Haiti

Citation:

Kelly, Liam D., B. James Deaton, and J. Atsu Amegashie. 2019. “The Nature of Property Rights in Haiti: Mode of Land Acquisition, Gender, and Investment.” Journal of Economic Issues 53 (3): 726–47.

Authors: Liam D. Kelly, B. James Deaton, J. Atsu Amegashie

Abstract:

In Haiti, two primary pathways to land ownership are through the purchase of land and through inheritance. In terms of inheritance, intestate law treats daughters and sons equally with respect to real property. Despite the formal law, we find that women are relatively less tenure secure on their inherited land than men. In contrast, men and women share similar perceptions of tenure security on purchased land. These differences become manifest in conservation investment activities: tree planting, fallowing, and terracing. We find evidence that these activities are less likely to occur by female respondents on their inherited land.

Keywords: gender, Haiti, inherited land, land tenure

Topics: Agriculture, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Land Tenure, Rights, Property Rights Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Haiti

Year: 2019

Citation:

Davis, Lisa, and Blaine Bookey. 2011. "Fanm Ayisyen Pap Kase: Respecting the Right to Health of Haitian Women and Girls." Health and Human Rights 13 (1): 50-61.

Authors: Lisa Davis, Blaine Bookey

Abstract:

Only in recent years has violence against women begun to receive international attention as both a public health and human rights concern. This article argues that the right to be free from sexual violence is a fundamental component of the right to health, and the need is particularly acute in post-disaster contexts. This article uses post-earthquake Haiti as a case study to illustrate conditions for women and girls who suffer daily threats of physical, emotional, economic, and social harm in ways that have no direct parallels for their male counterparts. In addition, this article discusses the reasons that the humanitarian response in Haiti has not effectively protected women and girls and has instead exacerbated structural inequalities, making women, girls, and their families even more vulnerable to human rights violations including interference in their right to health. The article argues that the failure to guarantee the right of women to be free from sexual violence — an essential component of the right to health — is due in large part to the exclusion of displaced women from meaningful participation in formal humanitarian interventions.

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Girls, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Health, Humanitarian Assistance, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Haiti

Year: 2011

Citation:

Vahedi, Luissa, Susan A. Bartels, and Sabine Lee. 2019. “‘Even Peacekeepers Expect Something in Return’: A Qualitative Analysis of Sexual Interactions between UN Peacekeepers and Female Haitians.” Global Public Health: 1–14. doi: 10.1080/17441692.2019.1706758.

Authors: Luissa Vahedi, Susan A. Bartels, Sabine Lee

Abstract:

The UN maintains a zero-tolerance policy on sexual interactions between peacekeepers and beneficiaries of assistance. Our research describes the lived experience of engaging sexually with UN peacekeepers during Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haiti (MINUSTAH) from the perspectives of Haitian women/girls. Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with Haitian women raising children fathered by MINUSTAH peacekeepers. Transcripts were analyzed according to empirical phenomenology. Adverse socio-economic conditions were key contextual factors. Three themes related to the nature of the sexual interactions emerged: sexual violence, transactional sex, and long-term transactional relationships imbedded in perceptions of love. Most sexual interactions were transactional and nuanced since the peacekeeper assumed the role of romantic and material provider. Sexual consent was conceptualised as the ability to weigh the benefits and consequences of engaging sexually with peacekeepers. Sexual violence was identified among minors and in instances of sexual abuse. This study provides empirical evidence to support a nuanced understanding of sexual relationships between women/girls and peacekeepers. In addition to holding peacekeepers accountable, a harm reduction approach that aims to raise awareness for peacekeeping codes of conduct and provide comprehensive reproductive and sexual education should be considered.

Keywords: Haiti, peacekeeping, transactional sex, sexual abuse and exploitation, United Nations

Topics: Gender, Women, Girls, Post-Conflict, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Women Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Haiti

Year: 2019

Citation:

Steckley, Marylynn, and Joshua Steckley. 2019. “Post-Earthquake Land Appropriations and the Dispossession of Rural Women in Haiti.” Feminist Economics 25 (4): 45-67.

Authors: Marylynn Steckley, Joshua Steckley

Abstract:

This study examines the trajectory of rural women’s labor in the wake of post-earthquake land appropriations in Haiti. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted between 2010 and 2013, it explores gendered access to land in Haiti in both historical and contemporary contexts, paying attention to the nature of rural gender relations and how they influence women’s access to land and their roles in petty commerce. The study describes the stratification of rural market women, their lived experience, and how losing land access will affect their traditional roles as market women. Ultimately it argues that without access to land, and a paucity of available wage work, recent dispossession will intensify existing vulnerabilities for rural women and narrow their means of household production by forcing them to depend on informal market activity in their roles as machann (market women). 

Keywords: women's labor, primitive accumulation, agrarian transition, Haiti, earthquake, land grabs

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Households, Land Grabbing, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Haiti

Year: 2019

Citation:

Llorente-Marrón, Mar, Montserrat Díaz-Fernández, Paz Méndez-Rodríguez, and Rosario González Arias. 2020. "Social Vulnerability, Gender and Disasters. The Case of Haiti in 2010. Sustainability 12: 3574.

