http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/HG_Lissade/top-ten-private-initiativ_b_797372_71331484.html
We all know the U.N., Red Cross, CARE, UNICEF, Doctors without Borders, Habitat for Humanity, Mercy Corps -- but what about smaller, private initiatives of the international community in Haiti? Individually, their efforts are tremendous. Collectively, they are of staggering importance. In the fields of agriculture, the arts, children and orphans, education, health, housing, microfinance, and reforestation, private initiatives are in the trenches helping to build the new Haiti.
Workers for Yéle Corps are employed four weeks at a time, with a long waiting list for jobs
as they come vacant. The majority of workers come from tent camps, and in most cases
the income they receive supports an extended family. Photo: Yéle Haiti / Sebastian Petion.
Recently, at the suggestion of Congressman Ben Gilman, I coordinated the leadership of select private initiative efforts in Haiti to meet, hosted by Bob Cushman of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Sixteen global citizens participated, with another six requesting updates. The informative and inspiring meeting has led to the planning of a press conference to keep the spotlight on HOPE for Haiti -- not the continuing hell and horror of debris, disease, and destruction. Noting donor fatigue at the endless cycle of bad news, the group will focus on what positive accomplishments and possibilities exist..
Top Private Initiatives in Haiti - 2010-11
1. Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti (Deschapelles)
2. International University Center Haiti (2011, Léogâne)
3. YMCA Haiti (Port-au-Prince)
4. Yéle Haiti (national)
Children help to transplant trees grown by their parents in the Yéle Vert nursery near
Gonaives. Like the other five nurseries that make up the Yéle Vert program in the Gonaives
area, this nursery is run by local farmers. Photo credit: Yéle Haiti / Sebastian Petion.
Hugh Locke, President of the Yéle Haiti, shared with me three markers of progress there:
There is good news from Haiti, but it does not make it past the overwhelming bad news that is defining how the country is perceived abroad. For some balance, I would like to share three good news stories from Yéle Haiti.
Yéle Vert combines tree planting (close to 400,000 planted so far this year) by farmers with an agricultural service to these same farmers that provides them with seed, fertilizer, tools and training to help improve crop yields. In January the program will be at full capacity and producing one million trees a year.
Yéle Corps provides jobs for 2,000 people from tent camps and poor neighborhoods to clean streets and canals, giving both dignity and income to those directly affected by the earthquake. Beginning in January, the program is expanding to include vocational training for 120 people at a time to learn carpentry, masonry and plumbing.
Nutrition for Kids employs peasant farmers to grow fresh vegetables that are delivered weekly to 21 orphanages, expanding within the next few weeks to around 40 orphanages and a total of around 2,000 children.
Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti in Deschapelles was started by the Mellon family in 1947.
Some of my friends think it is absurd to think about the arts in Haiti at this time. As the leadership of the Smithsonian Institute realized the day the earthquake hit, it would be absurd not to. Haiti will recover, and needs the arts for its sense of identity, satisfaction from beauty itself, and for commerce - tourism and gallery sales. The art scenes have been in Pétionville and Jacmel, but I predict that Léogâne will now become the third legs of the arts stool.
Sandy Mitchell, executive director of the International YMCA based in New York, told me:
There are certainly countless areas in which Haiti can benefit from support from the international community. In addition to all the very basic survival needs that still confront a significant portion of the Haitian population on a daily basis, I believe a key to long-term success in rebuilding the country is to focus on various forms of education, youth leadership development and the reinforcement of a culture of community service and responsibility.
This is not something to be imposed from outside but rather to be modeled hand-in-hand with our Haitian counterparts. Desperate situations can lead people to take desperate and often destructive and lawless actions. Positive role models, on the other hand, can help counter this and to tip the balance from feelings of hopelessness to hope, from fear and frustration to confidence that there is a better future, and from anger and despair to pride that positive change is possible by seeing real examples and actively engaging in the betterment of the community.
The YMCA of Haiti opened in Port-au-Prince in 2010 and plans for Léogâne in 2011.
Sandy continued:
Young people tend to be at the forefront of major societal changes and for that reason it is especially important for the youth of Haiti to find positive outlets and opportunities, and see positive role models. They are the future leaders and that leadership is being shaped now by what they see around them. They need hope; initiatives such as innovative approaches to formal and informal education and health care, the restoration or reintroduction of cultural outlets, the use of green architecture and agriculture, the inclusion of people from all walks of life in initiatives to improve community life, and the creation of small businesses can provide that hope for a brighter future.
As an organization present in over 120 countries, the YMCA has been addressing pressing social challenges and serving local community needs for more than 160 years. The YMCA of Haiti is a wonderful example of a Haitian organization which, with the support of other YMCAs, has continued to provide services to children, youth and families, including services to displaced individuals and those physically impacted.
We welcome the opportunity that this creative initiative to build The New Haiti offers for gaining synergy through more integrated efforts of many organizations. This will enable us all to expand the impact in the local community and prepare a path that does offer promise for the future.
Haiti's "peasant" cooperatives are a source of enormous organization and strength.
Agriculture & Reforestation
1. Coffee Growers Cooperative (COOPCAB; Belle Anse)
2. Leogane Agricultural Cooperative(Léogâne)
3. Factory Residential Cooperative
Former Haitian Ambassador Marcel Duret, now involved with the Haitian Coffee Growers Cooperative (COOPCAB), commented on the progress of the New York leadership for helping build The New Haiti:
The untold story of a multitude of small and medium size NGOs which have been involved in Haiti for years is quite a revealing one. Indeed, successes abound namely in the rural areas where thousands and thousands of families have been empowered by the technical and financial supports of NGOs all over the country.
