Project profile — Expanding Access to Health and Rights for Women and Girls in Haiti

This project addresses gaps in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of women and girls in Haiti. More particularly, this project strengthens and scales up previous work on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and gender equality in the eleven clinical sites of the Lower Artibonite and Central Plateau. Project activities include: (1) addressing the most urgent clinical needs of survivors of SGBV; (2) ensuring that those in positions of authority at the health, judicial and community levels are educated and engaged in the reduction, mitigation and prevention of SGBV through surveillance committees, created to support survivors and promoting survivors’ rights; and (3) engaging girls, women, boys and men in an educational and empowering approach towards gender issues that aims to increase the resiliency of women and girls, and change social norms around SGBV. This project is expected to reach 1.1 million people, while also strengthening linkages with broader women’s health services, community health programs, and Haitian civil society organizations. This project is implemented through a partnership between Partners in Health Canada, and its Haitian sister organization, Zanmi Lasante.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) enhanced provision of rights-based and gender-sensitive post-gender-based violence services; and, (2) enhanced support for gender equality and human rights among individuals in target communities.

Results achieved as of March 2022 include: (1) trained 71 community health workers (28 women and 43 men) on gender-based violence protocols; (2) provided 1,216 individuals (1142 women and 74 men) with rights-based, gender-sensitive post-gender-based violence clinical care across 14 sites; (3) trained 24 criminal justice employees (three women and 21men) on a rights-based, gender-sensitive criminal justice response to gender-based violence; (4) established nine surveillance committees to enhance multisectoral coordination in response to gender-based violence; and, (5) 789 adolescents (462 women, 325 men and two unspecified) received sexuality education through clubs since project inception.