WUNRN
Human Rights Watch
"Two
Haitian women told of us of gang rapes and of being raped when returning from
bathing in hidden areas of the camp. One girl was raped in her tent. But with
no one in authority running the camps, they had nowhere to report the assaults.
No one is investigating these cases."
Haiti - Quake Victims Vulnerable as Rainy Season Looms - Women
February 25, 2010
A woman sits in front of her tent in a makeshift
camp in
The earthquake in
The vast majority of settlements sheltering earthquake victims have zero
security, Human Rights Watch learned while visiting 15 camps in Port au Prince
and Jacmel. Even though these settlements hold between 5,000 and 35,000 people
each, no one has formal responsibility for what happens inside or around them,
and security officers are conspicuously absent.
The majority of these camps have no proper latrines or areas to wash. Women
wanting privacy to bathe seek out isolated, dark areas, leaving them vulnerable
to attack. Most camps are completely dark after sunset, making them unsafe.
Two women told of us of gang rapes and of being raped when returning from
bathing in hidden areas of the camp. One girl was raped in her tent. But with
no one in authority running the camps, they had nowhere to report the assaults.
No one is investigating these cases.
Many children live in camps without their families. While other
organizations are looking closely into this issue, trafficking should be a
serious concern as cars and trucks stream - unchecked -- from Haiti into the
Dominican Republic after dark.
Conditions for everyone living in the settlements, where many shelters are
made of sticks and pieces of cloth, will only worsen once the rainy season
starts in March. Camps built on hillsides are in danger of being washed away by
heavy rains and mudslides. Only 23,000 proper tents have been distributed,
according to the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian
Assistance. At least 1.2 million people are homeless.
Access to food is another major problem. The World Food Program's two-week
"food surge" did not reach some of the largest camps. Some of the
issues include the location of distribution points far from the camps, the
absence of security arrangements that would allow on-site distributions, and
the reliance on local officials - some of whom, Human Rights Watch found, were
involved in selling or otherwise interfering with fair distribution of the food
coupons.
A key step in stemming most of these problems will be building safe camps
that have basic sanitation and can protect people from bad weather. To
establish these camps, the Haitian government needs land. But most of the land
around Port au Prince is privately owned. That means that the government needs
either to expropriate or to buy the land to allow the international community
to create proper camps. These settlements need to be built quickly so that they
can provide shelter during the rainy season.
Acquiring the land lawfully and building proper, well-monitored camps can
keep the squalid and unsafe conditions experienced by hundreds of thousands of
quake survivors from becoming deadly as rain arrives.
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