While thousand others joined the effort of the revival of Haiti after the January 12 earthquake, criticism arose about the lack of coordination among them. It is refreshing and promising that some of them have joined forces to exchange ideas and coordinate their actions and therefore avoid duplications and the waste of energy and resources.
I salute this initiative wholeheartedly and I hereby promise my full commitment to the New York leadership for helping build The New Haiti.
Ciné Institute of Jacmel is a leading cultural institution in Haiti.
Arts
1. Ciné Institute, Haiti (Jacmel)
2. International Museum of Art (2011, Léogâne)
3. International Film Institute (2011, Léogâne)
4. International Library of Haiti (2011, Léogâne)
Children
1. Achilles Kids (2011, Léogâne)
2. Orphans International Worldwide (Léogâne)
l'Ecole de la Rédemption in Léogâne carried on post-quake in 17 tents.
Education
1. Allied Health Studies Institute (Léogâne)
2. Inter-university Institute for Research and Development (INURED; P-a-P)
3. l'Ecole de la Rédemption (Léogâne)
4. Teach The World On-Line (Port-au-Prince)
NPH Saint Damien Hospital Haiti in Port-au-Prince is Haiti's leading pediatric hospital.
Health
1. NPH Saint Damien Hospital Haiti (P-a-P)
2. L'Hôpital Ste Croix de Léogâne (Léogâne)
3. Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasante Haiti)
Jurate Kazickas, one of my own personal heroes and founder of Teach The World On-Line Haiti, explained to me:
Teach the World Online knows, as does everyone analyzing the situation in Haiti, that education is the key to its future. However, the young people of this country may never receive the knowledge needed to find and create jobs in their homeland by relying on traditional classrooms with traditional teachers. Enough brick-and-mortar schools cannot be built fast enough and qualified local teachers won't be found in this generation to instruct the hundreds of thousands children who today are without schools in Haiti.
Only the efficient and cheap use of video conferencing technology between teachers based in other countries to students interacting via a computer over the Internet can deliver immediate and meaningful instruction to Haitian youngsters.
Teach The World Online delivers this kind of education combining the tools of the new technology, a multi-media interactive curriculum and a workforce of qualified and willing teachers who are able to instruct students from their homes, offices and schools in the U.S. and around the world. We need others to join us in this revolutionary approach to education in Haiti. There is no other way to go.
Rotary International is active across Haiti with an emphasis on clean water.
Housing
1. American Institute of Architects (Global Dialogues Committee)
2. GreenLight Innovations (2011, Léogâne)
World-renown architect Noushin Ehsan, chair of the AIANY Global Dialogues Committee, explained:
With our Collaborative Design for Sustainable Housing in Haiti program, we will unveil the six final designs the evening of January 12 at a benefit in the AIA offices on Waverly Place. The AIA is assisting in the creation of housing to be created for $1,000 per home. The models homes are expected to be built for $5,000 each in both Petite Goâve and Léogâne. The Committee needs to raise $30,000 to build the six chosen prototype designs. An additional $30,000 would build the second set in Léogâne.
Microfinance
1. Fédération des Caisses (national)
2. Fonkoze (national)(story)
3. Konsèy Nasyonal Finansman Popilè (national)
4. Zafèn (national)(story)
My old friend Katleen Félix, Diaspora representative for the Haitian microfinance institution Fonkoze and leader of the sustainable economic development effort Zafèn, shared with me:
I learned from Father Joseph, founder of Fonkoze, that the 15 years of success of the organization is based on five founding principles: "1) Women constitute the backbone of the economy of Haiti. 2) You can't just give a woman a loan and then send her on her way - you have to accompany her as she struggles her way out of poverty. 3) All Haitians deserve a chance to participate in the development of their country. 4) A political democracy cannot survive without an economic democracy. 5) Nothing in Haiti can be effective without the endorsement and support of the Haitians living in the Diaspora, for it is those Haitians who keep the economy of Haiti afloat through the remittances they send home."
For me, the Haitian Diaspora and the Haitian Hometown Associations (HHTAs) are often the forgotten link of the development equation. They also have important support and economic development projects in Haiti's rural areas. Fonkoze recognized that link since its founding and has been facilitating transfers for more than ten years at a very low price through its network of 43 branches around the country.
Over the last four years Fonkoze, with the support of IDB and IFAD, has opened an active dialogue with the leaders of the Haitian Diaspora. Zafèn is the result of this dialogue, after the video conference on financial training of trainers of April 2009, we followed up with some recommendations made after the simultaneous workshops in Boston, Miami, New York, and Port-au-Prince.
One of the recommendations was to have Fonkoze to identify productive projects and business in the regions that Diaspora could invest in. Fonkoze, the Vincentian Family, DePaul University, and the Haitian Hometown Associations Resource Group have developed Zafen to facilitate participation of the Haitian Diaspora and friends of Haiti in sustainable projects and Small and Medium Enterprises in rural Haiti.
We have already identified HHTAs doing great work in various parts of the country with grassroots organizations. Since April, we have found more than $200,000 in loans for SMEs and social projects in rural Area. Of course, our focus is not only the Diaspora link. We are looking for small and medium around social enterprises the country that are creditworthy and are potentially sustainable.
