@Global giving-HAITI: Women demand role in reconstruction
HAITI: Women demand role in reconstruction
Women's civil society groups were noticeable by their absence from the landmark Haiti donor conference on 31 March, which secured pledges of US$5.3 billion over the next two years to support the country’s post-quake recovery. Their lack of a presence at the meeting was indicative of a broader missing voice in Haiti’s long-term reconstruction prospects, gender activists argued.
“Why are we not there right now, where are the women at this conference?” questioned Marie St. Cyr, a Haitian human rights advocate. “We still don’t have full participation and we certainly don’t have full inclusion. Haitian women are still being raped. They are supporting more than half of the households, and yet they are not being heard.”
The Haiti Gender Equality Collaborative, a coalition of civil society organizations, placed its own spin on the document, issuing a modified “gender shadow report” at the MADRE conference, hosted across the street from the United Nation Secretariat. It highlights the gender concerns absent from Haiti’s PDNA, and offers recommendations for gender-sensitive plans of action.
Enabling the participation of gender equality experts in all sectors of reconstruction, and ensuring that funding streams include gender-specific allocations are among the alternative report’s proposals, according to Kathy Mangones, UNIFEM’s Haiti office representative.
Women in Haiti, however, do not have the luxury of waiting for action, St. Cyr noted. Before the earthquake, they were running half the households – and those numbers have now risen, with women taking in children from other families.The issue of sexual violence also remains an enormously grave, though largely undocumented one.
“We need to be heard because the system has failed us so miserably. This is beyond words. It’s beyond laws that are not being implemented. It’s beyond dollars. It’s a country in degradation that is progressively being buried. The earthquake didn’t bury Haiti, Haiti has been continuously buried for years, and it’s time we help dig it out.”
Source: Irin News
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