and it's people like her that really give you strength," Raul told IPS. She is working in collaboration with members of El Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitiana and el Movimiento Socio Cultural Para los Trabajadores Haitianos. The three groups have gone to camps and orphanages in Jacmel, Leogane, Petit Goave, Grand Goave and Martissant.
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Vaccinating women to protect them from infectious diseases is a priority, as is feeding women who are now unable to provide for themselves and their families. Raul told IPS that members of HWHR brought over-the-counter medicines and nutritional bars from the United States in overweight suitcases. But beyond addressing the most urgent needs, these organisations are also hoping to aid some women's return to self-sufficiency over the longer term.
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"In Leogane, there was a group of women who know how to make bricks," Miriam Neptune, a filmmaker and a volunteer at HWHR, told IPS. "They said okay, if we're stuck here, and this is where we're living right now, maybe we can find a way to get some support to start a brick-making operation, a collective," she said. It is well-known that in humanitarian crises, women become more vulnerable to gender-based violence and abuse as the maintenance of law and order is challenged, and infrastructure ceases to function.
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In a video shot by Neptune, Raul described an incident at a camp in Martissant, a slum in Port-au-Prince, where a woman had been gang-raped by men in the camp. "There is a lack of security, particularly for the women," said Raul, "Women are really vulnerable." "An increase in violence against women is often one of the devastating consequences of crises, whether brought on by natural disasters or wartime," Dr. Henia Dakkak, a technical advisor in the Humanitarian Response Branch at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS.
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"When large numbers of people are displaced, separated from their families and communities, when civil society is virtually nonexistent with police, legal, health, education and social services severely weakened and stress and tension and poverty among populations high, women and girls are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation," she said.
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"In Haiti, where women and girls already faced high rates of violence, this is a serious concern that UNFPA and other agencies are addressing," Dakkak said. The World Food Programme (WFP) has set up 16 food distribution sites throughout Port-au-Prince, and has gone as far as to set up food distributions exclusively for women in hopes of preventing violence against women in mixed-sex lines, and precluding stronger men from repeatedly pushing their way to the front of distribution lines. Health emergencies are also exacerbated by the absence of medical care and supplies in times of crisis.
Dakkak told IPS that the UNFPA is particularly concerned about pregnant women in Haiti in the wake of the natural disaster.
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As a precaution, the UNFPA is distributing thousands of medical kits to expectant mothers who may not be able to reach medical facilities when they go into labour. "It is estimated that there are 63,000 pregnant women in the affected area, with 7,000 due to deliver in the next month. Before the quake, Haiti was the most dangerous place to be a pregnant woman in the Western Hemisphere, with the lifetime risk of dying in childbirth one in 47," Dakkak told IPS.
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Experts at the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) acknowledged on Monday that the needs of women must be met in the wake of the humanitarian crisis, in order to ensure their active and effective participation in the reconstruction of their country.
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"Whilst the strength and resilience of women are in high demand following such emergencies, they cannot adequately fulfill these roles if their basic needs are unmet and if decision-makers ignore them," said Naéla Mohamed Gabr, the head of CEDAW, and a women's rights expert.
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"The needs and capabilities of women must be taken into consideration in all sectors and clusters of the emergency response, as the role of women in early recovery is critical to effective implementation and long term sustainability," she said.

From the GDN:
Greetings from the Gender and Disaster Network to our friends in GROOTS, MADRE and other women's networks: We want you to know we stand ready to support your local partners in Haiti to the extent possible. Knowing that communications are down and that both short-term and long-term needs are acute for girls and women in Haiti, how can we help? Money is one way and we encourage our members to donate as possible through your networks. What else can our members offer the women's groups on the ground now? How can we help in future? In solidarity and for the GDN, Elaine Enarson

Contact persons:
Lourdes Meyreles, Santo Domingo, FLACSO: lourdesmeyreles@yahoo.com
Elaine Enarson, Denver: enarsone@gmail.com
Kris Peterson, New Orleans: krajeskipeterson@msn.com

Email to be forwarded to two groups:
A. Women's groups previously active around disaster resilience:
MADRE [http://www.madre.org/index.php?s=4&news=2]
GROOTS/Disaster Watch: http://www.disasterwatch.net/index.html

B. Women's groups in Haiti with emails (thanks to Maja Herstad, Gender adviser, Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB)
maja.herstad@msbmyndigheten.se)

ENFOFANM, Organisation de Défense de Droits des Femmes, E-mail: enfofanm@direcway.com. ENFOFANM is a non-profit organization whose mission is to defend the rights of Haitian women and to promote Haitian women as actresses in the process of national development. It works in four areas: documentation and archives, communications, capacity building and women’s rights and advocacy.

