The Haiti Advocacy Working Group (HAWG) is a coalition of around 35 international development, human rights, and faith-based organizations that aim to positively influence U.S. foreign policy towards Haiti. The HAWG aims to amplify Haitian voices, pursue and promote Haitian-led solutions with an emphasis on the most marginalized, and hold the U.S. government accountable while also identifying ways to work together in constructive ways. Some HAWG members also engage the United Nations, other multilateral organizations, and international financial institutions.
HAWG member organizations can serve as reliable sources of analysis, information, and insight on key issues within Haiti and between Haiti and the rest of the world. We organize sign-on letters, briefings on Capitol Hill, and private meetings with policymakers that are often the only gatherings to include Haitian civil society leaders. By building and maintaining relationships with Congress and government agencies, we seek to inform them on the intricacies of the Haitian reality and help break down silos between issues that prevent holistic problem-solving and genuine consideration of Haiti as a regional player.
The working group formed shortly after the devastating January 12, 2010, earthquake to coordinate advocacy efforts specifically for effective and just disaster relief, reconstruction, and long-term U.S. development policy toward Haiti. Since that time, HAWG’s work has broadened beyond aid accountability to include a variety of issues. HAWG members dig deep into areas that relate to unmet and emerging needs including food sovereignty, women’s empowerment, climate change, justice issues, aid accountability, democracy and elections, healthcare, labor issues, land rights, and migration.
More specifically, HAWG members have focused on the following priority areas:
- Promoting Haitian civil society inclusion and leadership
- Encouraging aid accountability, local procurement, and decentralization of aid
- Food sovereignty including rural agricultural development
- Fair immigration policy
- Gender and women’s issues
- The rights of LGBT people
- Public health, including addressing cholera
- Multilateral aid commitments and full debt relief
- Safe, sanitary and adequate shelter
- Environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change
- Labor issues
- Access to quality education
- Good governance and anti-corruption
- Improving the justice sector, including human rights concerns in prisons
For more information, please contact us.
Multiple organizations contribute sector-specific recommendations and positions expressed in HAWG communications and materials. These materials are not designed to be consensus positions and have not been explicitly endorsed by each organization active in the HAWG.