UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP)— Thousands of women and girls displaced by Haiti’s gang violence are under threat from a surge in sexual assaults, the United Nations warned Tuesday, denouncing deplorable living conditions in makeshift camps.
“The risk of sexual violence for women and girls in displacement sites in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince is rapidly rising owing, in part, to the alarmingly poor living conditions they are facing,” the global body’s sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA said in a statement.
The women and girls often “face spiraling sexual violence but have nowhere to turn,” it added.
Among the 185,000 people forced to flee their homes in the city, many are living in makeshift camps visited by UN officials.
In the 14 displacement sites surveyed by UNFPA, more than half of the latrines and many showers are not separated by gender, several shower doors have no locks and many sites have no nighttime lighting.
“As a result, many women and girls are at risk of sexual violence every time they use a shower or toilet,” the UNFPA said.
“With what I’ve been through, I’d rather have died,” said one mother of seven who was living in a Port-au-Prince shelter and was sexually assaulted while sleeping in a public square, according to the agency.
“When they saw that I didn’t have a man with me, they attacked me while I was 4 months pregnant,” she added. “I’m always afraid for my daughter, who’s 11.”
Such assaults are on the rise nationwide.
Between March and May this year, the number of cases of sexual and gender-based violence reported by UNFPA and partners jumped by more than 40 percent — with only a small fraction of total cases reported.
Such cases of violence surged from 250 in January and February to over 1,500 in March and topping 2,000 in April and May, according to UN figures.
In total from January to May 2024, some 3,949 cases of gender-based violence, mostly rapes, were reported. Some 61 percent of victims were displaced persons.
Against this backdrop of insecurity and abuse, the UNFPA has launched an appeal for $28 million in funding “to strengthen and expand access to life-saving reproductive health and gender-based violence services and support in Haiti in 2024.”
To date, only 19 percent of the funding has been mobilised.
Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas, has long been shaken by political, humanitarian, and security crises, including gang violence.
But the situation deteriorated sharply in February when gangs launched coordinated attacks in Port-au-Prince, forcing the departure of controversial prime minister Ariel Henry.