FANMYOLA, Collectif Féminin Haïtien pour la Pariticipation Politique des Femmes, E-mail: fanmyola@yahoo.fr; malizoue@yahoo.fr. FANMYOLA is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote women’s participation in the Haitian political process.

MOUFHED, Mouvement des Femmes Haïtiennes pour l’Education et le Développement, www.moufhed.org and moufhed@yahoo.fr. MOUFHED is a non-profit organization whose mission is the promotion of the fundamental rights of women and the family; it is especially involved in women’s legal issues, including legal advice and counseling and training.

RÉSEAU NATIONAL DE DÉFENSE DES DROITS HUMAINS - RNDDH,
www.rnddh.org and lgilles@rnddh.org.
Formerly the National Coalition of Haitian Refugees, this organization is a watchdog and advocacy group for human rights in Haiti and documents and report incidents of various abuse, including those including and affecting women.
FEMMES EN DEMOCRATIE,
E-mail: dsaintlot@yahoo.com

Femmes en Démocratie was formed in March 2000, as a non-profit organization inspired by the international movement to support women to their fullest potential in the judicial, social, political and economic domains. Its primary objectives are to promote the emergence of a feminine Haitian leadership; support women to participate in the highest levels of decision-making; communicate and support th exchange of experiences and best practices, and constitute a feminine lobby to national and international decision-makers.

FONDS KORE FANM
sabine.manigat@cgf.ht
This is the Local Management Office for Canadian Cooperation in Haiti exclusively concerned with women’s issues and development; it currently has a budget of CDN$4 million for support to women’s issues and groups.

Luis CdeBaca
Director, Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Washington, DC
February 3, 2010

QUESTION: Can you be more specific about Haiti and whether you – what you’ve seen and whether you’re just worried about it in general or whether you’re actually seeing it, and are there any cases aside from the dozen Americans in the case that’s pending down there?

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Well, I won’t address the dozen – the Americans in the case that’s pending. I think that you’ve heard about that from the podium through some other folks. But the – we are hearing anecdotal evidence from certainly, obviously, UNICEF, which is the head of the child cluster there in Haiti, and other NGOs about the notion of recruiters or others in some of these camps. I think that some of that’s been reported.

QUESTION: What was the name of that organization? UNIT?

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: UNICEF?

QUESTION: Oh, from UNICEF. Okay.

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Yeah. But some of the other organizations that are there. We have begun to – we’ve actually got funding out the door already to a group called Heartland Alliance that’s part of the child cluster that’s one of the more experienced U.S. countertrafficking organizations. They work with a lot of the trafficking victims in the Midwest. They’re out of Chicago. But they also do countertrafficking projects for – with grant money from us around the world. And they’re stepping up their activities in Haiti.

One of the things that we’re responding to is not necessarily that there is one particular case that’s triggered this or one particular allegation that’s triggered this, but rather the notion that when you have a refugee situation or you have a natural disaster, et cetera, especially in the 10 years now since the adoption of the United Nations Protocol Against Trafficking in Persons, there’s a recognition that you have to build that into your response, just like you’d build – if you were going to have a major sporting event, you’d have to build in how many ambulances do you need if somebody’s going to have heart attacks, what do you do about terrorism.

I think now we’re starting to see that countertrafficking responses need to be built in from the beginning, and especially in a place like Haiti, where, as our report in 2009 pointed out, there was a large child trafficking problem before the earthquake hit. And so I think that the unique situation that we have with Haiti means that it’s even more pressing on the part of donor communities and governments like the United States, who are working on the ground there.

QUESTION: Do you have any statistics on how many – on the problem in Haiti before the earthquake, numbers? And then also on that whole total of 12.3 million persons, how many of those were children, roughly?

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: We’ll have to, I think, circle back with you on the ILO study. The ILO study, just so you have it, the name of that was called the Cost of Coercion. And I --

QUESTION: The what?

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: The Cost of Coercion – in which the ILO not only did a snapshot of the problem in the world but also did some economic modeling in which they’re estimating that it’s about 31 billion profit to the traffickers annually, and about 20 billion opportunity cost losses to the victims on top of that, so it’s about a 50 billion industry worldwide.

As far as Haiti is concerned, last year in the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, Haiti – and again, this is a wide range of estimate – the high-end estimate is 300,000 children who are in the restavek system in Haiti, with an additional potential of 3,000 who may have been taken to the Dominican Republic for use.