The idea is to support jobs creation and return to our communities to stimulate economic growth in rural areas. The Haitian Diaspora has been trying with their personal resources to do just that for years. With Zafèn, we are giving them a tool to strengthen their efforts for their region of origin and find financial or non-financial support of friends of Haiti through their journey.
U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Merten with Secretary of State Clinton and entourage.
I asked U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten, who studied French from my father, to comment on our coalition. The Ambassador told me via e-mail:
As I have seen over the course of twenty-three years of involvement in Haiti, the Haitian people have achieved much in the face of many challenges, including coups, an embargo, and natural disasters.
And while the needs remain great, activities from NGO and other private actors, coordinated with the Haitian government and civil society, can complement the efforts of donor nations and multilateral organizations to help the Haitian people realize their dream of a more prosperous future.
Yéle Haiti provides fresh vegetables every week to approximately 1,000 children
in orphanages throughout Port-au-Prince and nearby Kenscoff. The vegetables are
grown by peasant farmers who are part of the 6,000-member farming cooperative
that is supported by a grant from Yéle. Photo credit: Yéle Haiti / Sebastian Petion.
U.S. Foundation Support
1. James Jay Dudley Luce Foundation (New York)
2. Rotary International (Chicago)
3. We Can't Have That Foundation (New York)
I am thankful to the thought leaders, global citizens, and organizations helping Haiti such as Wyclef Jean, Anne Hastings of Fonkoze, and former first lady Mirlande Manigat. Given the economy and donor fatigue, every organization needs funding. However, I personally would rather fund an organization where I can see the impact of my gift. As the year-end approaches and we struggle with charitable contributions and holiday gifts, keep in mind that big is not necessarily better. Haiti needs hope -- and so many private initiatives doing so much could do even more -- with your support. There is so much hope for Haiti. Let's fund it.
See also by Jim Luce:
Join Us in Integrated Approach to Build The New Haiti
Jim Luce on Haiti
Jim Luce on International Development
Follow Jim Luce on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jimluce
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HG Lissade 10 minutes ago (10:46 PM) 0 Fans Follow
It’s heart warming that all of these NGO’s want to help the Haitian people. At this point in time they need all of the help they can get. But what is the exit plan for the NGO’s? Haiti has the most active number of NGO’s of any country in the world. NGO’s are a big business and the current state of Haiti helps sustain their structure. The vision should be a country where the Haitian people can take care of themselves, free of NGO’s. At least that’s our vision at Haiti Engineering. Otherwise the NGO’s will be in Haiti a hundred years from now and the people of Haiti will be no better off.
~HGL~
www.HaitiEngineering.org
Favorite (0) Flag as Abusive HG_Lissade: It�s heart warming that all of these NGO�s want to
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/HG_Lissade/top-ten-private-initiativ_b_797372_71331484.html
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Randy MontReynaud 08:58 PM on 12/16/2010 25 Fans Become a fan Unfan
Great words! and deeds! and, we're very very tiny. a dwop in the bokit, but please don't forget www.ifpigscouldflyhaiti.org --- Pigs Not Only Fly, THEY DELIVER!
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Haiti Cholera Outbreak 'Came from UN Camp'
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/07-11
Published on Tuesday, December 7, 2010 by Agence France-Presse
Haiti Cholera Outbreak 'Came from UN Camp'
PARIS - The cholera outbreak ravaging Haiti began at a camp for UN peacekeepers from Nepal, according to an expert report submitted to the French foreign ministry, a source close to the matter told AFP on Tuesday.
Haiti cholera outbreak 'came from UN camp'. (AFP)Respected French epidemiologist Professor Renaud Piarroux conducted a study in Haiti last month and concluded the epidemic began with an imported strain of the disease that could be traced back to the Nepalese base, the official said.
"The source of the infection came from the Nepalese camp," the source told AFP, speaking on condition on anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss a report that has not yet been made public.
"The starting point has been very precisely localised," he said, pointing to the UN base at Mirebalais on the Artibonite river in central Haiti.
"There is no other possible explanation given that there was no cholera in the country, and taking into account the intensity and the speed of the spread and the concentration of bacteria in the Artibonite delta," he said.
"The most logical explanation is the massive introduction of faecal matter into the Artibonite river on a single occasion," the source added.
The United Nations, which has faced violent protests in Haiti over its alleged role in an outbreak that has already killed 2,000 people and made 90,000 sick, insists there is no evidence that its troops were to blame.
Foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero did not reveal the conclusion of the report, but confirmed the foreign ministry had received a copy and said it had been passed on to the United Nations for investigation.
"From the outbreak of the epidemic, France sent to Haiti at the request of the Haitian health ministry one of its best cholera specialists, Professor Piarroux, a head of department in Marseille's public hospitals," he said.
Cholera has added to the woes of the impoverished Caribbean nation, which was devastated by a massive earthquake in January that killed a quarter of a million people and left 1.3 million living in ramshackle refugee camps.
Piarroux discussed his report in an interview with AFP last month. He did not directly blame the Nepalese, but said the cholera was from abroad.
"It started in the centre of the country, not by the sea, nor in the refugee camps. The epidemic can't be of local origin. That's to say, it was imported," he said, shortly after his return from Haiti.
Haitian officials say the first cases of cholera, a waterborne illness, broke out on the banks of the Artibonite river, downstream of the UN base.
Last month, Edmond Mulet, head of the United Nations mission in Haiti, said no UN soldier, police officer nor civilian official had tested positive for cholera, and he defended the Nepalese, who have been the target of protests.
