First-year students Rebecca Yagerman, Anna Mance and Quinn Smith took advantage of their Spring Break this year to travel to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where they spent a week interviewing citizens, government officials and members of local organizations to determine the United Nation’s role in Haiti.

The three students, who are members of the Student Organization for Human Rights, obtained funding for the trip through the organization and planned it with the help of Professor Irwin Stotzky, director of the Law School’s Center for the Study of Human Rights. To prepare for the trip, the students conducted a great deal of research and participated in numerous telephone conference calls with Professor Stotzky and Brian Concannon Jr., the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

“I had an interest in Haiti before I came down to Miami and I spoke to Professor Stotzky about it. I was looking for an opportunity to work there,” Rebecca said.

With funding in hand and a great deal of research in tow, the students set off for Port-au-Prince to investigate what the perception of the United Nations is among the citizens of Haiti. The United Nations has had a presence in Haiti since 1993 when a joint United Nations-OAS International Civilian Mission was deployed. In 2004, the United Nations Security Council established the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Through MINUSTAH, the United Nations is supposed to help stabilize Haiti by, among other things, providing additional police officers for an interim period to support the Haitian National Police; helping to implement small arms control and other security sector-related programming; and providing humanitarian aid.

“There is a disconnect between what the UN perceives its mission to be and what the people perceive the mission to be,” Rebecca said. “The Haitian people expect support for grass roots efforts to reduce violence, while MINUSTAH seems to merely support a corrupt Haitian government in its flawed efforts to rout out gang violence.”

All three students said that, while most government officials, organization leaders and regular civilians were willing to speak with them, they often got the impression they were not getting the whole truth from the people they interviewed. However, their many conversations with citizens on the streets of Haiti and with leaders of local human rights organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, made one thing very clear: there are plenty of human rights violations occurring in Haiti on a daily basis. The students spoke with many people who told them about politically-motivated executions and rapes, political prisoners and citizens being detained without warrants.

“I learned a lot about how the international community deals with human rights violations. Also, meeting with people who have been violated puts a face on the problem,” Rebecca said.

Anna added: “The experience opened me up to a whole new culture I didn’t know about. I have a lot more sensitivity. I feel like I’m in a really sensitive state right now to how people deal with really tough situations. It’s encouraging in terms of how I want to direct my law school experience by getting involved with things that really matter to me.”

The students prepared a report of their findings and presented it at the Law School during Human Rights Week in early April. They also plan to publish their findings in a paper published by the Center for the Study of Human Rights.

“Haiti is so close to us and there are so many Haitians here, but there is so little research done on Haiti in terms of major reports,” Quinn said. “I think we have a responsibility to get involved being so close.”