And the restavek system, for those of you who are unfamiliar with that, it’s a – basically a system of fostering out children who then are working as child domestic servants, often abused, often exploited. They tend to age out because the Haitian law requires employers to pay domestic workers over the age of 15. And so one of the things that we’re concerned about and that we raised in the report last year was the notion that many of the street children – whether it’s girls in prostitution, whether it’s boys engaged in crime, et cetera – are basically restaveks who were disposed of by the families who had had them before. So that’s that that notion of kind of the child domestic servant, often enslaved, usually given to the person because of promises that the child would be cared for, sent to school, et cetera. So that’s one of the things that we are very concerned about is that as we rebuild, as we start to enter the rebuilding stage, that the child safety response is in place so that we don’t see an even bigger increase in that restavek population.

QUESTION: Last year’s report refers to --

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: I promised him that I would come to him.

QUESTION: You’ve got a specific question on Haiti?

QUESTION: No, go ahead and, I’ll come back to that.

QUESTION: Those figures are from 2008, though, right?

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Yes, and the 2009 numbers actually should be coming in. We’ve – we’re in the middle of our reporting period right now, so we’re looking for our reporting cables. Obviously, we’re going to have to see how much of the data is going to be collectible in Haiti right now, given what’s going on with the government and its ability to give us any kind of data on this.

QUESTION: Just two things. One, you said that you’re hearing anecdotally about the notion of traffickers in Haiti. What do you mean by “about the notion of”? I mean, are you hearing anecdotes that there are actually traffickers or --

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: For – just one for instance. There’s been reports, that I think have been reported on in the news as well, of men coming into some of the camps, using offers of food or water to get girls to leave with them in trucks. Now, obviously, we don’t have any hard evidence as to what’s happening to those girls once they leave with those men, and so that’s why the term “the notion of” trafficking.

When we look at human trafficking, as far as what the crime phenomenon would be, we’re looking at somebody who’s being held in compelled service. So we can suspect that that may have been the case that they might have been recruiting those girls for prostitution and that, because they’re under age, could be a trafficking situation, but we don’t have the hard information yet as to what’s happening down the road. And I think that’s one of the things that we’re going to be looking to work with the Haitian police as they, again, move out of the immediate disaster response and go back to reconstruction and governance. We’ll be wanting to work with them as far as how do you set up detective squads and child protective folks that can then go and look downstream as far as that’s --

QUESTION: That was exactly my next question, which is: Can you describe for us, other than detective squads, what are the kinds of specific, practical steps that one should set up? The same way that you try to estimate how many ambulances you need for a sporting event, what are the kinds of things you need to put in place in this kind of a – after such a natural disaster or a war or whatever?

AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Well, before the earthquake, we had about $500,000 worth of programming in Haiti itself, and those were largely about child trafficking. It was a couple of projects that were working with protecting escaped restaveks and seeking reintegration, either back with their families or with families who could foster them, who wouldn’t abuse them, to improve and instill greater public awareness about human trafficking within Haiti.

So it was something that then you’d see legal reforms or bigger resources being put it into it by the government, and also to provide direct services to victims, whether it’s men, women or children, in Haiti.

We also have some projects in the Dominican Republic, who are working with the Haitian community there, some of whom are in exploitative conditions, whether it’s in farming or whether it’s in the sex industry. And so there’s a project that we’re working on with the Solidarity Center, working on how to get information out to those communities.

What we’ve done in the last three weeks is we’ve repositioned a number of those projects. In the Dominican Republic, for instance, we’re working with the Solidarity Center so that we can try to turn that project around a little bit and have it catch, if there are folks that are coming over the border in search of jobs, in search of work, that they know their rights, that they know that they shouldn’t put themselves into a situation where they can be exploited.

So we’re working on the Dominican side with that project, and then we’re also moving money into Haiti as far as trying to build up those child protection brigades, as far as working with the groups such as the Jean Robert Cadet Restavek Foundation and others to try to make sure that we can have some things in place to protect those children.

But I think that what we see as far as the bigger macro issue is that it’s – the response to human trafficking is not the first week or two’s response; that’s the immediate shelter needs, immediate medical needs, et cetera. Then it’s starting to overlay in, do you have protection, do you have police, do you have social workers, et cetera, and that’s where we’re trying to move with this.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/605/index.html
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Haiti's catastrophic earthquake, in addition to leaving lives and institutions in ruin, also exacerbated a longtime lethal risk in Haiti: Dying during childbirth. Challenges in transportation, education, and quality health care contribute to Haiti having the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere, a national crisis even before the earthquake struck.
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While great strides are being made with global health issues like HIV/AIDS, maternal mortality figures worldwide have seen virtually no improvement in 20 years. Worldwide, over 500,000 women die each year during pregnancy.
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This week, a NOW team that had been working in Haiti during the earthquake reports on this deadly but correctable trend. They meet members of the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF), which operates a network of health agents in more than 100 villages, engaging in pre-natal visits, education, and emergency ambulance runs for pregnant women.
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The United Nations Population Fund, which trains midwives to share life-saving birth techniques and serve in rural communities, says that with proper funding, public support, and wider application of simple but scarce innovations, such deaths could be reduced by nearly 70 percent.
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As media attention on Haiti slowly fades, the issue of maternity mortality remains as imperative as ever. But with an estimated 200,000 women in Haiti currently pregnant--and a main midwife training school devastated by the earthquake--the mission of keeping mothers alive has never been more daunting.
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This show is a co-production with the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR), a non-profit video news production company. To learn more about organizations helping women in Haiti and in childbirth worldwide, consider:
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United Nations Population Fund
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The Haitian Health Foundation
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Family Care International

