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February 11, 2011 by Susan M Hall

Haitian Agents Advocate for Victims of Gender Based Violence

Haitian agent advocate profile close up

Haitian agent advocates provide medical accompaniment, as well as referrals for legal assistance and psychological support. © 2011 Susan M Hall

Haitian Agent Advocates women two

Haitian agents advocate for victims of gender-based violence in twenty-two tent camps in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. © 2011 Susan M Hall

Imagine that you go to the police department to file a complaint for rape, and the police officer, because you are unable to identify the perpetrator, refuses to make a report.

Jayne Fleming is a San Francisco-based human rights attorney who is preparing and filing humanitarian parole and political asylum applications for sixty Haitian victims of gender-based violence.

Many of Fleming’s clients are referrals from KOFAVIV and FAVILEK agents who advocate for victims in twenty-two tent camps in Port-au-Prince. The agents provide services including accompaniment and referrals for legal assistance, psycho-social support, and medical care.

One recent afternoon Fleming received a phone call from a KOFAVIV agent requesting $20. for transportation for a victim to the Bureau des Avocats (BAI) where she was conducting interviews with clients. Several hours later the woman arrived in a tap tap with her two teenage sons. The 45-year-old mother had tried to protect her teenage daughter from a group of attackers. The daughter escaped. The angry men turned on the mother. The victim was brutally beaten and gang-raped.

The troubling reality is that there is simply not enough legal capacity to advocate for all of the victims. When this mother is released from the hospital she will return to the tent camps. With no rule of law, legal consequences, or police protection the rapes and sexual violence will continue unabated.

KOFAVIV (The Commission of Women Victims for Victims) and FAVILEK (Women Victims Get Up, Stand Up) are grassroots women’s organizations established by and for rape survivors of the military coup d’etat against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004, which resulted in widespread rape of women by soldiers and police.