All samples taken from the latrines, kitchens and water supply at the suspect Nepalese camp have proved negative, Mulet said.
"There is no scientific evidence that the camp at Mirebalais is the source of this epidemic," he said, complaining of "a lot of disinformation, a lot of rumours around this situation."
But Piarroux -- who works at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille -- told AFP that the outbreak was not linked to the earthquake devastation, and could not have come from a Haitian environmental source.
"The epidemic exploded in an extremely violent way on October 19, with several thousand cases and several hundreds deaths after many people drank the water of the Artibonite delta," he said.
The professor said the world had not seen cholera spread so quickly since an outbreak in Goma, in eastern Congo, in 1994. "We've had more than 70,000 cases, and we could easily see them hit 200,000," he warned.
Cholera is caused by bacteria spread in contaminated water or food, often through faeces. If untreated, it can kill within a day through dehydration, with the old and the young the most vulnerable.
© 2010 Agence France-Presse E-mail Print Share Close Twitter StumbleUpon Facebook Delicious Digg Newsvine Google Yahoo TechnoratiDiscuss
Posted in Haiti,
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vaialdiavolo December 7th, 2010 5:53 pm
How is it that faeces made it into the Artibonite River? Why is it that, apparently, no one bothered to consider the Haitian people who need water would be drinking from this river?
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Progressive101 December 7th, 2010 9:03 pm
And Fox as well as other networks made the Haitians out to be crazy for believing the cholera came from UN peacekeepers. M$M was more focused on the rioting than the cholera.
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echoes December 7th, 2010 9:37 pm
why was the us congress waiting till after the elections to distribute the aid money? They could have made water treatment plant in 11 months with the bilion aid pomised and housing too.
Login or register to post comments report this comment
clearbluesky December 8th, 2010 3:40 am
And why did they think no one would notice or even care? This might be a clue, it happens all the time and no one bothers to ask questions. There is a vaccine for cholera and treatment that is relatively inexpensive if administered early. This is a tragedy.
Login or register to post comments report this comment
Lucitanian December 8th, 2010 8:04 am
Haiti – The international community which is a sophisticated name for a bunch of major “western” governments with central banks all controlled by the same elite are using Haiti as their lab rat for experiments in extreme disaster capitalism. They need to make sure that they can stay in charge, and get even richer and more powerful, when they bring the rest of the world’s population down to the same level as Haiti today.
Assets will be repossessed and then they can start lending again to revalue the same stolen assets and so once again doubling or tripling their wealth by slight of hand and usury.
Their lab rat status is the price the Haitians must pay for having revolting against slavery those many years ago, something that we have not the courage to do. But in a way they might see it in a more positive light if they just realise that they have been given a jump start on us by having an early chance to learn to survive on virtually nothing and with everything and all the powers stacked against them.
Be prepared and mark my word. Where Haiti is today, the bankers and your government is sending you tomorrow.
If you think it is not a conspiracy,just have a listen to:
Sen Bernie Sanders Amazing Speech!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5OtB298fHY&feature=player_embedded#!
Login or register to post comments report this comment
jclientelle December 8th, 2010 1:45 pm
Clearly UN peacekeepers in this case are gunslingers who are not trained to understand nor to respect the plight and conditions of the people against whom they are enforcing the peace. Obviously they had little orientation and training in public health during a natural disaster. They imposed a man-made disaster on top of the destruction caused by the earthquake. There is little pretense that they are there to help with the real killers such as homelessness and lack of food and clean water, or the real robbers such as garment industry and agribusiness.
I will say again - the best chance for countries such as Haiti is for the big "Western" institutions, and our IMFs and our World Bank and our corporations and military to stay far away. We overthrow the better leaders and then suppress the people. We rob their land, disrupt their farming and set up dependence on unreliable charity. Given half a chance Haitians will solve their own problems.
If you want to help Haiti, try giving to non-interfering groups like Doctors Without Borders.
Published on Tuesday, December 7, 2010 by Agence France-Presse
Haiti Cholera Outbreak 'Came from UN Camp'
PARIS - The cholera outbreak ravaging Haiti began at a camp for UN peacekeepers from Nepal, according to an expert report submitted to the French foreign ministry, a source close to the matter told AFP on Tuesday.
Haiti cholera outbreak 'came from UN camp'. (AFP)Respected French epidemiologist Professor Renaud Piarroux conducted a study in Haiti last month and concluded the epidemic began with an imported strain of the disease that could be traced back to the Nepalese base, the official said.
"The source of the infection came from the Nepalese camp," the source told AFP, speaking on condition on anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss a report that has not yet been made public.
"The starting point has been very precisely localised," he said, pointing to the UN base at Mirebalais on the Artibonite river in central Haiti.
"There is no other possible explanation given that there was no cholera in the country, and taking into account the intensity and the speed of the spread and the concentration of bacteria in the Artibonite delta," he said.
"The most logical explanation is the massive introduction of faecal matter into the Artibonite river on a single occasion," the source added.
The United Nations, which has faced violent protests in Haiti over its alleged role in an outbreak that has already killed 2,000 people and made 90,000 sick, insists there is no evidence that its troops were to blame.
Foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero did not reveal the conclusion of the report, but confirmed the foreign ministry had received a copy and said it had been passed on to the United Nations for investigation.
"From the outbreak of the epidemic, France sent to Haiti at the request of the Haitian health ministry one of its best cholera specialists, Professor Piarroux, a head of department in Marseille's public hospitals," he said.