WHO/Pan American Health Organization
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Experience from past disasters suggests that women and children in Haiti may not be getting a fair share of the massive relief aid that is pouring into the country following last week’s earthquake, say public health experts at the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO).
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“I am deeply disturbed by pictures in the media of Haitians lined up and receiving relief aid, and they are all men,” said Dr. Marijke Velzeboer-Salcedo, PAHO/WHO’s top expert on gender issues. “We’re seeing images in newspapers and on TV with only men, or a majority of men, standing or pressing themselves forward in food or water lines. We can’t help but wonder, where are the women? Have they all entrusted their survival tasks to their men? Do we know that resources are getting shared equally by these men and other members of their families?”
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Women and children are especially vulnerable following a disaster, Velzeboer-Salcedo and other experts say. This is especially true in Haiti, where rates of violence against women and girls were already high before the earthquake.
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In a study carried out by the Inter-American Development Bank in Haiti in 2006, one-third of women and girls said they had suffered physical or sexual violence, and more than 50 percent of those who had experienced violence were under the age of 18.
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“We hope and pray that security can prevent and control violence against women,” said PAHO Deputy Director Dr. Jon Andrus, citing reports of increasing violence in the earthquake’s aftermath.
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“We have to keep in mind that disasters make existing inequalities even worse,” said Velzeboer-Salcedo. “Those who are stronger and more powerful, whether physically or psychosocially--or both--are going to have better access to scarce resources. But when women are deprived of resources, entire families are likely to be deprived, too.”
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Both experts called on relief organizations to address the different needs of women, girls, boys, and men by conducting needs assessments that take gender differences into account, and by ensuring that both men and women are on assessment teams.
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Data collected by relief organizations on deaths, injuries, displacement, and who is receiving aid should be gathered and analyzed by sex and age. This is critical for targeting services and assistance according to actual needs, said Velzeboer-Salcedo.
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Women face other special challenges in the aftermath of disasters. For example, young children and pregnant and nursing mothers are considered at higher risk of moderate or severe acute malnutrition, as are older people.
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The danger of malnutrition rises when, due to the disruptive effects of a disaster, women stop breastfeeding their infants or fail to initiate breastfeeding of their newborn babies.
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“With water and sanitation systems failing, it is even more important for mothers to breastfeed their babies rather than giving them formula mixed with water that may very well be contaminated,” said Dr. Chessa Lutter, a PAHO/WHO nutrition expert.
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Velzeboer-Salcedo also called on relief workers to be alert for cases of sexual violence, exploitation, and abuse. “It takes extra awareness and effort to empower women, who are the main caretakers of the injured and families during these tragic circumstances,” she said.
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PAHO was established in 1902 and is the world’s oldest public health organization. It works with all the countries of the Americas to improve the health and quality of life of the people of the Americas and serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO).

BBC video of the outdoor maternity ward: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8471326.stm
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Woman in Labor: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8469290.stm

