• A chance for Congress to help Haitian women
    Jan 24, 2012
    Haiti desperately needs legal reform on gender-based violence. Haitian law prohibits domestic violence against minors but does not classify domestic violence against adults as a distinct crime. The penal code includes penalties for rape but does not address marital rape. Women and girls cannot seek protection orders from judicial officers.
  • Hope for Haiti's Women
    Jan 17, 2012
    Women's rights is one example of huge problems and work ahead, and yet it also shows why no one should give up on Haiti. Groundbreaking work is being done to promote the rights of women and girls -- who have suffered immeasurably in Haiti's disasters and instability -- through new legislation.
  • Stability of Haiti's Reconstruction Hinges on Women
    Sep 29, 2011
    Conditions have become worse for many Haitian women and girls after last year's earthquake, including access to reproductive health care. Their needs must be considered in every aspect of reconstruction and at each step.
  • Haiti: After the Shock, Building a Rights-Respecting Future
    Jan 9, 2011
    Following the first anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, the international community and government of Haiti should allow Haitians to participate more in decision-making and increase accountability mechanisms.
  • A Vote to Help Women Around the World
    Dec 2, 2010
    Two weeks ago, Natalie sat across from me in a crowded camp of displaced earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince, wrapped her arms around her pregnant belly, and told me the world needed to do something about rape in Haiti.
  • Why Democracies Don't Get Cholera
    Oct 25, 2010
    Amartya Sen famously said that famines do not occur in well-run, democratic countries. The same is almost always true for cholera epidemics.
  • For Women, Disaster and a Brutal Aftermath
    Jul 16, 2010
    It was nighttime in Parc Marie Vincent when the five men grabbed her, Gentile told Human Rights Watch researchers. A few short weeks after losing her home in the earthquake, she was in a packed camp for the quake survivors when she was kidnapped, raped, beaten and forced to perform oral sex.
  • Sexual Violence: Help Haiti's Women
    Mar 9, 2010
    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.
  • We do believe that former heads of state deserve a fair trial
    Oct 18, 2007
    John Laughland suggests that human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, are more concerned about the conviction of former heads of state than about them getting fair trials. Nothing could be further from the truth.