about us
NÈGÈS MAWON is a Haitian Feminist organization founded in 2015 that fights against the effects of the patriarchal organization of society on Women. We aim to liberate Haitian Women and Girls from all forms of violence and oppression. We connect our Feminist struggle to the ideals of justice and freedom ushered in by the Revolution of 1804.
To achieve this political vision, we work every day to improve the living conditions of Women and Girls in Haiti. We are committed to promoting, defending, and strengthening Women’s social, cultural, economic, and political rights.
This struggle is grounded in a vision of liberation from every system that prevents Women around the world from fully enjoying their humanity, exercising their rights, and maintaining autonomy over their bodies.
Our mandate
View our programs01
Support and Accompaniment
Recognizing that solidarity is one of the pillars of Haitian society, we provide material, psychological, and administrative support and assistance from a Feminist perspective.
02
Action and Mobilization
Claiming our right to public space is important to us. For this reason, NÈGÈS MAWON organizes public actions and events, including protests, demonstrations, artistic performances, debates, and other forms of collective mobilization.
03
Bringing Together and Gathering
Working toward justice and equality requires training, knowledge-sharing, and collective analysis of the different forms of domination and oppression that we experience as Women and Girls. For this reason, we organize meetings and training sessions that create opportunities to understand, exchange, and learn.
04
Advocacy
The Haitian Feminist struggle has achieved major political victories, but these important advances must not make us forget all that remains to be won.
For this reason, our organization engages in legislative monitoring and advocacy to ensure that public policies protecting Women and advancing their political, social, cultural, and economic autonomy are enshrined in law.
What we want
- 01
- Ensure respect for the rights and interests of Women, Girls and all oppressed and discriminated communities.
- 02
- Dismantle inequalities and the forces responsible for the systemic discrimination experienced by Women, Girls and oppressed communities.
- 03
- Eliminate all forms of violence, discrimination, oppression, marginalization, and exclusion against Women and oppressed communities.
- 04
- Achieve equality between Women and men in all sectors of society.
- 05
- Protect the rights of Women and Girls while recognizing the connections between different forms of discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, physical or mental abilities, age, and class.
- 06
- Strengthen Women’s autonomy and leadership in the personal, social, economic, cultural, and political spheres, creating real and lasting change in their lives and living conditions.
Our Political Vision
Justice, equality and access to rights, resources, opportunities, well-being and happiness for Girls & Women
Our Name
Why NÈGÈS MAWON?
“Creole child who still lives within me, you will be born free and rebellious, or you will not be born at all.”
These are the last words of Lisette, the main character in Evelyne Trouillot’s novel The Infamous Rosalie, as she flees the plantation where she was enslaved to secure freedom for her child, the day she becomes a maroon.
Naming our Feminist organization NÈGÈS MAWON places it within a tradition identified by historians such as Edner Brutus and Jean Fouchard, who defined marooning as a phenomenon of permanent dissent that contributed to the culmination of the Haitian Revolution. Our Feminist struggle is rooted in the legacy and ideals of justice and freedom brought forth by the Revolution of 1804. It also amplifies the struggles of our sisters around the world for the advancement of Women’s movements.
We reclaim the maroon as a symbol of freedom, rebellion, revolt, vitality, and the thirst for justice. As young Women today, we use this symbol to express our struggle against all forms of violence, discrimination, oppression, marginalization, and exclusion rooted in patriarchy. We have feminized this symbol to protest the invisibilization, minimization, and distortion of Women’s contributions to the history of our nation and the world.
“NÈGÈS MAWON”
To honor all the Women warriors who have forged this nation with their blood, sweat, and lives since 1492. NÈGÈS MAWON, to be the worthy heirs of the heroines whom history remembers, as well as those whom history has forgotten or hidden.
“FREEDOM OR DEATH”
so that our struggle may keep alive the voices of those who, for centuries, have cried out on our soil and throughout the world.
Milestones
Our Journey
2015
Where it began
Our Feminist struggle is part of the legacy and ideals of justice and freedom brought about by the 1804 Revolution. It amplifies the struggles of our sisters around the globe in advancing Women’s movements.
2016
The First Feminist Festival
The NÈGÈS MAWON Feminist Festival is the first Feminist festival in Haiti. It examines cultural and artistic production through a Feminist lens while exploring new ways of knowing and expanding Feminist thought and action through art.
Through the festival, NÈGÈS MAWON seeks to transform art into a language and establish a dialogue with this powerful medium, creating connections between Women’s demands and the creativity of our artists. The festival uses artistic expression as a tool for imagining new horizons and developing new forms of Feminist activism and protest in Haiti, art that champions the rights of Women and Girls.
The festival also creates a space for encounters, discussions, discoveries, knowledge-sharing, creation, and collective work around the themes explored each year through this powerful activist and cultural event.
2021
Sisterhood Program (Marrainage)
The Sisterhood Program provides comprehensive support to survivors of violence in Haiti, including medical, psychological, legal, and financial assistance, temporary housing, and a network of mentors who help survivors rebuild their lives in a safe environment.
