Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Since an armed insurrection overthrew the government of Haiti in February 2004, various human rights organizations, reporters, and government officials have accused assorted political groups, the Haitian National Police and United Nations Peacekeepers of committing egregious and systematic human rights abuses. However, no scientifically rigorous inquiry into the frequency and severity of the abuses or the perceived perpetrators of these abuses had been conducted. During a one-month period ending December 2005, 1260 randomly selected households (representing 5708 individuals) were surveyed to record their experiences since the 2004 coup with different types of human rights violations. These violations included: sexual assaults; physical assaults; looting, theft and vandalism of personal property; murders, and extra-judicial detentions. Households in the greater Port-au-Prince area were selected utilizing randomized GPS coordinate sampling. This methodology had been employed by researchers in the past to assess and compare mortality rates in Iraq pre- and post-invasion by Coalition Forces. Given the dangerous conditions that exist in Port-au-Prince, the lack of home postal delivery, and limited telephone access for most of the population, this methodology was particularly well-suited for this study. GPS locations were included in the study if they were within 20 yards of a currently inhabited residence and within one of the 96 geographic blocks comprising metropolitan Port-au-Prince. Teams of postgraduate, trained interviewers then conducted face-to-face interviews with individuals in the selected households. Response rate for this survey was approximately 91%. Preliminary results indicate that both crime and systematic human rights abuses are common in Port-au-Prince. Findings indicate that murder, rape, child sexual abuse, physical assault, and threats of physical violence were at rates that would be considered exceptional by US standards. Of all households, 1.8% reported that someone in their household had been murdered since the onset of the coup (95% C.I. = +/- 0.6%). Given the estimated population of the greater Port-au-Prince area (2,121,000), this figure suggests that approximately 8,500 individuals were murdered during this period. Rape of both adults and children were also at an egregious rate; 6.1% of all households (95% C.I. = +/- 1.3%) reported a rape incident since the onset of the coup. Approximately one-half of these rapes (2.9%) were of restaveks (children not related by birth to the head of household). Extrapolating from the estimated population, findings suggest that approximately 29,000 rapes occurred during this time period. Preliminary findings indicate that “criminals” are the most frequent perpetrators of these types of crimes; however, findings also indicate that the Haitian National Police and Brazilian Peacekeepers also frequently engage in human rights violations.