Haitian women seek support for children fathered by U.N. troops in Haiti
By Reuters
PUBLISHED: 18:51 GMT, 12 December 2017 |
By Anastasia Moloney
BOGOTA, Dec 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Lawyers representing 10 Haitian women who say they had children with United Nations peacekeepers have filed the first legal actions in Haiti against the U.N. and individual peacekeepers for child support and paternity claims.
The lawsuits filed by the Haiti-based human rights group Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), is part of a legal battle by Haitian women to force peacekeepers who they say fathered their children to contribute to their upbringing.
"Having and then abandoning children is not within the official capacity of a U.N. peacekeeper and therefore we argue that this does give a Haitian court jurisdiction to resolve paternity and child support claims," Nicole Phillips, a lawyer at the U.S.-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), who is working on the case, said on Tuesday.
Ten mothers of 11 children who they say were abandoned by U.N. troops are seeking financial support from them. One of the mothers was 17 when she gave birth, which amounts to statutory rape under Haitian law, the IJDH said.
Under the U.N.'s "zero-tolerance policy" sexual relationships between peacekeepers and residents of countries hosting a U.N. mission are strongly discouraged.
Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation responsibility for child support rests with those "individuals who have been established to have fathered children."
"... the United Nations itself cannot legally establish paternity or child support entitlements... compensation is a matter of personal accountability to be determined under national legal processes," Haq said by email.
The 13-year U.N. mission left Haiti in October after being sent in to stablilize a country plagued by political turmoil. The mission introduced a cholera epidemic that killed some 10,000 people and has been dogged by accusations of sexual assault.
The Haitian mothers are struggling to bring up their children they say were fathered by soldiers from the U.N.'s peacekeeping force stationed in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH, who came from Uruguay, Argentina, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka, said their lawyer Mario Joseph at BAI, who filed the lawsuits.
"These mothers and their children face severe economic difficulties and discrimination," he said, adding that six of the mothers were left homeless after Hurricane Matthew devastated the Caribbean island last year.
(Reporting by Anastasia Moloney @anastasiabogota, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)
Manno funeral at Little Haiti (Miami)
Miami bids farewell to folk singer Manno Charlemagne, the Bob Marley of Haiti
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
DECEMBER 14, 2017 09:08 PM
UPDATED DECEMBER 14, 2017 09:42 PM
They came one last time to pay homage to the firebrand folk singer whose politically charged lyrics set to acoustic guitar melodies put corrupt politicians on notice and inspired a generation of Haitians.
Joseph Emmanuel “Manno” Charlemagne was their Bob Dylan, their Bob Marley — and his stirring lyrics became a shield as they battled dictatorship, struggled with democracy and dreamed of another Haiti.
Now Charlemagne and his deep, crooning voice are gone, taken by cancer in Miami Beach where, for years, he entertained diners at South Beach’s Tap Tap Restaurant with his songs of protest.
His death at 69 on Sunday came after multiple stints in exile, many assassination attempts and a star-studded international campaign by the late filmmaker Jonathan Demme to free him from the Argentine Embassy where he sought haven after a military coup toppled Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. An avowed Marxist who was dubbed the “Caged Bird of Haiti,” he had an unsuccessful tenure as mayor of Port-au-Prince in the mid-90s.
Over the years, his storied activism on behalf of Haiti’s poor — and his political missteps — became the subject of books and films that elevated him to folk-hero status.
“This makes me sad,” said Jean Chaperon, 53, a longtime friend fighting back tears as he stood in the sanctuary of Little Haiti’s Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church, steps away from Charlemagne’s open casket. “He fought hard for the country to change and that didn’t happen.”
Katia Barnave, Charlemagne’s younger sister, said the family decided to hold the public viewing and memorial Mass in Miami before flying his body next week to Haiti.
“He’s been so well known and recognized for decades that it’s just a way for people to pay their respects and honor him in the way that he deserves to be honored,” she said.
