A GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY-BASED APPROACH TO HUMAN RIGHTS
HURAH, Inc. grew out of a chance meeting at the Haitian National Penitentiary in 2004 between Tom Luce and Evel Fanfan, president of the Haiti-based Association of Groups Committed to a Haiti with Rights (AUMOHD). Luce was in Haiti as a member of an EPICA delegation soon after former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in an illegal coup d’état. The delegation was there to visit former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, imprisoned illegally by the Latortue government.
2004 EPICA Delegation -Tom Luce, center
Luce returned to the United States and began focusing his efforts on Haitian human rights issues through the April6VT Citizens Lobby, a group of more than 800 Americans committed to promoting peace and justice worldwide. A former Catholic priest, Luce first learned of human rights abuses in Haiti under the brutal Duvalier dictatorship from one of his classmates in the seminary, Father Max Dominique.
AUMOHD President Evel Fanfan invited Luce to return to Haiti to collaborate with him, and an informal partnership began in June 2004. Luce provided accompaniment (a visible international presence alongside Haitian human rights workers in visits to courts, prisons, and on the streets) and financial aid in the form of phone cards, transportation and other expenses (court and other legal fees) to Fanfan’s pro-bono organization. AUMOHD provides legal assistance, representation and advice to poor, unlawfully jailed prisoners, particularly to street children, and to a host of other Haitian non-profit organizations, such as worker’s rights groups. Luce formed HURAH in 2005. HURAH’s formal partnership with AUMOHD ended in 2009, but HURAH continues to pursue ways to collaborate with Haitian human rights organizations in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake.
