Haiti: KOFAVIV | Zanmi Lasante
KOFAVIV (Commission of Women Victims for Victims)
KOFAVIV is an organization established by and for rape survivors from the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince. KOFAVIV combines support for individual women with the power of grassroots women’s organizing to transform the underlying conditions that give rise to sexual violence against the poor.
The women of KOFAVIV are survivors in every sense of the word. After losing their homes and possessions in the January 2010 earthquake, they reconstituted the organization in one of the sprawling, makeshift camps of Port-au-Prince. There, they are responding to epidemic levels of rape by working with MADRE to prevent and redress sexual assault, care for survivors and build a movement for human rights in Haiti.
Meeting Immediate Needs
KOFAVIV has a long history of providing rape survivors with direct support and services, and they are continuing this work in the camps. They have over 1,000 members in the camps, and women know that they can turn to KOFAVIV if they've been raped.
KOFAVIV provides rape survivors with critical and immediate support, accompanying them to the hospital and the police station. MADRE is working with KOFAVIV to prevent rape in the camps by organizing nighttime community watch groups and providing cell phones, whistles and flashlights to women in the camps.
Movement Building for Social Change
Long before the earthquake, KOFAVIV was mobilizing rape survivors in Port-au-Prince to be part of a movement for social change. In the wake of this disaster, their work is even more important to the safety and well-being of women living in the camps. With support from MADRE, KOFAVIV is working to strengthen the network of women living in the camps by:
- Providing a safe space for women to gather, support one another and organize to meet their needs and rebuild their community networks.
- Offering trainings for women on how to stay safe, manage stress, care for traumatized children and maintain family health and hygiene in the hazardous environment of the camps.
- Facilitating psycho-social support through peer-counseling groups of rape survivors who empower one another to heal and rebuild their lives.
Advocating for Human Rights
KOFAVIV and MADRE are seeking justice for rape survivors by partnering with Haitian lawyers to pursue cases and advocating internationally for safe conditions in the camps and a Haitian-led reconstruction process that respects women’s human rights.
Zanmi Lasante
Zanmi Lasante was founded in 1983 by a group of doctors and community organizers who believe that the poor deserve no less than the best medical treatment and medications available. Understanding that the root causes of poor health lie in the structural violence of poverty, Zanmi Lasante offers comprehensive social and medical support to its patients, providing them not only with health care, but also with access to potable water, adequate food and housing, schooling, and economic opportunities.In addition to Zanmi Lasante's emergency response, MADRE supports the clinic's women’s health program, which provides pre- and post-natal care, vaccinations for women and children, and screening and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and cervical cancer. The clinic also has a mobile health care unit, which provides high-quality health care for women and girls who are unable to travel to the clinic itself.
Providing Comprehensive Health Care to Impoverished Communities
The Zanmi Lasante Social-medical Complex includes a 104-bed hospital, a 30-bed infectious disease center, a women's health clinic, an outpatient clinic, an ophthalmology clinic, a laboratory, a pharmaceutical warehouse and radiographic services. In addition to providing health care to patients at the clinic itself, Zanmi Lasante also trains community health care workers who travel to the countryside to provide daily DOT (Directly Observed Therapy) for HIV/AIDS and TB patients.Social and Economic Rights
Through its Program on Social and Economic Rights, Zanmi Lasante addresses the social inequalities that put their patients at an increased risk of disease, including lack of access to potable water, education, nutrition and housing. In the past year alone, Zanmi Lasante has undertaken dozens of water projects in rural villages, trained and employed over 50 teachers for both child and adult literacy programs, built 52 houses for patients who were previously living in sub-standard conditions, and provided daily meals for over 2,000 malnourished children and infants.