Cholera has added to the woes of the impoverished Caribbean nation, which was devastated by a massive earthquake in January that killed a quarter of a million people and left 1.3 million living in ramshackle refugee camps.
Piarroux discussed his report in an interview with AFP last month. He did not directly blame the Nepalese, but said the cholera was from abroad.
"It started in the centre of the country, not by the sea, nor in the refugee camps. The epidemic can't be of local origin. That's to say, it was imported," he said, shortly after his return from Haiti.
Haitian officials say the first cases of cholera, a waterborne illness, broke out on the banks of the Artibonite river, downstream of the UN base.
Last month, Edmond Mulet, head of the United Nations mission in Haiti, said no UN soldier, police officer nor civilian official had tested positive for cholera, and he defended the Nepalese, who have been the target of protests.
All samples taken from the latrines, kitchens and water supply at the suspect Nepalese camp have proved negative, Mulet said.
"There is no scientific evidence that the camp at Mirebalais is the source of this epidemic," he said, complaining of "a lot of disinformation, a lot of rumours around this situation."
But Piarroux -- who works at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille -- told AFP that the outbreak was not linked to the earthquake devastation, and could not have come from a Haitian environmental source.
"The epidemic exploded in an extremely violent way on October 19, with several thousand cases and several hundreds deaths after many people drank the water of the Artibonite delta," he said.
The professor said the world had not seen cholera spread so quickly since an outbreak in Goma, in eastern Congo, in 1994. "We've had more than 70,000 cases, and we could easily see them hit 200,000," he warned.
Cholera is caused by bacteria spread in contaminated water or food, often through faeces. If untreated, it can kill within a day through dehydration, with the old and the young the most vulnerable.
© 2010 Agence France-Presse E-mail Print Share Close Twitter StumbleUpon Facebook Delicious Digg Newsvine Google Yahoo TechnoratiDiscuss
Posted in Haiti,
6 Comments so farHide All
Comment viewing options
Flat list - collapsedFlat list - expandedThreaded list - collapsedThreaded list - expanded Date - newest firstDate - oldest first 10 comments per page30 comments per page50 comments per page70 comments per page90 comments per page150 comments per page200 comments per page250 comments per page300 comments per page
vaialdiavolo December 7th, 2010 5:53 pm
How is it that faeces made it into the Artibonite River? Why is it that, apparently, no one bothered to consider the Haitian people who need water would be drinking from this river?
Login or register to post comments report this comment
Progressive101 December 7th, 2010 9:03 pm
And Fox as well as other networks made the Haitians out to be crazy for believing the cholera came from UN peacekeepers. M$M was more focused on the rioting than the cholera.
Login or register to post comments report this comment
echoes December 7th, 2010 9:37 pm
why was the us congress waiting till after the elections to distribute the aid money? They could have made water treatment plant in 11 months with the bilion aid pomised and housing too.
Login or register to post comments report this comment
clearbluesky December 8th, 2010 3:40 am
And why did they think no one would notice or even care? This might be a clue, it happens all the time and no one bothers to ask questions. There is a vaccine for cholera and treatment that is relatively inexpensive if administered early. This is a tragedy.
Login or register to post comments report this comment
Lucitanian December 8th, 2010 8:04 am
Haiti – The international community which is a sophisticated name for a bunch of major “western” governments with central banks all controlled by the same elite are using Haiti as their lab rat for experiments in extreme disaster capitalism. They need to make sure that they can stay in charge, and get even richer and more powerful, when they bring the rest of the world’s population down to the same level as Haiti today.
Assets will be repossessed and then they can start lending again to revalue the same stolen assets and so once again doubling or tripling their wealth by slight of hand and usury.
Their lab rat status is the price the Haitians must pay for having revolting against slavery those many years ago, something that we have not the courage to do. But in a way they might see it in a more positive light if they just realise that they have been given a jump start on us by having an early chance to learn to survive on virtually nothing and with everything and all the powers stacked against them.
Be prepared and mark my word. Where Haiti is today, the bankers and your government is sending you tomorrow.
If you think it is not a conspiracy,just have a listen to:
Sen Bernie Sanders Amazing Speech!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5OtB298fHY&feature=player_embedded#!
Login or register to post comments report this comment
jclientelle December 8th, 2010 1:45 pm
Clearly UN peacekeepers in this case are gunslingers who are not trained to understand nor to respect the plight and conditions of the people against whom they are enforcing the peace. Obviously they had little orientation and training in public health during a natural disaster. They imposed a man-made disaster on top of the destruction caused by the earthquake. There is little pretense that they are there to help with the real killers such as homelessness and lack of food and clean water, or the real robbers such as garment industry and agribusiness.
I will say again - the best chance for countries such as Haiti is for the big "Western" institutions, and our IMFs and our World Bank and our corporations and military to stay far away. We overthrow the better leaders and then suppress the people. We rob their land, disrupt their farming and set up dependence on unreliable charity. Given half a chance Haitians will solve their own problems.
If you want to help Haiti, try giving to non-interfering groups like Doctors Without Borders.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
The future of the world in Haiti
The future of the world in Haiti
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
By Melanie Newton
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/commentary/the-future-of-the-world-in-haiti.html
Many who have followed Haiti's recent political history have a strong sense that the aftershocks of the Haitian earthquake will not be felt in Haiti alone. What happens now in Haiti is a question of world historical signifi cance.