Authors: Mar Llorente-Marrón, Montserrat Díaz-Fernández, Paz Méndez-Rodríguez, Rosario González Arias

Abstract:

The study of vulnerability constitutes a central axis in research work on sustainability. Social vulnerability (SV) analyzes differences in human capacity to prepare, respond and recover from the impact of a natural hazard. Although disasters threaten all the people who suffer from them, they do not affect all members of society in the same way. Social and economic inequalities make certain groups more vulnerable. Factors such as age, sex, social class and ethnic identity increase vulnerability to a natural disaster. Ten years after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, this work deepens the relationship between natural disasters, SV and gender, exploring the unequal distribution of the SV in the face of a seismic risk. The source of statistical information has been obtained from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), developed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Multicriteria decision techniques (TOPSIS) and the differences in differences (DID) technique are used to analyze variations in gender inequality in SV as a result of the catastrophic event. The results obtained reinforce the idea of the negative impact of the disaster on the SV. Additionally, an intensification of the negative effects is observed when the household is headed by a woman, increasing the gap in SV between households headed by women and the rest of the households. The conclusions obtained show additional evidence of the negative effects caused by natural disasters on women, and important implications for disaster risk management are derived that should not be ignored.

Keywords: social vulnerability, gender, natural disasters, sustainability, inequality, Haiti

Topics: Age, Class, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Ethnicity, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Haiti

Year: 2020

Citation:

Singh, Neha S., James Smith, Sarindi Aryasinghe, Rajat Khosla, Lale Say, and Karl Blanchet. 2018.  “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services during Humanitarian Crises: A Systematic Review.” PLoS One 13 (7): 1-19.

Authors: Neha S. Singh, James Smith, Sarindi Aryasinghe, Rajat Khosla, Lale Say, Karl Blanchet

Abstract:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Domestic Violence, Education, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Girls, Health, HIV/AIDS, Reproductive Health, Humanitarian Assistance Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries, Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Haiti, Pakistan, Philippines

Year: 2018

Citation:

Badulescu, C. L., and D. AM. Radu. 2019. "Women Survivors of Sexual Violence and the Need to Repair. A Comparative Analysis of Timor-Leste and Haiti." Paper presented at the 1st Congress of the Mukwege International Chair, Liege, November 13-15.

Authors: CL Badulescu, D AM Radu

Abstract:

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Justice, Reparations, TRCs, NGOs, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries, Oceania Countries: Haiti, Timor-Leste

Year: 2019

Citation:

Jennings, Kathleen M. 2019. "Conditional Protection? Sex, Gender, and Discourse in UN Peacekeeping." International Studies Quarterly 63 (1): 30-42.

Author: Kathleen M. Jennings

Abstract:

How do peacekeepers operating in Haiti, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) discursively construct the local people, especially local women, and to what effect? I show a connection between peacekeepers’ representations of local people, articulated in discourse, and the gendered, often sexualized interactions and transactions in peacekeeping sites. Gender plays a central role in peacekeeper discourse. It situates the peacekeeper outside, and superior to, the chaotic, dysfunctional, feminized local. At the same time, a close reading of peacekeepers’ representations of local people disrupts idealized notions of peacekeeper masculinity as protective and benign, which still persist in peacekeeping circles, revealing it as something more vulnerable and brittle. The connection between discourse and (non)performance of peacekeeping duties is neither causal nor straightforward, but I argue that peacekeepers’ discursive constructions of locals affect how peacekeepers interpret their mandate to protect civilians: protection becomes conditional on peacekeepers’ perceptions of locals’ appearance, affect, behavior, and their ability to act out an idealized role as someone “worth” protecting. The article thus brings new insight to our understandings of gender, masculinities, and protection failures in peacekeeping.

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Peacekeeping Regions: Africa, Central Africa, West Africa, Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Liberia

Year: 2019

Citation:

Fordham, Maureen. 2012. “Gender, Sexuality and Disaster.” In The Routledge Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction, edited by Ben Wisner, J. C. Gaillard, and Ilan Kelman. Oxon: Routledge.

Author: Maureen Fordham

Abstract:

In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, The Independent newspaper reported occurrences of the rape and sexual abuse of women and girls (Nguyen 2010). This is the most recent evidence at the time of writing that cases of gender-based violence are frequent and still at an unacceptably high level in disasters. This raises questions about why women, as compared with men, continue to be disadvantaged, abused or made vulnerable in disasters, and highlights the importance of recognising gender as of vital consideration in disaster management and in instigating measures for disaster risk reduction (DRR).

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Haiti

Year: 2012

Citation:

True, Jacqui. 2013. “Gendered Violence in Natural Disasters: Learning from New Orleans, Haiti and Christchurch.” Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work 25 (2): 78–89.

Author: Jacqui True

Abstract:

Why are women so vulnerable to violence and death as a result of disaster compared with men? This article investigates how global environmental forces in the form of natural disasters from floods, droughts and famines to earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes affect women and men differently. Disasters are known to have direct and indirect impacts on gender-based violence particularly against women and girls, revealing a pattern of heightened violence and vulnerability in their aftermath. These gendered impacts are directly relevant to social work theory, practice and advocacy, which seek to promote social well being and to prevent violence in homes and communities during and in the aftermath of disasters. The article argues that women’s unequal economic and social status relative to men before a disaster strikes determines the extent of their vulnerability to violence during and after a crisis. If gender-based violence and women’s particular needs are not addressed in disaster preparedness, disaster recovery plans and humanitarian assistance, then women and girls’ vulnerability will increase. The article offers some lessons based on primary research of responses to the 2010-2011 Christchurch earthquakes against the backdrop of what we know about the responses to an earthquake of similar magnitude in Haiti in 2009. It draws implications from this research for social work theory, practice and advocacy, highlighting the importance of ensuring that future disaster planning and decision making is gender-sensitive.

Keywords: canterbury earthquakes, christchurch earthquakes, disaster, women, gender, haiti earthquake, violence, disaster planning

Topics: Economies, Economic Inequality, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Humanitarian Assistance, Violence Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries, North America, Oceania Countries: Haiti, New Zealand, United States of America

Year: 2013