2021
Alaso Launched
A Haitian Feminist anthology edited by Fania Noël. This trilingual anthology (Haitian Creole, French, and English) serves as a space for Feminist expression and dialogue, aimed at developing and fostering critical thinking, debates, and analyses that make Feminist thought accessible.
our leadership
The Women Behind the Movement
Executive Committee
Gaëlle Bien-Aimé
Deputy coordinator
Gaëlle Bien-Aimé is a Haitian actress, comedian, author, director, and journalist. As co-founder of ACTE, a drama school, and the ACTAMBULE theater company, she works at the intersection of the arts, journalism, and social activism. Through her artistic work, she explores the social and political realities of her country and uses creativity as a tool for reflection and transformation. A committed artivist, she is also a co-founder of the Feminist organization NÈGÈS MAWON, where she contributes to the struggles for Women’s rights and social justice.
Pascale Solages
General coordinator
Pascale Solages is a Haitian grassroots Feminist organizer and human rights advocate with over 10 years of experience in Feminist movement building, reproductive justice, ending violence against Women, and Women’s participation in public affairs. She is a founding member and General Coordinator of NÈGÈS MAWON, one of Haiti’s leading Feminist organizations, where she works on developing and managing programs aimed at improving the lives and rights of Women and Girls. Her expertise includes gender and development, project design and management, and documenting Women’s experiences. A committed advocate for social justice, she also supports LGBTQ+ rights, abortion rights, and good governance, and co-founded the citizen collective NOU PAP DÒMI in 2018, emerging from the PetroCaribe mobilization movement to fight corruption and impunity in Haiti.
Marie Lunix Hogla Cerisier
General secretary
General secretary of NÈGÈS MAWON, and one of the voices of its reproductive justice work.
At the first Menstruation Fair in Haiti, held with RÈG Ayiti on Place Saint-Pierre in May 2026, she put the organization’s demand plainly: that the authorities recognize menstrual dignity as a fundamental right, and that Haiti legislate on menstrual leave.
Advisory Council
Amina Doherty
Head of Programs and Impact, Clara Lionel Foundation
Amina Doherty is a globally respected philanthropic strategist and senior advisor with more than two decades of experience helping institutions invest in social change.
She currently serves as Head of Programs and Impact at the Clara Lionel Foundation, where she leads strategy and oversees funding that supports community resilience and expands access to opportunity across the Caribbean and the U.S. South.
Déborah Douyon
Political Scientist and Feminist Activist
Déborah Douyon is a Haitian Feminist and political activist. She is pursuing a master’s degree in comparative politics at the University of Bordeaux after studying law and political science. Her areas of interest include the social history of ideas, systems of political thought, and international relations, particularly at the regional level.
Yanick Lahens
Writer
Yanick Lahens is a writer, teacher, and leading intellectual figure in contemporary Haitian literature. She studied literature at the Sorbonne, taught at the State University, and has been actively involved in the cultural and educational landscape, particularly in support of the Creole language and youth. Her powerful literary body of work, comprising novels, short stories, and essays, lucidly depicts the political and social realities and the collective memory of her country. Internationally recognized, she won the Prix Fémina in 2014 for Bain de lune, became the first holder of the “Mondes francophones” chair at the Collège de France in 2019, and received the Grand Prix du roman from the Académie française in 2025 for her novel Passagères de nuit.
Rosy Auguste Ducéna
Lawyer, Human rights activist
Rosy Auguste Ducéna is a Haitian lawyer and a leading activist who has been committed to defending human rights in Haiti for more than twenty years. As program director at the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), one of the country’s most influential organizations, she dedicates her life to documenting abuses, supporting victims, and fighting impunity. Recognized for her unwavering determination both nationally and internationally, she regularly speaks on behalf of Haitian civil society before high-level bodies, such as the U.S. Congress, to denounce gang violence and the collapse of security. For this passionate lawyer, her work is a true calling, guided by a profound philosophy: “In the defense of human rights, giving up means abandoning the victims.”
Patricia Jean
Event planner
On weekdays, you’ll find Patricia at her desk drafting and implementing strategic plans, communications plans, and funding proposals for important organizations that reflect her values, such as Feminist organizations and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender organizations. In the late afternoon and on weekends, you can find Patricia in two other places: either in her backyard planting vegetables and tending to her chickens, rabbits, and goats, or at the Cinéma Mobile Summer School, where she encourages young people to use art and their cell phones as tools for social change.
Rose-Berthe Augustin
Lawyer
Rose-Berthe Augustin is a prominent Haitian lawyer, researcher, and Feminist activist, recognized for her steadfast commitment to Women’s rights and social justice in Haiti. With a bachelor’s degree in legal studies from Quisqueya University and a master’s degree in economic law from Paul Cézanne University (Aix-Marseille III), she applies her legal expertise to family law reform and the fight against gender-based violence. Her expertise and leadership have earned her a seat as an advisor on the Council of the Port-au-Prince Bar Association, while she has also been appointed as a conciliator with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), making her an indispensable voice in contemporary law and activism in Haiti.
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