This is not the fi rst time that events in Haiti have served as harbingers for the world's collective future. An anti-slavery and anti-colonial revolution of 1791-1804 created the independent state of Haiti as only the second independent country in the Americas. In giving birth to Haiti, the revolution transformed the sociopolitical landscape of the 19th-century Atlantic world, unleashing forces that would ultimately lead to the collapse of Atlantic slavery. In a repeat of history, the 2010 earthquake has the potential to transform politics in our own times, either for better, or -- if we fail to take the time to reflect deeply on the full meaning of what has happened -- for worse. Together with Haitians, we must all confront the daunting but inevitable question: how do we imagine the future in the face of a catastrophe of this scale?
On Jan. 25 representatives from several national governments, aid agencies and international donors will meet in Montreal to discuss the issue of the reconstruction of Haiti. It is crucial that such bodies, including the government of Canada, acknowledge some of their responsibility for contributing to the recent human catastrophe. The international community needs to base its contribution to reconstruction efforts on respect for Haiti's government and people, rather than the criminalization and unforgivable ignorance that has undergirded foreign engagements with Haiti since the revolution.
Over the years, western destabilization of Haiti has been fostered by a deep culture of racist paternalism. This is evidence of the failure of countries such as the United States, France and, yes, Canada, to come to terms fully with the legacies of their own support for the slavery that the Haitian Revolution so boldly rejected. Engagement with Haiti must be based on a recognition that Haitians do, in fact, know better than we do what is best for the country.
One of the most destabilizing aspects of Haiti's political history has been the use of aid and loans by powerful external donors in order to call the political shots, control Haiti's economy and facilitate the exploitation of its people. In the midst of this crisis, rather than repeatedly treating the Haitian government like a child who cannot be trusted with money, Canada should spearhead a new kind of engagement with Haiti's government based on respect, transparency and a genuine, non-partisan effort to build up the Haitian government's ability to provide services to its people. Foreign governments have repeatedly used the excuse that the Haitian government is too corrupt to be trusted with these funds. At the same time, these self-interested international actors have failed to reflect on their own role in manipulating such a climate of corruption.
The kleptocratic tendencies of Haiti's government were not a serious enough concern to stop billions of dollars being funnelled to Haiti's horrifically violent Duvalier dictatorship from 1957 to the 1980s so long as the Duvaliers remained a bulwark against the possibility of so called "communist" infi ltration of Haiti. Only when it became clear in the 1980s that the dictator had become a force destabilizing the country and damaging foreign interests there did the aid tap begin to dry up.
The first United States occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 laid part of the groundwork for the current disaster. In an effort to facilitate imperial political and foreign economic exploitation of rural areas, the Americans largely rebuilt the infrastructure of Haiti using the forced labour of Haitians. Ever since then the countryside has hemorrhaged people by the millions, creating most of the massive urban slums that dominate Port-au-Prince.
The political and economic infrastructure left behind by the Americans after 1934 was the primary means through which the r?ɬ�gime of Fran?ɬ�ois Duvalier, which came to power in 1957, was able to establish a degree of violent authoritarian control over Haiti previously impossible for any Haitian government. Under Duvalier the national infrastructure deteriorated and an environmental catastrophe caused by astounding impoverishment accelerated. This centralization of anti-democratic power is a fundamental reason why it has been so hard to transform the political landscape of Haiti and why it has been so diffi cult since the earthquake to bring aid to many devastated areas.
While the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince is crucial, foreign governments must prioritize working in a non-partisan fashion with Haiti's vast network of democratic and popular organizations to revitalize the rural agricultural economy and empower democratic structures and economic life across Haiti. This is a demand long articulated by environmentalists, intellectuals and pro-democracy activists in Haiti, and long ignored both by the Haitian government in Port-au-Prince and by the international community.
Such a reconstruction effort rooted in Haiti's own pro-democracy movements must also be accompanied by the recognition that there are no military solutions to Haiti's crisis. In common with other countries across the Americas that were born out of anti-colonial revolution, Haiti has struggled throughout its history with the challenge of removing the military from civilian government. Repeated foreign interventions have only served to destabilize Haiti and undermine the process of democratic reform. Neither the UN nor individual western countries has ever truly given civilian government in Haiti the support that it requires. The current U.S. and Canadian policy of militarizing Haiti, rather than focusing on public lines of communication with and support for the democratically elected civilian government of Ren?ɬ� Pr?ɬ�val, is a disturbing return to bad habits.
Last, and most important, reconstruction efforts must aim at eliminating Haiti's terrible reality of la mis?ɬ�re, the Haitian Kr?ɬ�yol word for the abject poverty that dominates the lives of most Haitians. As long as Haiti remains one of the world's most socio-economically unequal countries, reconstruction efforts in Haiti are likely to re-create the structures exacerbating the current catastrophe. This is not the time to use Haiti as a testing ground for neo-liberal economic policies or to tie the hands of the Haitian government with debt as it tries to rebuild. This would be a recipe for social, political and economic disaster.
For all of these reasons, the future of Haiti is an issue of basic human justice, not just humanitarian concern. Together with Haitians, we all have a chance to imagine a different and more democratic future. Nothing that Haitians demand of their government or the world is particularly utopian -- these are the basic elements of meaningful democratic government and active citizenship.
Melanie Newton is an associate professor of history.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
By Melanie Newton
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/commentary/the-future-of-the-world-in-haiti.html
Many who have followed Haiti's recent political history have a strong sense that the aftershocks of the Haitian earthquake will not be felt in Haiti alone. What happens now in Haiti is a question of world historical signifi cance.