Women's E-News
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The U.N. has devised various programs to provide food and aid directly to women, who often get outmuscled by men during disaster situations. Relief efforts have become complicated as many Haitian female leaders who worked with U.N. agencies were lost during the earthquake.
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With 45 percent of Haitian households headed by women, a number of United Nations agencies are targeting their relief efforts at Haitian women to help them overcome their human and material losses from the recent earthquake.
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"They are the ones who are the economic as well as the psychological mainstay of children and other dependents, the aged and the sick," said Roberta Clarke, regional program director for the United Nations Development Fund for Women, or UNIFEM.
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"You can imagine that in the context of pre-existing vulnerabilities--poverty, exposure to gender-based violence and lack of health care services--that this earthquake has dealt a heavy blow to women already stretched to the limits of their capacities to support their families," Clarke said in a conference call last week with reporters.
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The experience of humanitarian workers in disaster relief is that men usually outmuscle women for food and other aid at distribution points in the desperate days and weeks following a catastrophe, according to various U.N. officials. In response, the United Nations has devised various programs aimed at bypassing men to get aid directly to women and from them to their dependents.
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The World Food Program, or WFP, has developed women-only centers for food distribution in Haiti. WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said Saturday that 10,000 women a day will be given 55-pound bags of rice at 16 WFP distribution points around the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. The women will be given coupons over the next 15 days, which they alone can use in exchange for the rice.
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Prior said at a news conference in Port-au-Prince that women could bring family members along to help them carry the rice, but only they would receive the bags. The coupons would be color-coded to help foil counterfeiting, he said.
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"Traditionally, WFP has always sought to deliver food into the hands of women as they are more likely to ensure that the food is divided up amongst those who really need it and can't fend for themselves," said Prior in an email interview from the Haitian capital...
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Many female leaders who worked with U.N. agencies were among those lost in the earthquake. The loss of these leaders has also complicated relief efforts by UNIFEM and other U.N. agencies such as the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, Clarke said
Among those killed were Myriam Merlet, the ministry's chief of cabinet and founder of Haiti's National Coordination for Advocacy on Women's Rights; Myrna Narcisse, the ministry's director general; Magalie Marcelin, founder of KayFamn, which operates Haiti's only shelter for survivors of gender-based violence; and Anne-Marie Coriolon, a founding member of one of the country's largest women's groups, Solidarite Fanm Ayisyèn.
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"Women's organizations suffered terrible losses during the earthquake," Clarke said. "The [Ministry of Women's Condition and Rights] lost one of its buildings and a number of women leaders lost their lives and that will have a significant impact on gender equality."
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UNIFEM, for instance, before the quake was about to deliver a shipment of motorbikes to Ministry of Justice officials to specifically help speed up response time to reports of gender violence. The Justice Ministry building collapsed.
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Despite the losses and challenges, various U.N. agencies are continuing with their efforts to reach women. UNFPA is working with nongovernmental organizations to distribute two kinds of kits to women: one for reproductive health and one for dignity, said Jemilah Mahmood, head of UNFPA's humanitarian response branch.
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"One of the issues not talked much about is the issue of dignity," Mahmood said. "We must remember that women and girls are still menstruating despite having to live outside in very deplorable conditions." Embarrassment from soiled clothing prevents women from wanting to be seen at distribution points and many would rather stay away, risking their survival, she said.
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The dignity kits contain sanitary napkins, hygiene materials and underwear.
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The reproductive health kits are packed with a clean sheet, a sterile blade to cut an umbilical cord, a clean string to tie the cord and a blanket to wrap the baby in.
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"We estimate 7,000 women are going to give birth in the next month," many "in the middle of the street," Mahmood said.
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UNFPA is also shipping medical equipment to perform Caesarian section surgery, as well as basic post-natal care such as vitamins and medicine, she said.
"We know from past disasters that these moments lead to spikes in violence against women and girls, so there is an urgency that they can get in touch and protect themselves and others in their community," said Clarke.
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One way to keep the lines of communication open is to distribute transistor radios to women. UNFPA and a nongovernmental inter-agency group called Communicating with Disaster Affected Populations are in the process of doing just that.
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"These transistor radios, often solar-powered, proved to be very instrumental during previous crises, such as that of the Indian Ocean tsunami, in helping women and communities access vital information they'd need after a disaster, such as where to go to receive health care, where to seek protection, obtain food," said UNFPA spokesperson Omar Gharzeddine in an email message. "They can also provide a very useful source of information about lost family members." [..]
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Tamara Kreinin, executive director of the Women and Population Program of the U.N. Foundation, said the tragedy of Haiti is that before the earthquake it was making great strides to achieve the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals or MDGs, which seek to eradicate global poverty by 2015, particularly in education and "gender empowerment."
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"We are quite saddened that there's going to be a bit of a setback," Kreinin said. Even with the progress towards the MDGs, Haiti had the highest rate of maternal mortality in the region, she said.
The risk of a Haitian woman dying in childbirth is 1 in 47.
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"We know that number is going to skyrocket because many of the health facilities were destroyed and incidents of injury and trauma are on the rise," Kreinin said.

