Myriam Merlet was leading feminist activist who was killed in earthquake: Paula Allen/V-Day
Myriam Merlet International Feminist Solidarity Camp to Launch in Haiti
An International Feminist Solidarity Camp is opening on the Jemaní border region between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Named after feminist Myriam Merlet, the camp will help mobilize and transfer resources, and open direct channels of communications with Haitian women. The Dominican women’s rights organizations Centro de Investigación para la Acción Feminina (Women’s Action Research Center) and Colectiva Mujer y Salud (Women’s Health Collective), announced the launch of the camp, in partnership with the Radio Feminista and advocates from across Latin America and the Caribbean. The camp will partner with international solidarity efforts to support grassroots Haitian women’s rights organizations and monitor violations of women’s rights post-earthquake. Radio Feminista is going to broadcast a radio program to share the stories of women, Colectiva Mujer y Salud will coordinate health services and the delivery of humanitarian assistance in the hands of women, and other organizations will coordinate activities from the camp. Read more (English or Spanish)
Prioritize Aid for Women
Call on the U.N. and world leaders to prioritize aid for Haitian women in the wake of the earthquake! View letter (English or Spanish) and sign-on!
After the Quake, Depend on Women, MADRE News
Where to Donate
Grassroots organizations with a gender lens that know how women are uniquely and disproportionately affected by disaster and can identify the best ways to meet women’s needs and elevate women’s solutions as they work within their families and communities to recover and rebuild.
MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, has activated an emergency response through their partner organization, Zanmi Lasante Clinic. The doctors, nurses and community health workers there are working to get bring medical assistance and supplies to areas that have been hardest hit. MADRE has determined that their partner organization in Haiti, Zanmi Lasante, is able to bring humanitarian aid overland into the country. Teams of healthcare workers from the project have established a functioning supply chain through the Dominican Republic and are currently delivering medical aid to those most in need in Haiti. MADRE is also sending a delegation of midwives and health professionals to Haiti. Please donate.
The Global Fund for Women has a nearly 20 year history of working with women's organizations in Haiti, and, to date has supported 18 women's and children's organizations in Haiti. Through the Crisis Fund, the Global Fund for Women is committed to helping these organizations rebuild their communities and continue their women's rights work after the immediate crisis is over. Read about how the Global Fund for Women is responding to the crisis in a letter from ED Kavita Ramdas.
Astraea has also been in touch with grantee partners in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island with Haiti and was not affected by the earthquake. The lesbian feminist collective Las Tres Gatas and trans group Transsa Dominicana are working in solidarity with Haitian communities in both countries. Members of Las Tres Gatas are traveling to the border and into Haiti to provide medical and social services. The two groups intend to connect with LGBTI communities and leaders in Haiti to assist in rebuilding their organizations. This solidarity work has important implications given the long history of deep racial and national tensions between the two countries. Please donate.
Partners in Health (PIH), an international organization dedicated to healthcare for the poor, has been working on the ground in Haiti for over 20 years. They are currently working in Haiti to coordinate relief efforts and save lives after the dreadful earthquake that struck the nation. Over the past 18 hours, Partners In Health staff in Boston and Haiti have been working to collect as much information as possible about the conditions on the ground, the relief efforts taking shape, and all relevant logistics issues in order to respond efficiently and effectively to the most urgent needs in the field. At the moment, PIH's Chief Medical Officer is on her way to Haiti, where she will meet with Zanmi Lasante leadership and head physicians who are already working to ensure PIH's coordinated relief efforts leveraging the skills of more than 120 doctors and nearly 500 nurses and nursing assistants who work at Zanmi Lasante's sites. Partners In Health will be one of the organizations benefiting from the most widely distributed telethon in history, Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief. Visit their site for instant updates, to donate or to volunteer.
The Grassroots International has worked with community-based organizations in Haiti for about 20 years, to create a just and sustainable world by building alliances with progressive movements. Their site features regular updates on Haiti and an Earthquake Relief Fund for Haiti to support our partners and meet the urgent needs of the population there following massive earthquake just outside the capital city of Port-au-Prince/p>
Earthquake Claims Life of Haitian Feminist Activist
Myriam Merlet was the chief of staff of Haiti’s Ministry for Women. Like many who sought exodus from poverty and repression, she fled Haiti in the 1970s. After a politically active life in the Haitian diaspora, Merlet returned to Haiti with her young family in 1986. As both a political activist and professional, Merlet was committed to the process of social and political change in Haiti. Merlet was also a published author on women’s rights, race, and gender issues. DemocracyNow speaks with playwright and activist Eve Ensler who knew Myriam very well and airs a video of Myriam speaking in 2008 in New Orleans at VDay.
