Myriam Merlet was born 70 years ago in Les Cayes

The years of exile

Coming from a bourgeois family close to the Duvalier regime, she left Haiti at 14 for Europe, where she lived in France and then Italy. In 1974, she moved to Montreal, Canada. In 1985, she earned a master's degree in economics from the Université du Québec, while also studying political sociology and feminist theory.

Enfo Fanm and the feminist struggle

In July 1986, a few months after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, she returned to Haiti and founded Enfo Fanm, a documentation and information center for the defense of women's rights. The organization produced radio and television programs and published the newspaper Ayiti Fanm in Creole. She also co-founded the Coordination Nationale pour le Plaidoyer des Femmes (CONAP), for which she was a spokesperson for a long time. She published several texts, including Entre l'amour, la colère et la folie : Construire la paix en Haïti, in 2001.

Against sexual violence

From 2006 to 2008, she was chief of staff at the Ministry of Women's Condition and Rights, and then remained an advisor until her death. She played an important role in the recognition of rape as a crime in 2005 and alerted international opinion to the violence suffered by poor women. She perished in the earthquake of January 12, 2010, like activists Anne-Marie Coriolan and Magalie Marcelin.