Haitian women took center stage in PetroCaribe protest marches in February 2019, with women-led organizations organizing dedicated demonstrations that highlighted the gendered dimensions of corruption and misgovernance. Women’s groups argued that the misuse of public funds had a disproportionate impact on women, who bore primary responsibility for feeding families and accessing healthcare and education for children.
The demonstrations drew hundreds of women from across Port-au-Prince and other cities, many carrying signs connecting the PetroCaribe corruption to specific failures in services that affected their daily lives: maternal health clinics that lacked supplies, schools without desks or books, water systems that did not function. The protests put human faces on abstract figures of financial mismanagement.
Leaders of the women’s march movement were careful to connect their demands to a broader vision of transformation. They called not just for the prosecution of corrupt officials but for a fundamental reimagining of how Haiti’s public resources were managed, with genuine community participation and gender-responsive budgeting.
International women’s rights organizations expressed solidarity with the Haitian women’s movement and called on the international community to ensure that any political resolution to Haiti’s crisis included meaningful representation of women in decision-making processes.