Saying goodbye to leaders of the women's movement

Yolette Etienne (pictured below), from Port-au-Prince, has been Oxfam’s country director in Haiti for the past 10 years. She writes in a special series of posts for Channel 4 News.

To find out more about Oxfam in Haiti visit their website here.

One of the greatest shocks, of so many we’ve faced, was to discover that three key activists in the women’s movement perished in this disaster. What a cruel twist of fate.

We lost three mothers, three dynamic leaders, women who never thought there had to be a divide between their lives as mothers, as heads of households, and their utter commitment to building the feminist movement in Haiti.

Magaly Marcelin, Myriam Merlet and Anne Marie Coriolan each had her own group (Kay Fanm, SOFA and Enfofanm); each took her own approach. And at the same time the three of them stood out from others because they worked together to make the progress we all yearn for.

We have all needed to mourn our children and our families. But we needed a special goodbye for these women, because their disappearance is such a heavy blow.

Last Sunday a few dozen women gathered in a private home. We took time to hug each other, to console each other and to console the grown children of these women. And to recall the great things these three achieved.

Magaly, Myriam and Anne Marie worked tirelessly to get Haitian women’s voices heard. All across the country they traveled to help illiterate women organize and become aware of their rights.

Now you can go to the most remote village and you will find organized women. And I am quite sure the women there will tell you that one of these three women went there, talked to them, told them they could change their lives.

This is a small country, but women feel so isolated. These three women broke that isolation, built a network of Haitian women and linked that to women around the world.

Most recently, these three led a struggle for acknowledgment from the courts that violence against women is wrong and should be outlawed. We won and the law that so discriminates against women was changed.

At the memorial, we talked about how guilty we feel to have survived, when they did not. Sharing our feelings helped. We saw we cannot stop fighting. Today, women in the makeshift settlements are suffering violence, rape, accusations of sorcery. All the problems of women are still outstanding. We have no right to stop.

By talking, we realized that all of us are already carrying on the work of Magaly, Myriam and Anne Marie, wherever we happen to be. We realized that none of us is despairing. Rather we are working to cope with the terrible chaos around us. And in some way incorporating the lessons from our three heroines.

Then we ate Haitian food together. Women from government, international organizations, women’s organizations, all together like sisters – the way they would have wanted it.