This is not the fi rst time that events in Haiti have served as harbingers for the world's collective future. An anti-slavery and anti-colonial revolution of 1791-1804 created the independent state of Haiti as only the second independent country in the Americas. In giving birth to Haiti, the revolution transformed the sociopolitical landscape of the 19th-century Atlantic world, unleashing forces that would ultimately lead to the collapse of Atlantic slavery. In a repeat of history, the 2010 earthquake has the potential to transform politics in our own times, either for better, or -- if we fail to take the time to reflect deeply on the full meaning of what has happened -- for worse. Together with Haitians, we must all confront the daunting but inevitable question: how do we imagine the future in the face of a catastrophe of this scale?
On Jan. 25 representatives from several national governments, aid agencies and international donors will meet in Montreal to discuss the issue of the reconstruction of Haiti. It is crucial that such bodies, including the government of Canada, acknowledge some of their responsibility for contributing to the recent human catastrophe. The international community needs to base its contribution to reconstruction efforts on respect for Haiti's government and people, rather than the criminalization and unforgivable ignorance that has undergirded foreign engagements with Haiti since the revolution.
Over the years, western destabilization of Haiti has been fostered by a deep culture of racist paternalism. This is evidence of the failure of countries such as the United States, France and, yes, Canada, to come to terms fully with the legacies of their own support for the slavery that the Haitian Revolution so boldly rejected. Engagement with Haiti must be based on a recognition that Haitians do, in fact, know better than we do what is best for the country.
One of the most destabilizing aspects of Haiti's political history has been the use of aid and loans by powerful external donors in order to call the political shots, control Haiti's economy and facilitate the exploitation of its people. In the midst of this crisis, rather than repeatedly treating the Haitian government like a child who cannot be trusted with money, Canada should spearhead a new kind of engagement with Haiti's government based on respect, transparency and a genuine, non-partisan effort to build up the Haitian government's ability to provide services to its people. Foreign governments have repeatedly used the excuse that the Haitian government is too corrupt to be trusted with these funds. At the same time, these self-interested international actors have failed to reflect on their own role in manipulating such a climate of corruption.
The kleptocratic tendencies of Haiti's government were not a serious enough concern to stop billions of dollars being funnelled to Haiti's horrifically violent Duvalier dictatorship from 1957 to the 1980s so long as the Duvaliers remained a bulwark against the possibility of so called "communist" infi ltration of Haiti. Only when it became clear in the 1980s that the dictator had become a force destabilizing the country and damaging foreign interests there did the aid tap begin to dry up.
The first United States occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 laid part of the groundwork for the current disaster. In an effort to facilitate imperial political and foreign economic exploitation of rural areas, the Americans largely rebuilt the infrastructure of Haiti using the forced labour of Haitians. Ever since then the countryside has hemorrhaged people by the millions, creating most of the massive urban slums that dominate Port-au-Prince.
The political and economic infrastructure left behind by the Americans after 1934 was the primary means through which the r?ɬ�gime of Fran?ɬ�ois Duvalier, which came to power in 1957, was able to establish a degree of violent authoritarian control over Haiti previously impossible for any Haitian government. Under Duvalier the national infrastructure deteriorated and an environmental catastrophe caused by astounding impoverishment accelerated. This centralization of anti-democratic power is a fundamental reason why it has been so hard to transform the political landscape of Haiti and why it has been so diffi cult since the earthquake to bring aid to many devastated areas.
While the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince is crucial, foreign governments must prioritize working in a non-partisan fashion with Haiti's vast network of democratic and popular organizations to revitalize the rural agricultural economy and empower democratic structures and economic life across Haiti. This is a demand long articulated by environmentalists, intellectuals and pro-democracy activists in Haiti, and long ignored both by the Haitian government in Port-au-Prince and by the international community.
Such a reconstruction effort rooted in Haiti's own pro-democracy movements must also be accompanied by the recognition that there are no military solutions to Haiti's crisis. In common with other countries across the Americas that were born out of anti-colonial revolution, Haiti has struggled throughout its history with the challenge of removing the military from civilian government. Repeated foreign interventions have only served to destabilize Haiti and undermine the process of democratic reform. Neither the UN nor individual western countries has ever truly given civilian government in Haiti the support that it requires. The current U.S. and Canadian policy of militarizing Haiti, rather than focusing on public lines of communication with and support for the democratically elected civilian government of Ren?ɬ� Pr?ɬ�val, is a disturbing return to bad habits.
Last, and most important, reconstruction efforts must aim at eliminating Haiti's terrible reality of la mis?ɬ�re, the Haitian Kr?ɬ�yol word for the abject poverty that dominates the lives of most Haitians. As long as Haiti remains one of the world's most socio-economically unequal countries, reconstruction efforts in Haiti are likely to re-create the structures exacerbating the current catastrophe. This is not the time to use Haiti as a testing ground for neo-liberal economic policies or to tie the hands of the Haitian government with debt as it tries to rebuild. This would be a recipe for social, political and economic disaster.
For all of these reasons, the future of Haiti is an issue of basic human justice, not just humanitarian concern. Together with Haitians, we all have a chance to imagine a different and more democratic future. Nothing that Haitians demand of their government or the world is particularly utopian -- these are the basic elements of meaningful democratic government and active citizenship.
