At 8:30 a.m. on August 14, 2021, a massive, 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck southern Haiti, its epicenter in the heart of a rural region home to many of the country’s poorest communities. Globally, it was the deadliest natural disaster of 2021, with nearly 2,500 people killed. In Haiti, the earthquake was the latest blow to …
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American Jewish World Service (AJWS), the leading global Jewish human rights organization, calls on the U.S. and the international community to pursue a true partnership with civil society in setting robust commitments at this week’s summit and throughout the year of action to follow. In advance of the Summit for Democracy, Robert Bank, President and CEO …
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The headlines in Haiti are bleak. After years of increasing political corruption under former President Jovenel Moïse and skyrocketing gang violence, including kidnappings and outright massacres of civilians, the country faced a new onslaught of crises in the summer of 2021. In July, Moïse was assassinated in his home, disintegrating what was left of Haiti’s …
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In response to the sudden resignation of the United States’ special envoy for Haiti, Ambassador Daniel Foote, and the devastating treatment of Haitian migrants at the US Southern border, Tracey Gurd, senior director of civil and political rights and advocacy at American Jewish World Service (AJWS), issued the below statement: “Ambassador Foote’s resignation as the …
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One year ago last week, on January 12, 2010, the Caribbean country of Haiti, already the poorest country in the Americas,[1] experienced a devastating earthquake, the worst to hit the region in nearly two hundred years. The quake not only took hundreds of thousands of lives, but it also destroyed the country’s already limited infrastructure …
Read MoreIn Parshat Re’eh we are introduced to one of the most radical economic and social mandates of the Bible. We are commanded: “Every seventh year you shall practice remission of debts. This shall be the nature of the remission: every creditor shall remit the due that he claims from his fellow; he shall not press …
Read More“We will keep the victims and their families in our prayers.” So said President Barack Obama after the devastating earthquake in Haiti last January, before concluding with just such a prayer: “May God bless the people of Haiti and those working on their behalf.”[1] At the same time, the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism distributed …
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