why I left haiti

Haiti’s Unspoken Tragedy: The Violence That Forces Women to Flee or Die Trying

By Shanice Fils-Aime

Brooklyn, NY - I was born in Haiti, but I left. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Like so many other women, I knew that staying meant either enduring the unbearable or dying at the hands of men who see our pain as a tool of power. Women in Haiti don’t just leave for a better life—they leave to survive. And for those who can’t escape, their fate is often sealed by the brutal, inescapable violence that surrounds them.

Haiti has long been a country of resilience, but it is also a country where sexual violence is a weapon of war, a tool of control, and a sentence for too many women and girls. Reports indicate that children as young as ten years old have been subjected to horrific sexual crimes, often in front of their own families, meant to inflict maximum trauma and psychological destruction. The consequences of this go beyond individual suffering—it tears apart the fabric of communities, normalizing fear and subjugation as the status quo.

Women and girls are not safe anywhere. They are assaulted by gangs, by political forces, by neighbors, by people who should protect them. And yet, there is no real justice, no widespread outrage, and no systemic change. In many cases, survivors are blamed for their own assaults or pressured into silence. To be a woman in Haiti is to live in a country where your body is not your own.

Many women, like myself, flee Haiti with nothing but the hope that somewhere, there is safety. Others die trying. They board overcrowded boats, hoping to make it to foreign shores where they might be treated as more than property or collateral in a violent man’s war. They cross borders, risking abuse at the hands of human traffickers, because they know what awaits them if they stay behind.

And yet, the world is largely silent about the war against women in Haiti. We hear about political instability, we hear about economic struggles, but the mass rapes, the child victims, the families torn apart by sexual violence—those stories are not headlines.

I left Haiti, but I will never stop speaking about what happens there. I will never forget the women who didn’t make it out. And I will never stop demanding that the violence against women in Haiti be recognized for what it is: a human rights crisis that the world can no longer ignore.