Rapists in the rubble - preying on quake victims
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Bandits are preying on vulnerable survivors of Haiti's earthquake, even raping women in camps set up in the capital. National police chief Mario Andresol said the thugs were taking advantage of the lack of electricity in Port-au-Prince, using the cover of darkness to harass and rape women and young girls `under the tents'.
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Among the roaming gangs are more than 7000 prisoners who escaped in the post-quake chaos. "It originally took us five years to apprehend them,' Mr Andresol said. ``Today, they are running wild.'
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Rachelle Dolce, who is living at a large makeshift camp on the Petionville Club Golf Course, said she thought someone had been raped outside her tent the previous night. She said she heard men making noise and a woman struggling. "I heard a fight outside and I saw panties on the ground. I started to shout a lot, and they left," she said.
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Although the scale of the sex crime wave is not known, women's organisations have already detailed a number of cases and alerted the United Nations mission in Haiti, Mr Andresol said. His warning came a day after UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said gangsters and child traffickers could try to exploit the chaos triggered by the earthquake to step up their criminal activities.
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The January 12 earthquake killed about 170,000 people and left more than a million others homeless, many of whom are living in camps in the ruined capital. Security was tenuous in Haiti before the 7.0-magnitude quake, but Mr Andresol said the police force had been crippled by the disaster.
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He said the Haitian police force had only 8000 members before the quake and many of them were now dead or missing, adding that a large number of the remaining officers were demoralised or traumatised.
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"We lost 70 police officers, nearly 500 are still missing and 400 were wounded," he said at a temporary police headquarters. Residents said they largely fended for themselves, gathering meagre belongings into a pile at night and sleeping beside them to stop thieves.

Key Messages on Gender to the Haiti Emergency and Briefing Kit on Gender in Haiti
http://oneresponse.info/crosscutting/gender/Pages/Gender.aspx

Gender Handbook in Humanitarian Action
http://ochaonline.un.org/AboutOCHA/GenderEquality/KeyDocuments/IASCGende...

Guidelines for Gender-based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Settings
http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/iasc/pageloader.aspx?page=content-subsid...

Gender and Health in Disasters
http://www.who.int/gender/other_health/en/genderdisasters.pdf

Guttmacher.org

Following the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, relief agencies, multilateral institutions and governments are increasingly shifting their focus from emergency response to longer term relief, rebuilding and development efforts. Given the scale of the disaster, many thousands of Haitians will likely be forced to live in camps or other makeshift arrangements for years, if not decades, to come. During this time of displacement, the health and lives of Haiti’s women and girls—many of whom were already in a precarious situation because of poverty or low social status—are threatened by severe living conditions, including the virtual absence of reproductive health services.

Most immediately, there is an urgent need for clean delivery kits to ensure that childbirth is safe for mothers and their newborns. Likewise, displaced women and girls are especially vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation, and proper care—including emergency contraception and HIV prophylaxis—must be made widely available to any victims of sexual violence. Also, the many Haitian women who find themselves cut off from their usual sources for family planning services and supplies, including condoms, must be provided with free contraceptives. A failure to address these needs heightens the risk for unwanted pregnancy and botched abortion, HIV and other STIs, and high-risk, life-threatening pregnancies and childbirth.

Fortunately, with increased awareness over the last 15 years of the importance of reproductive health for displaced people, coordination and collaboration among agencies working on these issues has grown, including through the work of the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict (RHRC) Consortium. Additionally, increased research and documentation of the specific needs of refugees and displaced people have been critical in improving service delivery and strengthening advocacy efforts aimed at donors, NGOs and policymakers.

The U.S. government’s response to the Haitian earthquake has been both swift and strong. But Haiti’s women also need the United States to reassert a leadership role in ensuring that sexual and reproductive health care is a core component of the humanitarian response to the crisis. As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in her recent speech on global reproductive health: “Investing in the health of women, adolescents and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do. That is why we are integrating women’s issues as key elements of our foreign policy agenda.” It’s time to put these wise words to the test in U.S. relief and rebuilding efforts in Haiti by prioritizing reproductive health care.

Source: Ascribe Newswire, 26 January 2010

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced that it has made a $500,000 emergency grant to the Western Hemisphere Regional Office of International Planned Parenthood Federation for it to provide reproductive and basic primary health care to Haitians affected by the recent earthquake.

The Federation will work through its partner Association pour la Promotion de la Famille Haitienne (Haiti Family Planning Association, or PROFAMIL), which has critical on-the-ground capacity to provide key services, such as basic trauma care, and to help fulfill sexual and reproductive health needs now and in the coming months.

The effects of the earthquake hitting Haiti have been devastating, leaving one-third of the country's 9 million inhabitants in urgent need of food, water, and medical care. Following such natural disasters, previous experience suggests that women and girls will be hit especially hard, family planning experts say.

There is an increased risk of sexual violence, sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies, and unsafe abortions.

"Haiti suffers from chronic shortages of reproductive health care in the best of times," said Sara Seims, director of the Population Program at the Hewlett Foundation. "It's no surprise that the current crisis has greatly exacerbated that situation. We're lucky to be able to support an organization that has deep experience in the field, so it can immediately make a difference and ease the suffering."

PROFAMIL lost two of its clinics in the earthquake but, in partnership with other organizations, will be able to offer primary health care and sexual and reproductive health services through mobile units in the cities of Port-au-Prince and Jacmel as it rebuilds capacity.