Still, Charlemagne, who shuttled back and forth between Miami and Haiti, had a conflicted relationship with the land of the blanc, or foreigner. In one of his most popular tunes, Alyenkat (“Alien Card”), Charlemagne railed against the treatment of Haitians seeking refuge in the United States, a country that he and others accused of invading Haiti on multiple occasions.
“He really loved his country,” said Barnave, who was trying to reconcile how she was unable to fulfill his wish to die in Haiti.
Charlemagne came to Miami in July to go to the doctor. He was fighting lung cancer that had spread to his brain.
“He was who he was, all the way up to the end — a fighter to the last days,” Barnave said.
Jean Michel Lapin, the director general of Haiti’s Ministry of Culture, said the government will pay to bring Charlemagne’s body back to Haiti, and has taken charge of his funeral “to permit the entire country to pay a final homage.”
While South Florida artists and Charlemagne’s Tap Tap band will honor him — and the late Haitian painter Joseph Wilfrid Daleus, who also died Sunday in Miami — at Sounds of Little Haiti on Friday, the Haitian government has organized a musical tribute in Charlemagne’s honor on Tuesday on the Champ de Mars in Port-au-Prince.
His government-sponsored funeral is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 22, also on the Champ de Mars, across from the grounds of the National Palace. Still undecided, Lapin said, is whether Charlemagne will be given a state funeral, the highest honor.
Former Haitian President Michel Martelly, who had been pushing to bring Charlemagne back to Haiti before his death and was instrumental in getting the government to pay for the funeral, said he deserves the state ceremony.
“Based on the dimensions of Manno and how huge he is, why not consider something national?” Martelly told the Miami Herald in a telephone interview from Port-au-Prince. “He deserves it.”
Martelly, also a singer who goes by the stage persona “Sweet Micky,” said prior to Charlemagne’s death, plans had been in the works to fly him back to Haiti.
“But he was too weak and could not travel. We had to wait until he recovered — which never happened,” Martelly said.
On Thursday, South Florida’s Haitian community paid tribute to Charlemagne by quoting his lyrics and reminiscing about their time together. Florida Sen. Daphne Campbell, a Haitian American, announced that she was naming N. Sherman Circle in Miramar, where one of Charlemagne’s sons lives, in his honor.
Gary Sanon-Jules, the former general manager of Tap Tap, said that honor, however, belongs in South Beach.
“I’d rather name a street where he lived than where he died. He performed at Tap Tap for 20 years, lived upstairs overlooking Meridian Court,” Sanon-Jules said. “That street embodies a lot of our memories as we all illegally parked our cars to go and listen to Manno Charlemagne and the Tap Tap Band. That street should be renamed Manno Charlemagne Court”
Haitian musician Beethova Obas, who recorded the song Nwel Anme (“Bitter Christmas”) with Charlemagne, said he didn’t know he was so connected to his longtime friend until he appeared to him in his dreams two days before his death.
“He said, ‘I was wondering when you were going to come see me,’” said Obas, who lives in Belgium. Hours later, Obas, onvacation in Port St. Lucie, was at Charlemagne’s bedside “playing all the songs that whenever he was around, he wouldn’t let me sing.” One of the final songs, Obas said he played, was his song Kè’m poze (”I am at peace”).
“I told him, ‘You are facing the light; you have to go to the light. You were sent to do a job. You did your job,’ ” Obas said. “Even if I knew he was going to die, I wasn’t prepared for him to go.”
Not all those who came out Thursday were luminaries. Some were regular people like 87-year-old Gerard Antoine, who despite his cane, said he needed to pay his final respects.
As Antoine ambled toward the gray casket where Charlemagne, dressed in a navy suit, white shirt and green-striped tie lay surrounded by white roses and daisies, the singer’s song, Lan Male m’ Ye, (“I am in deep trouble”) played.
“People tend to recognize people when they die,” Martelly said.
