New challenges for the realisation of migrants' rights following the Haiti 2010 earthquake: Haitian women on the borderlands

Abstract

Crossing the Dominican-Haitian border in greater numbers than previously, Haitian women and girls, many of whom have been forcibly displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, make multiple decisions about where to go and whom to trust. Thus they are in contact with informal scouts and other agents, while seeking employment as vendors in the frontier market, domestic workers in private homes, and sex workers in brothels in the Dominican Republic. This article argues that trafficking is but one problem along a spectrum of violence and human rights violations facing these women, requiring coordinated social interventions beyond law enforcement. © 2013 The Authors. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2013 Society for Latin American Studies.