Women’s groups ask who will investigate the soldiers who came to help

American troops landed in Haiti on 19 September 1994 and Aristide came home on 15 October. Two months after the landing, in November 1994, several Haitian women’s organisations wrote to the Ministry of Justice asking it to open an inquiry into the conduct of the multinational force toward Haitian women, since accounts of assaults on women and girls by soldiers were circulating in several towns. The organisation ENFOFANM named Saint-Marc, Les Cayes, Gonaives, Cap-Haitien and Port-au-Prince, citing corroborating sources, and said that some of the victims had been taken quietly to hospital. No inquiry was ever opened. A staff member of the United Nations and Organization of American States civil mission said afterwards that observers at a provincial base who reported allegations against French and Caribbean peacekeepers to their superiors in Port-au-Prince in 1995 were told to stop looking into them. The force that ended the junta’s rape campaign generated complaints nobody in authority was willing to examine.