A fan of Charlemagne since he was a teenager, Martelly, 56, who often sang about the country’s misery before his successful 2010 presidential bid, said he often drew inspiration from Charlemagne’s songs and guitar-based twoubadou melodies.
“You don’t hear his type of songs. Manno was unique in the way he spoke about problems in Haiti, the reality in Haiti … He talked about real stories of life, stories that could touch you, and make you, whether man or woman, cry,” Martelly said.
“He marked our time, our culture,” the former president added. “He opened a lot of young people’s minds to Haiti’s problems and on how to dream, how to think. He was a real talent.”
2
USAID Announces New Project
in Support of Safe Water and Sanitation for Haiti
For Immediate Release
The United States took another step to support access to clean water for Haiti’s citizens and continuing the fight against cholera. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Water and Sanitation project supports the goal the United States shares with the Government of Haiti to expand safe water and sanitation access to vulnerable communities, the most important battlefront in the eradication of cholera and other waterborne diseases.
The USAID Water and Sanitation project represents a $41.8 million investment aligned with the priorities of Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and the water and sanitation directorate. It aims to improve the health of Haitians, to build on previous United States investments in Haiti and to start a longer-term, more comprehensive approach to water, sanitation, and hygiene that will strengthen local and national Haitian institutions working in this sector.
The Project is part of the U.S. Government’s Global Water Strategy vision for a water-secure world. It aims to promote sustainable access around the world to safe drinking water and sanitation services, the adoption of key hygiene behaviors, and the strengthening of water sector governance, financing, and institutions.
Haiti, is designated a high priority country under the United States’ Water for the World Act of 2014. That law, which reinforced and refined the implementation efforts of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005, ensures that water, sanitation, and hygiene programming contributes to long-term, sustainable results.
This project will focus on increasing access to improved water and sanitation services in priority cholera “hotspot” communes identified in Haiti’s National Mid-Term Plan for the Elimination of Cholera, and in communes recovering from natural disasters such as Hurricane Matthew. It will also engage the private sector in creating solutions for expanding access to water and sanitation services.
The four-year project will be implemented by Development Alternatives, Inc., an international non-governmental organization, well-known for providing technical and managerial support to social and economic development programs around the world.
(End of text)
Brooklyn Chrch wants tu help victims of child slavery
Dec 10, 2017 · by Cindy Rodriguez
Haitian community leaders say it is all to common in their island nation for poor children to be sent to live with upper class families who use them as domestic servants and worse. These victims of child slavery are known as restaveks. The Courtelyou Road Church of God in East Flatbush wants to identify and help survivors now living in Brooklyn.
"After they were raised in Haiti, they come here to the United States, many of them here in this community and then they raise children without being treated for PTSD and many other things that they suffer," said Pastor Diane St. Surin during a press conference on Sunday.
Surin said she knows of at least 10 survivors who attend her church.
"I've seen them become very intimidated very quickly. They cannot advocate for themselves and they lean on the church. I'm also an attorney so they lean a lot on me," said the Pastor. "I don't see how they're surviving in this type of an environment with that trauma."
Surin said the goal is to connect survivors to mental health services in the community and to teach mental health clinicians to understand the Haitian culture so they can help in an appropriate way.
City councilman Jumanee Williams, who represents the Flatbush area where many Haitians live, said that 60 percent of restaveks in Haiti are young girls who have no rights or identity, and who are verbally and sexually abused.
"When natural disasters effect this country, like an earthquake, like a hurricane, like cholera, all these things are exacerbated," he said.
Williams said the US should not be sending people back to Haiti when child slavery continues to happen there. He was referring to the Trump administration's decision to end Temporary Protected Status for tens of thousands of Haitians living in the US. Those with TPS have been given 18 months to leave and return home.
There's no data on how many restaveks are living in Brooklyn but community leaders said their efforts would help determine that and raise awareness about the problem in the Haitian community.
"Our goal in this action is to begin to look at this data, begin to talk to this community, begin to assess...and see what can be done," said Fabiola Desmont of Restavek Freedom Foundation.