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Haitian Women Reproductive Health Care Re-Building Efforts
– Reported, February 29, 2012
Even though the devastation in Haiti is receding from the headlines — especially with the 8.8 magnitude quake that struck Chile the following month — the crisis in this island nation continues. An estimated 1.5 million displaced residents live in make-shift tents and scramble daily for food and other assistance. Many among Haiti’s nine million citizens are still mourning for the more than 200,000 dead and wondering how the long-term challenge will be met in caring for the thousands who have been seriously disabled. The rainy season threatens to add to the human catastrophe, and aid workers are struggling to help a nation brought to the brink of total collapse.
Women’s Reproductive Lives at Issue – For all the attention that the world’s aid organizations and news outlets have brought to bear on this poor country, one of the most significant factors that has contributed to the present crisis has been ignored. This situation, the desperate lives of Haiti’s women and girls, is recounted in the related article Women of Haiti – A Violent History and Uncertain Future.
A lack of education, limited access to reproductive health care, and the rape and violence that Haitian women face have led to a country with a staggeringly poor set of vital statistics. These include a high maternal and infant mortality rate and a high illiteracy rate, with only half the population able to read and write. Because of the high birth rate and abject poverty, hundreds of thousands of children are given up to over-burdened orphanages. Before the quake, an estimated 380,000 children had been placed in just 167 orphanages and care centers; that number of orphans, observers say, may have doubled as a result of the quake and could now be as many as one million!
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has reported that there are more than 60,000 pregnant women in the capital alone, with 7,000 of them to give birth in the next month. UNFPA indicates that 10,000 of these women will need medical care due to complications and one in almost 50 risks dying in childbirth. (The average rate for maternal death in developing countries is one in 75.) The agency plans to provide thousands of safe delivery and reproductive health kits to Haiti, but the lack of medical facilities to handle complicated deliveries and fragile infants remains a serious problem.
Violence an Epidemic – With 43 percent of the population under 18 years of age and a bleak future for many young men, continued violence and political instability are likely. Unfortunately, as we have seen in other countries, a bleak economic outlook for young men produces a mix of frustration and aggression that is taken out on girls and women. Incidents of domestic violence and sexual assault were at epidemic proportions before the earthquake and will undoubtedly continue for some time.
Haiti, with a per capita daily income of about $1.32, is not able to produce enough food to feed its population and much of its economy depends upon remittances from Haitians living in the U.S and Europe. Combine all this with corrupt and ineffective governments, and you have all the necessary ingredients for a social disaster of enormous proportions that cannot be addressed by bricks and mortar alone. Successful recovery and long range development planning must squarely address the condition of Haiti’s women. Haitian women must be granted equal representation in government decision-making and given the authority to lead positive change.
Women Must Decide – NOW urges that humanitarian efforts orient assistance to women and girls to enhance protection against violence and to assure access to birth control and other health care services. Recognition of the need for safe abortion care is essential. Until these basic human rights of women are embraced in policy and programs, all other efforts to expand education, public safety, health care and economic development will be extremely difficult to achieve. Many in the international aid community know that women’s education and control over family planning decisions are crucial for developing countries. Conservative religious restrictions against family planning and abortion have contributed mightily to this social catastrophe and must be challenged. Poor women need to decide for themselves the number of children that they are able to support. Education for all of Haiti’s young people must be guaranteed and should include family planning information and services, adequate nutrition and child care, and other critical life skills.
It’s obvious that Haiti will have to be re-built from the ground up, including construction and repair of public buildings, temporary and permanent housing for perhaps as many as two million people, extensive food and medical assistance and rehabilitative care. What is to be done with the estimated seven hundred thousand to one million orphaned children is a challenge of staggering proportions. But reconstructing Haiti’s social fabric in a way that protects the human rights of women is absolutely essential.
Funding for these many efforts will have to come from other nations, as it clear that Haiti does not have sufficient resources. Haiti’s tragic history is one of a colony founded by former slaves who have been repeatedly exploited, first by the king of France, who used war ships to threaten the population with re-enslavement unless they paid 90 million in gold franks, and then by two Duvalier regimes who robbed Haiti and deposited hundreds of millions in Swiss bank accounts. Embargoes and foreign debt have added to their misery, though talk about foreign debt forgiveness looks like a real possibility.
How to Help – Dwa Fanm, a New York-based organization dedicated to the rights of Haitian women and girls, advises that the offices of most of the women’s groups in Haiti have been destroyed, and the offices of the Haitian Women’s Ministry were flattened in the quake. Dwa Fanm (whose name means “women’s rights” in Haitian Creole) reports: “Women are finding it a extremely difficult to find their footing and re-group as they handle the immediate crisis and deliver emergency aid to women and children in Haiti and with little structure and means of communication in place, it has become almost impossible to respond as the incidences of violence increase in the emergency camps.”
If you want to help Haitians in a way that is directed specifically to women, UNIFEM is a good place to start. Other agencies providing assistance include UNICEF and the Red Cross.
Credits: Jan Erickson, Director of Programs, NOW Foundation
More Information:http://www.now.org/issues/global/030910haiti-a.html
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