Haitian lesbians face dangers at home and in the U.S.
For LGBTQ Haitians, security and funding cannot depend on the international community alone.
Pervasive gang violence in Haiti ruled out any possibility of festivities to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8 in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Edmide Joseph from Femme en Action Contre la Stigmatisation et La Discrimination Sexuelle (FACSDIS), an association that has been helping lesbian women in Haiti since July 2010, talks about the dangers facing homosexual women in her native country:
Insecurity has not abated despite UN involvement
Erasing 76 Crimes: In Port-au-Prince, has the Kenyan-led police force improved conditions for LGBT+ organizations, and yours in particular, when a gang leader, Krisla, was threatening lesbian women in working-class neighborhoods last August?
Edmide Joseph: Nothing has changed, in fact it’s even worse, to the extent that the majority of international flights now operate out of Hugo Chavez International Airport in Cap-Haïtien in the north of the country. The capital’s Toussaint-Louverture airport, once the main gateway to the country, is operating at a very low level of activity.
As for FACSDIS, our offices are located in Canapé-Vert, and a Haitian police brigade is helping to drive back the gangs who have not yet been able to take over this district, one of the few not under their control.
Our priority now is to ensure the safety of the people who help keep the association’s office and administration running a few days a week.
The latest news from Haiti, with the attack on an encampment of displaced persons in the grounds of the girls’ high school on rue Chavannes earlier this week, continues to alarm us.
Today, we’re thinking of relocating our organization’s activities elsewhere, in the south of Haiti, towards Jacmel. However, the roads to this part of the country are not safe.
The crushing blow of the US development aid freeze
Erasing 76 Crimes: What were FACSDIS‘s activities when the security situation was less degraded?
Edmide: We worked mainly on advocacy activities concerning gender-based violence, unlike many LGBT+ organizations on the island who work more with gays on reducing the prevalence of HIV/AIDS.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s 90-day freeze on U.S. aid, as well as the dismantling of USAID, the U.S. agency for overseas development assistance, have done great harm to the work of local organizations, while the security and humanitarian situation is absolutely critical for the population, given that there is a famine situation in the country, although this is not making headlines in the world press.
This year, for International Women’s Day on March 8, we were unable to carry out any activities, which is a real heartbreak, and the situation is all the more desperate as there is no political way out of the crisis in Haiti, while the possibilities of fleeing the country are increasingly restricted since Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
He has even decided that the temporary protection enjoyed by Haitians on American soil will be lifted as of next August, in order to increase the number of illegal immigrants being deported from the United States.
Micro-credit as a lever for autonomy
Erasing 76 Crimes: You’re living in Florida right now. What else do you think is possible?
Edmide: It’s a real sword of Damocles that Haitians in Florida have to live with. And if I get expelled from the greater Miami area, I’ll come back to my country, but not to the capital.
On the other hand, times have changed, Western donors are under political pressure, and we need to think about setting up other projects that promote Haiti’s autonomy and economic and social development, as well as the banking of precarious and discriminated groups. And in this sense, access to micro-credit for lesbian and bisexual women, which we discussed together a few years ago, is a lever that seems interesting, but is still currently under-exploited.
After 15 years of existence of FACSDIS, we realize that we have to get away from the logic of dependence and that we can’t always count on the international community, either for security or for financing women’s organizations, especially lesbian women. What’s more, the days when immigration was a lifeline for Haiti are over. The wall built by the neighbouring Dominican Republic on its border since February 2022 is the most blatant symbol of this.
