Transgender Situation in Haiti

 As of right now, the country Haiti has been going through a collection of problems which has stretched from the assassanation of the president, Jovenel Moïse, the president of Haiti, who was assassinated on 7 July 2021 at his residence by a group of 28 foreign mercenaries are alleged to be responsible for the killing. Haiti is also the poorest country in the LAC region (Latin America and the Caribbean)and among the poorest countries in the world. In 2020, Haiti had a GDP per capita of US $2,925, the lowest in the LAC region.

In spite of all of this, Haiti still has never really been able to fully recover from the earthquake that devastated the land in 2010. The earthquake resulted in About 220,000 people reportedly killed, among them, 102 United Nations staff who lost their lives when the building housing the mission there, known as MINUSTAH, collapsed. With all the tragedy that has happened to the Haitian people as a whole, people have not been really able to focus on the human rights aspect of Haiti. The country of Haiti has been a kind of pass to pretty much say and treat people however they want. This is shown with the attitude most Haitian people have towards the LGBTQ community.

Though this hurts me to say this but the people of Haiti have a negative connotation with all things LGBTQ and this believed because of the Christian religion they follow. This was forced upon them by the french and influenced them to beleive that there are only 2 genders(male and female) and with this belief people believe that anything even remotely different from it is completely wrong. Haiti does not recognize same-sex marriages or any other similar institution. In 2013, Christian and Muslim religious leaders organized a large public demonstration against gay marriage, when a Haitian LGBTQ rights group announced plans to lobby for a gay rights bill in the parliament. This is shown with the example of a transgender woman in Haiti that has said, “she does not want to die in a man's body”, and hopes to leave her native country to fulfill her dream of transitioning from being a man to a woman. Semi Alisha Fermond works with transgender people at "Kay Trans Ayiti" which is the creole name for House of Haitian Trans and is an activist with the UNDP and UNAIDS-supported organization Community Action for the Integration of Vulnerable Haitians (ACIFVH).