Nadia kisses the baby’s forehead tenderly as she calms the weeping three-month-old who is wrapped in her arms.
At 19, she wasn’t prepared to become a mother. The young Haitian’s life, however, altered last year when she was returning from class on the arid streets of a neighborhood dominated by gangs.
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A gang of men tied her up, put blindfolds on her, and took her away in a car. She was malnourished, beaten, and gang-raped for three days.
She discovered she was pregnant some months later. Her aspirations to further her education and provide for her family financially vanished in an instant.
In their struggle for power, Haiti’s violent gangs are increasingly using women’s bodies as weapons as they continue to pillage the Caribbean country’s intractable humanitarian catastrophe, kidnapping, displacing, and extorting helpless residents.
Women who experience the effects include Nadia.
“The most difficult part is that I have nothing to give her,” according to Nadia. She added, “I’m scared because as she gets older to ask about her father, I won’t know what to tell her. … But I will have to explain to her that I was raped.”
The lady merely provided The Associated Press with the fictitious name Nadia; the news outlet does not identify victims of sexual assault.
Haiti has a history of natural catastrophes, political unrest, extreme poverty, and cholera epidemics. After President Jovenel Mose was assassinated in 2021, the country descended into anarchy.
Around the world, sexual assault has long been employed as a tool of war as a savage means of inciting fear among populations and establishing dominance.
According to Renata Segura, the International Crisis Group’s deputy director for Latin America and the Caribbean, “They’re running out of tools to control people.” She added, “They extort, but there’s only so much money that can be extorted from people that are really poor. This is the one thing they have they can inflict on the population. “
Port-au-Prince has felt the effects of such anxiety. Parents are reluctant to take their kids to school for fear that gangs may abduct or sexually assault them. The city’s bustling streets are deserted at night.
Leaving the house is risky, especially for women. Exiting is also an option when gangs utilize the fear of rape to prevent locals from leaving the regions they control.
Late in January, Helen La Lime, the UN’s special representative in Haiti, informed the Security Council that the gangs use sexual assault to “destroy the social fabric of communities,”, especially in areas governed by rival gangs.
She said that they rape children as young as 10.
Significant underreporting has compounded the problem, making it challenging for any authority to understand the true scope of the harm. Women have a similar level of faith in the Haitian police and fear that gangs will exact retribution on them.
The nation’s present administration, which many believe to be unconstitutional, failed to comment on the measures it is doing to solve the problem.
2,645 instances of sexual assault were reported to the UN in 2022, a 45% rise from the previous year. The actual number of attacks is far less than that figure suggests.
One of those who chose not to report was Nadia.
When she found out she was pregnant, she debated whether or not to retain the child, but ultimately opted to give her daughter the best possible life. It became hard for the new mother to work or further her education in Port-au-Prince, a city with a severe shortage of opportunities and high levels of poverty.
