Bearing Witness: Girls and Women in Haiti's Camps

“The situation of women in Haiti has always been precarious, but this last trip, I found thousands of women in the camps on the brink of survival. Access to the most basic human needs of food, water, proper shelter, and school is severely limited for everyone,” explains Didi Bertrand Farmer in a World Pulse magazine article published on November 4. “Women face, however, a double dilemma: satisfying these needs often places them and young girls at high risk of sexual violence and exploitation.”

Bertrand Farmer, Director of the Community Health Program for Inshuti Mu Buzima, Partners In Health's sister organization in Rwanda, recently returned to her homeland of Haiti, but found herself unprepared for what she saw in the tent cities: an increase in sexual violence; mothers forced to leave their vulnerable daughters; young girls, pregnant as a result of rape.

“Leaving the camp, I felt compelled to increase awareness of the day-to-day atrocities that women and girls are facing there. Right now food, water, and shelter are critically needed and in short supply. But if we address these basic needs while neglecting the education and empowerment of women, we will continue to leave them and their daughters vulnerable to rape and the prospect of bearing children of rape for years to come.”

Read the full article.

http://worldpulse.com/magazine/columns/visionary-leaders/bearing-witness-girls-and-women-in-haiti-s-camps

In an accompanying photo essay, photographer Nadia Todres documents the lives of young girls coming of age in the settlement camps of Port-au-Prince.

http://www.worldpulse.com/magazine/articles/photo-essay-documenting-the-lives-of-girls-in-haiti