Safe Place for Haitian Women

The opening of a shelter in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, is good news for women there, and a sign of hope in a country that has a long history of stigmatization of rape victims.

The shelter "is part of a broader push by the national police force and the government to address the problem of gender-based violence," according to an article by Jonah Engle in The Haitian Times.

"We must overcome the taboos and the macho culture within our society in our struggle to combat violence against women," Stanley Jean Brice, police chief for the West department, which includes Port-au-Prince, told Engle.

The shelter is housed in the Fort National Police station in the city. A second such shelter is due to open soon in the city of Delmas. The shelters are "the result of several years of advocacy and planning by women’s rights organizations, the Ministry of Justice and Public Safety and the Ministry of Women’s affairs and Women’s rights, with funding and technical support provided by the UN and foreign donors," according to Engle.

Marie-Louise Gauthier is national coordinator for women’s affairs for the country's police department. She said the facility "is based on a Brazilian model of police stations specially designed for female victims. It consists of a suite of four simply furnished rooms; a reception area, an investigations office and a small room at the back with two beds for women to rest. The officers in charge have been trained in how to sensitively question" women who have been victimized.

"You don’t want to further victimize someone by asking the wrong kinds of questions," Gauthier told Engle.

"The goal is to break the silence that surrounds rape and conjugal violence, and to allow the police to get a sense of the problem and to deal with it," Baudouine Kamatari, head of the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission’s (MINUSTAH) Gender Unit, told Engle.

Photo courtesy of kretyen, via Flickr