Haiti opens first state-supported safe house for sexual violence survivors

Haiti has opened its first state-supported safe house for survivors of sexual violence, offering a rare point of protection in a country where gang violence has eroded the state’s reach and left many women and girls without secure shelter. Backed by the United Nations, the new Women’s House is meant to do more than provide a bed: it is designed to offer protection, psychosocial support, and help rebuilding lives for survivors whose safety has been shattered.

The opening comes as the scale of abuse has climbed sharply. The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti verified 1,863 cases of sexual violence in 2025, a 163% increase from 2024. UN Women said the crisis is now affecting women, girls, and some men and boys, with violence used to terrorize communities and tighten criminal control.

The shelter also exposes the gap between symbolic progress and practical protection. Marie Goretti Nduwayo, speaking for UN Women in Haiti, said gang violence, once concentrated in Port-au-Prince, is now spreading across the country and forcing people from their homes. UN Women says about 300,000 Haitian women and girls are displaced without basic safety and health services, while more than a million people overall have been uprooted, nearly a tenth of the population.

Those numbers underscore how limited the response remains. UN Women says 47% of women and girls in Haiti will need humanitarian aid in 2025, and the country’s crisis is being driven by political instability, gang violence, and humanitarian emergencies. From January to September 2025, more than 7,400 gender-based violence cases were reported, about 27 a day, with roughly 3,700 involving sexual violence and about 2,500 gang rape cases.

The violence is also cutting deeper into childhood. UNICEF reported a 1,000% increase in sexual violence cases against children in 2024 compared with 2023, while UN human rights reporting said at least 1,571 women and girls were victims of sexual violence between 1 March and 31 December 2025. UN Women’s Haiti programme says sexual crimes in the country show a persistent upward trend and are being used as weapons of control, a reminder that the new safe house may mark the start of a system of care, or remain a fragile first outpost in a much larger emergency.