WOMEN’S RIGHTS activists have paid tribute to three prominent Haitian feminists killed in this month’s devastating earthquake.Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan were among those who died.
They were described as enterprising activists who had taken on a legal and social system which, in Marcelin’s words, treats women’s bodies as commodities.
The three were part of the first wave of civil society organisations to emerge when the dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier stepped down in 1986. Working inside and outside government, they and the organisations they helped lead were instrumental in establishing, in 2005, the country’s first law criminalising rape.
They also helped bring about protection for domestic workers and legal equality in marital and family relations between men and women, and led campaigns to name streets in Port-au-Prince after famous Haitian women.
“The earthquake took out three pillars of the movement,” Eve Ensler, a feminist writer and activist, said. “They were so forceful and so visionary and so original.” Carolle Charles, professor of sociology at Baruch College, in New York, said they had shared an idea of “doing politics differently . . . It’s a big loss.”
Merlet and Coriolan held high positions in the Haitian ministry for women's affairs, created after the 1994 return of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They drew attention to the plight of Haiti's poor women. – ( Guardianservice)