Foundation hosts anti-rape forum in Haiti

By Valentine Piedelievre

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Trust.org) – Thomson Reuters Foundation has hosted an unprecedented forum of Haitian government officials, police, lawyers, prosecutors, doctors and women's groups in Port-au-Prince.

The goal of the May 6 event was to find practical ways to ensure better protection, care and justice for women in a country where rape has only been outlawed since 2005.

Those aims immediately received bipartisan support from both Haiti President-elect Michel Martelly and the head of the majority party in parliament. They vowed to fight an epidemic of sexual violence in the quake-shattered country, throwing their weight behind a TrustLaw initiative to strengthen anti-rape laws and tackle impunity.

"We don't have the necessary means, the necessary infrastructure or the necessary mentality," President-elect Michel Martelly said in a meeting with Thomson Reuters Foundation after the forum.

"We need to change all this. It is our will and our mission to change all this, to make sure the rule of law reigns in Haiti, that justice is for everybody, that the police do their job. The problem is very serious and I don't underestimate the problem of sexual violence."

Speaking earlier at the forum, Joseph Lambert, majority leader in the Haitian parliament, expressed "solidarity with Thomson Reuters Foundation's programme to help reduce sexual violence against women and children" and said he would pass legislation to achieve that goal.

Forum’s participants agreed on the need for concrete action in key areas, pointing out, for example, the need of more female police officers to be appointed, the importance of  information campaigns on legal rights for women or the need of disseminating a 24-hour hotline number on TV and radio to advise women who have been raped.

Since the earthquake in January 2010, police say the number of rapes in Haiti has increased considerably, with more than 600,000 people still living in crowded camps with few lights at night and little security.

In response to the problem, Thomson Reuters Foundation has mobilised members of its pro bono network of 160 law firms and corporate counsels to conduct a review of Haiti's anti-rape laws and compare them with legislation in six other jurisdictions: France, Sweden, Canada, the United States, South Africa and Brazil.

The comparative study, launched via the Foundation's TrustLaw Connect platform, will be presented by international women's group MADRE to the United Nations' Human Rights Council meeting on Haiti in October.

For more on the forum, see Haiti's rulers back TrustLaw anti-rape project.