Women have been the target of violence for nearly two decades in Haiti. For three years following the military coup that ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, rape was part of the repressive tactics used by the military and paramilitary forces to crush all opposition.

The report of the National Commission of Truth and Justice (1996), admitted that "rape became a political weapon used systematically to instill fear and to punish those sectors of society which were believed to have supported the democratic government."

"During the armed rebellion that ousted Aristide for a second time in February 2004, and in its aftermath, rape was used as a weapon by numerous gangs throughout the country to terrorise the population," observed the 2008 Amnesty International report, 'Don't turn your back on Girls – Sexual Violence Against Girls in Haiti'.

"Being raped, it makes you … a person without rights, a person rejected from society and now, in the neighbourhood I live in, it's as though I am raped every day because every day someone reminds me that I've been raped … that I shouldn't speak, I should say nothing," is one of the testimonies in the report.

The state of lawlessness and lack of public security of the transitional government of Haiti (March 2004 to May 2006) contributed to increasing the high incidence of sexual abuse by armed groups.

The medical journal, The Lancet, estimated that between February 2004 and December 2005 almost 19,000 per 100,000 girls were raped in the capital, Port-au-Prince, which has a population of two million.