Increase in sexual violence in Haiti

Newshour

BBC

News, Daily News

4.4 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres, has told the BBC that cases of sexual violence in Haiti have tripled in the last four years. One in five victims are under the age of eighteen. With gangs now controlling nearly all of the capital, Port au Prince, violence and insecurity are worsening. So far this year, more than four thousand people have been killed. A BBC team talking to survivors in the capital found women and children were the most affected by systematic rape, murder and arson.

Also in the programme: an American university agrees to a settlement with the Trump administration; and the death of a global wrestling icon.

(Photo: A damaged house stands after gangs torched homes in a residential area in Furcy, Haiti. CREDIT: REUTERS/Jean Feguens Regala)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service.
0:06.6	We're coming to you live from London.
0:08.4	I'm James Menendez.
0:09.7	And later in the programme, a head of the Women's Euros Football Final on Sunday,
0:13.6	we'll be visiting a bar in Amsterdam with a very unusual theme.
0:18.3	Everyone's decked out in orange.
0:20.4	The beer is flowing. This is Bar Lainey. It's decked out in orange. The beer is flowing.
0:22.3	This is Bar Lainey.
0:23.8	It's named after the first woman to score an international goal for the Netherlands.
0:28.4	And she's sitting over there, actually.
0:30.7	And it is thought to be the only bar in Europe focused on women's sport.
0:36.8	Well, the only bar for now, maybe.
0:39.4	We'll hear how support for the women's game is taking off in the Netherlands
0:42.1	and visiting a new team which hopes to gain from that surge in support.
0:46.6	That report coming up in about 15 minutes.
0:50.1	We are going to begin today with a rare and devastating insight into what's going on in Porto Prince, the capital of Haiti, a Caribbean country that's steadily been slipping from poverty into outright anarchy over the past few years.
1:03.4	Gangs now control an estimated 90% of the city. The police there are outnumbered and outgunned. Government authority is all but collapsed,
1:12.8	and for ordinary Haitians, it is a constant struggle just to survive. In the past six months,
1:18.2	more than 4,000 people have been killed in the violence. Cuts to aid from the US are compounding
1:23.9	the crisis, leaving already vulnerable communities without food, healthcare or protection.
1:29.4	And it is women and children suffering the most.
1:33.2	I have to warn you, the report we're about to bring you now contains some upsetting content relating to sexual violence.
	...

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