March 8, 2026

Media Contact: media@haitianbridge.org

San Diego, CA. — On International Women’s Day, Haitian Bridge Alliance honors the resilience, leadership, and achievements of women around the world while calling attention to the urgent challenges that continue to threaten the safety, health, and economic empowerment of women and girls.

Today, women continue to face alarming levels of violence and inequality globally. Nowhere is this crisis more visible than in Haiti, where escalating gang violence has created one of the most dangerous environments for women and girls in the Western Hemisphere. Armed groups now control much of Port-au-Prince and have used sexual violence as a weapon of terror against communities. Medical organization Médecins Sans Frontières reports that cases of sexual violence treated at its Port-au-Prince clinic have nearly tripled since 2021, with an average of over 250 survivors seeking care each month in 2025, the vast majority of them women and girls.

Haitian Bridge Alliance is calling on the international community to increase funding for survivor-centered services, including free mental-health counseling and therapy for women and girls who have endured sexual violence, as well as medical care, shelters, and long-term trauma support.

Gender inequality also persists in other parts of the world, including the United States. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women face some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country— 44.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2024, more than three times the rate for white women. 

Across the globe, millions of women and girls continue to face systemic barriers to education, healthcare, and economic opportunity. Child marriage alone affects an estimated 650 million women and girls worldwide, with roughly 12 million girls forced into marriage every year,  often ending their education and limiting their economic prospects. This is simply sexual abuse and sexual exploitation, and it must end. 

As global leaders gather this month in New York for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 2026), Haitian Bridge Alliance applauds international efforts to advance gender equality. However, the organization emphasizes that much more must be done.

Governments and multilateral institutions must increase investments in:

• healthcare and maternal health services for women
• programs that protect women from gender-based violence, including child marriage
• education opportunities for girls
• trade finance and investment programs that allow women to participate fully in commerce and global markets

Economic empowerment is critical to gender equality. Women entrepreneurs and small-business owners remain significantly underfunded globally, limiting their ability to engage in trade and build sustainable livelihoods.

Guerline Jozef, Executive Director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, stated:

“From Haiti to the United States and across the globe, women continue to confront violence, discrimination, and systemic barriers. Yet women remain the backbone of our communities and economies. The global community must move beyond words and invest in real solutions—protecting women from violence, ensuring access to healthcare and education, and expanding economic opportunities so women can thrive and lead.”

Haitian Bridge Alliance remains committed to championing the rights of women and girls, advocating for policies that protect survivors of violence, expand economic opportunity, and dismantle patriarchal systems that treat women as second-class citizens.

Because when women are safe, educated, and economically empowered, entire societies prosper.

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ABOUT HAITIAN BRIDGE ALLIANCE

Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), also known as “The Bridge”, is a grassroots community organization that advocates for fair and humane immigration policies, foreign policy, and provides migrants and immigrants with humanitarian, legal, and social services, with a particular focus on Black migrants, the Haitian community, women and girls, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and survivors of torture and other human rights abuses. HBA also seeks to elevate the issues unique to Black migrants and build solidarity and a collective movement toward policy change. Anpil men chay pa lou (“Many hands make the load light”).
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