Tomorrow the Haiti Democracy Project joins a conference in Port-au-Prince on preventing violence toward women and on increasing the number of women candidates. Sponsored by the U.N. and Canada and held at the Hotel Montana
While they are correctly deemed as external, the Canadian and U.S. sanctions merely pick up where the Haitian electorate left off. In three presidential elections the voters consistently rebuffed the corruptionists. The corrupt ones fought back with electoral fraud and assassination. Is it any wonder they have denied the Haitians the right to vote for six years?
Eleven Haitian women’s organizations, ours included, call on foreign police to help their Haitian counterparts to restore order — part of a larger call to repress the gangs and make way for elections. Together these organizations claim to represent 250,000 Haitian women
On August 25, 2022 the women candidates went to the jail to provide medical support for women held there
Past discrimination resulted in the last legislature having only four women out of 149 members. On June 27 and July 14, 2022 the Haiti project’s women-candidates initiative held seminars in Port-au-Prince focusing on the electoral commission’s complicity in this discrimination
One year after the tragedy of a presidential assassination, it is clearer than ever that respect for elections is key to Haiti’s future