According to International Planned Parenthood Federation, there are 750,000 women of reproductive age in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and another 15,000 in the city of Jacmel, which also was hard hit by the earthquake. These women currently have very limited access to reproductive health services, including emergency obstetric care.

PROFAMIL will work with its counterpart in the Dominican Republic, which has been coordinating with the United Nations and other Dominican nongovernmental relief agencies, to deploy mobile health unit teams across the border to conduct an initial assessment of key areas of need and begin providing services.

These teams have extensive experience working with Haitian immigrants living in the Dominican Republic.

They have been targeting service provision to these key areas, working intensively over a three- to five-day period and then returning to the Dominican Republic to restock with essential medical supplies.

PROFAMIL has created a task force to determine the duration and intensity of needs in terms of staff, services, and supplies over the short term. Its staff and community health promoters in the two cities will organize the mobile health units to bring primary health care, obstetric care, family planning, and HIV prevention services to tent cities and other temporary shelters that are being established in and around both cities. These efforts will be carried out in coordination with the Haitian government, the national health commission, and the UN's health response teams.

"It means a world of difference," Dr. Carmen Barroso, director of the Western Hemisphere Regional Office of International Planned Parenthood Federation, said of the Hewlett grant. "We've already put people on a plane to the Dominican Republic. They'll drive to Haiti this week to begin to assess immediate needs."

By Jessica Ravitz, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Three leaders in the Haitian women's movement are confirmed dead, victims of quake
* They gave women voices, fought against violence and made rape in Haiti a crime
* Friends, including Eve Ensler of "The Vagina Monologues," share memories
* Amid chaos after earthquake, concerns rise about protecting women and girls

(CNN) -- One returned to her Haitian roots, to give voice to women, honor their stories and shape their futures.

Another urged women to pack a courtroom in Haiti, where she succeeded in getting a guilty verdict against a man who battered his wife. A third joined the others and helped change the law to make rape, long a political weapon in Haiti, a punishable crime.

Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan, founders of three of the country's most important advocacy organizations working on behalf of women and girls, are confirmed dead -- victims of last week's 7.0 earthquake.

Remembering the victims of the Haiti earthquake

And their deaths have left members of the women's movement, Haitian and otherwise, reeling.

"Words are missing for me. I lost a large chunk of my personal, political and social life," Carolle Charles wrote in an e-mail to colleagues. The Haitian-born sociology professor at Baruch College in New York is chair of Dwa Fanm (meaning "Women's Rights" in Creole), a Brooklyn-based advocacy group. These women "were my friends, my colleagues and my associates. I cannot envision going to Haiti without seeing them."

Myriam Merlet was until recently the chief of staff of Haiti's Ministry for Gender and the Rights of Women, established in 1995, and still served as a top adviser. She died after being trapped beneath her collapsed Port-au-Prince home, Charles said. She was 53.

iReport: A tribute to Merlet

Merlet, an author as well as an activist, fled Haiti in the 1970s. She studied in Canada, steeping herself in economics, women's issues, feminist theory and political sociology.

In the mid-1980s, she returned to her homeland. In "Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance," published in 2001, she contributed an essay, "The More People Dream," in which she described what brought her back.

"While I was abroad I felt the need to find out who I was and where my soul was. I chose to be a Haitian woman," she wrote. "We're a country in which three-fourths of the people can't read and don't eat properly. I'm an integral part of the situation. I am not in Canada in a black ghetto, or an extraterrestrial from outer space. I am a Haitian woman. I don't mean to say that I am responsible for the problems. But still, as a Haitian woman, I must make an effort so that all together we can extricate ourselves from them."

She was a founder of Enfofamn, an organization that raises awareness about women through media, collects stories and works to honor their names. Among her efforts, she set out to get streets named after Haitian women who came before her, Charles said.

Dubbed a "Vagina Warrior," she was remembered Tuesday by her friend Eve Ensler, the award-winning playwright and force behind V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

"She was very bold," said Ensler, who at Merlet's insistence brought her play "The Vagina Monologues" to Haiti and helped establish safe houses for women in Port-au-Prince and Cap Haitien. "She had an incredible vision of what was possible for Haitian women, and she lifted their spirits. ... And we had such a wonderful time. I remember her dancing in the streets of New Orleans and just being so alive."

Magalie Marcelin, a lawyer and actress who appeared in films and on stage, established Kay Fanm, a women's rights organization that deals with domestic violence, offers services and shelter to women and makes microcredits, or loans, available to women working in markets, said Charles, the chair of Dwa Fanm.

