This article argues for a rights-based approach to assistance in Haiti which is a form of developmental aid that strengthens the public justice systems in the developing world. As traditional legal assistance to marginalized communities tends to be top-down and exclusionary, much like the traditional distribution of humanitarian aid, human rights lawyers in Haiti seek to apply the rights-based approach to their lawyering – providing “legal empowerment” as an alternative to “legal aid”.

Cette réflexion s’appuie sur deux expériences, issues l’une d’un terrain anthropologique –c’est-à-dire sur une étude monographique, longue et suivie- et l’autre d’une simple révolte de spectateur. Il va donc être question ici de mes recherches dans les camps de réfugiés sahraouis, au Sud-Ouest de l’Algérie ; et de la représentation du tremblement de terre haïtien dans les médias où le séisme fut montré, raconté, et les appels au don mis en scène.

The report was composed by women from diverse backgrounds working both in grassroots communities in Haiti and in the international arena with the aim of ensuring women’s participation and leadership in all phases of reconstruction of Haiti. The Gender Shadow Report (GSR) provided the missing gender content of the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), the blueprint for Haiti’s reconstruction.

More than 6 months after the earthquake, Haitians — and particularly Haitian women — continue to struggle. Danielle St. Lot has held several positions in Haiti's government, and has spent much of her career focused on promoting women's rights. St. Lot talks about the role of women in the rebuilding process.

This paper explores gender inequalities and transformations following Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake. Post-disaster experiences of women are located in a wider context of a longer term gender crisis. The paper argues that patterns of gender exclusion occur on multiple levels from the transnational to the local, and identifies gender-specific obstacles in the recovery and reconstruction period. In Haiti, these include meeting family survival needs, violence and exploitation, and class and racially based stigmatisation.

The increase in humanitarian emergencies has left aid organizations searching for ways to better serve populations affected by disaster, and women have often been among those excluded. This study utilized a critical narrative methodology to explore the humanitarian aid response to the 2010 earthquake from the perspective of Haitian women, seeking to understand their experiences and stimulate change through raising awareness of their voices in scholarly literature.

Nearly two years after the massive Haiti earthquake, half a million people remain in displacement camps that have become breeding grounds for gender-based violence (GBV). Why does this travesty persist and what is being done to stop it? The first part of this paper will present the context for gender-based violence in Haiti’s camps and discuss some of the actions taken by the international community and local groups to prevent and combat the problem. I will then analyze the 572 Call Center project which has emerged as a promising lifeline for women in the camps.

At the end of a long, sweltering day, on January 12, 2010, as markets and businesses attempt to close for the day, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude, shook the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, leaving over 250,000 dead, over 1.3 million injured and another 1.5 million homeless. The earthquake itself lasted for only 45 seconds, but nothing would be the same again for anyone on the ground, for any Haitian watching monuments fall to the ground from afar, on television screens, for anyone with a personal tie to its land.

“A must-read report… you will be inspired.”-- Edwidge Danticat, author, Breath, Eyes, Memory.