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Written by Lisa Neff, Staff writer
Apr 7, 2011
Violence and discrimination against LGBT Haitians spiked in the months following the 7.0 monster earthquake that shook the country, according to a study from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and SEROvie.
The report, “The Impact of the Earthquake, and Relief and Recovery Programs on Haitian LGBT People,” examines human rights violations since the Jan. 12, 2010, natural disaster that killed 222,500 people, left 1.5 million homeless and turned to ruins the capital of Port-au-Prince.
“UN agencies, private organizations and governments must recognize the horrible impact of the Haiti disaster on LGBT people. While the needs of some marginalized groups are at least acknowledged, LGBT people are completely ignored,” IGLHRC executive director Cary Alan Johnson said, referring to relief efforts.
LGBT people, however, were not ignored by some in the days after the earthquake. Rather, as has been the case following other disasters in other places, conservative religious leaders blamed LGBT people for the quake.
“We were shouted at in the streets – ‘You gay people, take your sin and go, you are responsible for this tragedy,’” said Reginal Dupont of SEROvie, an LGBT service organization. “Many masisi were attacked, verbally and physically.”
Dupont said the earthquake destroyed her organization’s offices, killed 14 members and “deprived the community of a safe haven.”
To prepare the 14-page report, IGLRHC and SEROvie interviewed more than 50 people in Haiti. The conversations included talks with LGBT Haitians, as well as with representatives of relief organizations and diplomats. The interviewers learned that a population already living with “secrecy, isolation, discrimination and violence” faced even greater hardship after Jan. 12, 2010.
Violence related to sexual orientation and gender expression has increased in the past year, especially in the crowded settlement camps. SEROvie has documented the rape of lesbians, gays and transgender women in or near camps, including the gang rape of a 24-year-old lesbian last August.
In the effort to provide food to those in need, relief organizations established a policy to provide food first to female heads-of-households, creating a situation that “had the unintended side-effect of excluding many gay men and transgender people in need,” according to the report. “Many Haitian LGBT have been rejected by their families or are living in families that do not include an adult female.”
“These gender restrictive policies effectively excluded all-male households, such as one in the Delmas IDP camp in Port-au-Prince that IGLHRC and SEROvie interviewed,” the report continued. “The family, made up of two MSM and an informally adopted teenager who had lost his mother in the earthquake, was unable to receive food assistance from relief organizations operating in the camp and was living a precarious and stressful existence.”
Johnson concluded that “while earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes … will continue to occur, there is nothing natural or inevitable about the ways in which LGBT people are denied equal access to housing, food and security.”
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