Charles remembered a visit to Haiti about two years ago when Marcelin,believed to be in her mid-50s, called seeking help. Hoping to deflect the political clout of a defendant in court, she asked for women to come out in droves and pack the courtroom. Charles watched as the man on trial was convicted for battering his wife.

Her death has been reported through various media outlets, and was confirmed to CNN by Carribbean Radio Television based in Port-au-Prince. Her own daughter helped dig her body out from rubble in the aftermath of the quake, Charles said she learned when she got the call from Marcelin's cousin.

In an interview last year with the Haitian Times, Marcelin spoke of the image of a drum that adorned public awareness stickers.

"It's very symbolic in the Haitian cultural imagination," Marcelin said, according to the Haitian Times report. "The sound of the drum is the sound of freedom, it's the sound of slaves breaking with slavery."

With Merlet, Anne Marie Coriolan, 53, served as a top adviser to the women's rights ministry.

Coriolan, who died when her boyfriend's home collapsed, was the founder of Solidarite Fanm Ayisyen (Solidarity with Haitian Women, or SOFA), which Charles described as an advocacy and services organization.

Her daughter, Wani Thelusmon Coriolan, said in Haiti children bear only their father's surname, but her mother insisted on keeping her maiden name and making sure her two children shared it, too.

"She said my dad was not the only one who created me. She was involved, too," her 24-year-old daughter, who lives and is studying in Montreal, Quebec, said with a laugh.

Even though Wani and her brother no longer live in Haiti (he is in Paris, France), she said her mother was determined to make sure they were proud of their homeland.

"She loved her country. She never stopped believing in Haiti. She said that when you have a dream you have to fight for it," Wani said. "She wanted women to have equal rights. She wanted women to hold their heads high."

Coriolan was a political organizer who helped bring rape -- "an instrument of terror and war," Charles said -- to the forefront of Haitian courts.

Before 2005, rapes in Haiti were treated as nothing more than "crimes of passion," Charles explained. That changed because of the collective efforts of these women activists -- and others they inspired.

With the three leaders gone, there is concern about the future of Haiti's women and girls. Even with all that's been achieved, the struggle for equality and against violence remains enormous.

The chaos that's taken over the devastated nation heightens those worries, said Taina Bien-Aimé, the executive director of Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to women.

Before the disaster struck last week, a survey of Haitian women and girls showed an estimated 72 percent had been raped, according to study done by Kay Fanm. And at least 40 percent of the women surveyed were victims of domestic violence, Bien-Aimé said.

And humanitarian emergencies have been linked to increased violence and exploitation in the past, she said.

"From where we stand," Bien-Aimé wrote in an e-mail, "the most critical and urgent issue is what, if any, contingencies the relief/humanitarian agencies are putting in place not only to ensure that women have easy access to food, water and medical care, but to guarantee their protection."

Concerned women in the New York area plan to gather Wednesday to strategize their next steps, Ensler said.

And while they will certainly keep mourning, she and the others are hopeful that Haitian women, inspired by these fallen heros and leaders, will forge ahead -- keeping their fight and legacies alive.

http://www.iawg.net/haiti.html#res1

* Priority Reproductive Health Interventions: The Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) for Reproductive Health
* Coordination
* Preventing and Responding to Sexual Violence
* Preventing the Transmission of HIV
* Preventing Excess Maternal and Newborn Morbidity and Mortality
* Planning for Comprehensive Reproductive Health
* Reproductive Health-related Reports on Haiti

By Joyce Kryszak

BUFFALO, NY (WBFO) - The already delicate social fabric of Haiti unraveled completely in the wake of the devastating earthquake. And the scarcity of food, water and shelter has only increased the chaos - and violence. Some of the survivors are more vulnerable than others.

Click the audio player above to hear Joyce Kryszak's full story now or use your podcasting software to download it to your computer or iPod.

The media tells stories of horrific pain, but also of fear and violence. What it does not tell are the stories of the women and children who most easily fall victim.

Mendy Marsh is a gender-based violence specialist with UNICEF. She has been on the ground in South Africa and Kenya working to protect women in children during conflicts there. Marsh said one of their most important jobs is to make sure women and children get any aid that is available without being sexually exploited.

She said the best way to do that is to make sure distribution teams include both men and women. She said that way men can not so easily abuse their power and access. Marsh said women and children need to know the aid is free, that they do not need to "pay for it" with sexual favors.

Keeping women and children safe when they are asleep is also a priority.

Marsh said keeping families together whenever possible is the best form of protection. But she said in disasters of this magnitude many women and children are left alone. Marsh said it is up to the specialist to find a surrogate who can protect them from sexual assault.

Marsh said they have hired a specialist and will have her in Haiti, hopefully, this week. She will be working in cooperation with gender-based violence specialists from a host of other humanitarian agencies.