Women's movement mourns death of 3 Haitian leaders, Jessica Ravitz, CNN - Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan, founders of three of the country's most important advocacy organizations working on behalf of women and girls, are confirmed dead -- victims of last week's 7.0 earthquake.
Women in Haiti
After the Quake, Depend on Women, MADRE News
Why "women and children first" persists, Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon
Haiti's Earthquake Could Disproportionally Impact Women, Andrea, Feeminists for Choice
Haitian Women: Pillars of the Economy, and of Resistance, AWID
Formula for disaster: Do donations of artificial milk help or hurt Haiti's babies, Tracy Clark-Flory
Haiti Didn't Become a Poor Nation All on Its Own -- The U.S's Hidden Role in the Disaster, Carl Lindskoog, AlterNet
The Situation in Haiti
Securing Disaster in Haiti, Peter Hallward, Americas Program Report
So, send in the Marines, OK?, Sokari Ekine, Black Looks, January 18, 2010 From the very beginning it was clear that the tragedy of the earthquake would be used as an opportunity for the US to further militarise the country and control the political process.
Andy Kershaw: Stop treating these people like savages - Haitians have faced their tragedy with dignity and stoicism – not that you would know it from the way the disaster has been reported
Haiti: Absent in Life, Death and On the Evening News, Amanda Furness
Who Controls the Aid in Haiti? U.S. Accused of Militarizing Haiti, DemocracyNow, January 18, 2010 The U.S. decides aid flights from other nations are being turned back. "We don't need soldiers as such. There's no war here. The choice of what lands and what doesn’t land should—you know, the priorities of the flight should be determined by the Haitians. So, otherwise, it’s a takeover. And what might happen is that the need of Haitians are not taken into account, but only either the way a foreign country defines the need of Haiti or try to push its own agenda." ~Patrice Elie, former Haitian Defense Minister
The Rescue Operation's Priorities in Haiti, Nelson P. Valdés, Counterpunch, January 18, 2010
Haiti Reborn - Quixote
Help Haiti - Drop the Debt
Jubilee South is calling for an urgent cancellation of all of Haiti’s remaining debt. They have also criticised the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for their proposed offer of $100 milion in new lending to to Haiti at a time when significant grant-aid is required. Jubilee South is a network of jubilee and debt campaigns, social movements, people's organizations, communities, NGOs and political formations that aims to and is in the process of emerging and developing as an international south movement on the debt. Sign on to the Jubilee South statement: Solidarity and respect for Popular Sovereignty: Haiti is Calling available in English, Spanish, and other languages..
ONE has an online petition that is addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitherner encouraging debtors to cancel Haiti’s debt, which currently tops $1 billion, and to extend grant emergency aid, not debt-incurring aid. Some developing countries spend decades repaying debt that was forced on them by corrupt regimes. They are then required to accrue more debt to make payments on the old loans— essentially losing money that should be going to build the country’s education, healthcare, and infrastructure systems instead goes to debt repayment. It’s a vicious cycle and seemingly impossible to halt. When the price of fuel and fertilizers rises—and the global economy plummets—developing countries and their poorest citizens pay the steepest price. Sign on to the petition calling for Droping the Debt in Haiti.
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The worst earthquake in 200 years struck Haiti on January 12, causing catastrophic destruction in the hemisphere's poorest country. The quake struck near the capital Port-au-Prince, the most densely populated part of Haiti. We hope you will consider donating to MADRE, Partners in Health, the Global Fund for Women Crisis Fund or Grassroots International so that much needed medical assistance and supplies can reach the areas that have been hardest hit.
Broadcasting Women's Voices
Radio Feminista is on the ground in Haiti collaborating in setting up the Feminist Solidarity Camp and preparing to broadcast women’s voices and perspectives on the Haiti situation.
What You Can Do
Haiti: Thoughts on Women
Sokari Ekine, author of the blog Black Looks, gives a compelling round up and review of reports on how and what Haitian women are doing in her post Roundup of Commentary on Haiti.
Debt Cancellation
“Haiti’s dire poverty has been built on centuries of injustice perpetrated against the country by the rich world. It is time for our part of the world to pay its debt to Haiti. That means full cancellation of all of Haiti’s debts and large grant funding.”
Nick Dearden, Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign
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