Melanie Newton is an associate professor of history.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
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Sunday, November 28, 2010
Major candidates call for halt to Haiti election
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Election in Haiti beset by cholera, confusion
Skirmishes raise specter of violent Haiti election
By JONATHAN M. KATZ and BEN FOX
Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Haiti's election ended in discord Sunday, with nearly all the major presidential candidates calling for the vote to be voided over fraud and U.N. peacekeepers lamenting "numerous incidents that marred the elections."
Sunday evening found crowds surging through the streets carrying tree branches and campaign posters, some protesting problems with the balloting but most jubilantly claiming victory for their candidates.
Twelve of the 19 candidates for president endorsed a joint statement denouncing the voting as fraudulent and calling on their supporters to show their anger with demonstrations against the government and the country's Provisional Electoral Council, known as the CEP.
"It is clear that the government of Rene Preval, in agreement with the CEP, is putting into execution the plan hatched to tamper with the elections ... with the help of the official political party and its candidate, Jude Celestin," independent candidate Anne Marie Josette Bijou read as nearly every other candidate nodded in agreement.
The statement included all of the major contenders but one: Jude Celestin, who is backed by the Unity party of President Rene Preval.
Preval twice sailed into office with the backing of ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's supporters, but was branded a traitor for not returning his predecessor from exile. Frustrations grew as Haiti's economy remained one of the world's worst. When the laconic leader disappeared from sight following the Jan. 12 earthquake, frustration boiled into anger.
Until tapped as a candidate by Preval, Celestin was the little-known head of the state-run construction company whose dump trucks carted many of the quake's estimated 300,000 dead to mass graves. His well-funded campaign, the first under Preval's newly created party, included airplanes trailing banners with his name and dropping leaflets that fluttered like yellow-and-green birds over tent camps for the quake homeless.
A text message sent to Haitian cell phones Saturday summed up the primary message of Celestin's campaign: "Let's assure stability." His campaign workers already referred to him as "The President."
But support for the other candidates was far more passionate. Some opinion polls put Mirlande Manigat, 70-year-old former first lady whose husband was helped to power and then deposed by a military junta, as the likely winner. Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, known for jazzy, sarcastic dance music, had thousands of urban youths toting his pink signs and shouting to "Vote for the bald head!"
In other races, ninety-six contenders were competing for 11 Senate seats and more than 800 others were seeking to fill the 99-seat lower house.
But the day was thrown into chaos around 2 p.m. when nearly the entire presidential ballot took the stage in the ballroom of an upscale hotel to roars from their followers. Individual cheers melded into a single chant of "Haiti! Haiti!" before the crowd burst into Haiti's national anthem.
The statement called on people to protest, concluding that the fraud was a ploy by "the corrupt government of Preval" to "perpetuate his power and keep the people hostage to continue their misery."
The crowd errupted in cheers and chanted "Arrest Preval!" as the rival candidates joined hands and raised their arms in triumph.
Demonstrators were already in the streets, some outside the gates of the hotel, as body-armored U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police moved out in trucks and a U.N. helicopter circled the election headquarters.
Thousands continued protesting peacefully into the night, some throwing rocks at police who fired back tear gas. People danced through the major cities of Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien, carrying posters of their candidates and chanting their names, most celebrating Martelly, the popular musician.
The electoral council never suspended voting, though the presence of protesters on the street from early afternoon likely affected turnout in the capital. In an evening news conference, the council praised the day's voting and denounced the candidates' protest, saying after repeated questioning from local media that the challenge was not a legal document.
"The CEP cannot accept things that are not formal and are not legal," said council official Pierre Louis Opont.
The officials said there had only been irregularities at 56 voting centers and said they would investigate them, but made it clear that the balloting would stand.
Swiping back at the challengers, Opont added: "If they declare that one of these candidates won, are they going to say they don't want to be elected?"
Preliminary results were not expected until Dec. 7, and all but the most confident supporters of individual candidates expected to see a run-off for races at all levels.
The international community expressed serious concern.
Representatives of the major international donors, including the ambassadors of the U.S., Canada, France and the European Union, met after the candidates declaration to discuss the situation, said Organization of American States Assistant Secretary-General Albert Ramdin, who is in Haiti to monitor the elections.
"We are all concerned about the possibility of violence because we don't want to see people lose lives in a process that should be democratic," Ramdin said.
The United Nations said that it "and the international community expressed their deep concern at the numerous incidents that marred the elections." The chief OAS/Caribbean Community observer, Colin Granderson, added that observers were "in the process of evaluating and analyzing the information gathered on the conduct of the vote."
Even before their reports are issued, the united front of so many presidential candidates cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the election, the first since the quake killed hundreds of thousands, destroyed much of the capital and sent the moribund economy into a tailspin.
Tensions are already high following a series of deadly clashes earlier this month between U.N. peacekeepers and demonstrators who suspected them of bringing a rapidly spreading cholera outbreak.
Voters throughout the country showed up at polling stations only to find them closed hours after their scheduled opening, or to be turned away because their names were not on lists. Even Celestin was initially turned away.
There were also sporadic reports of violence and intimidation, as well as a ballot box being stolen and its contents strewn about in the capital's Cite Soleil slum.
In the town of Grande Riu Du Nord, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) east of Cap-Haitien, youths sacked a polling station and scattered thousands of ballots. Photos obtained by the AP showed that some of the ballots apparently had been filled out. More were burned in a road. The motives in the attack were unknown.
Voter rolls were filled with the dead, and many living citizens were struggling to figure out if and where they could vote.
Observers from dozens of parties crowded voting areas and furious voters were turned away from stations where poll workers could not find their names on lists.
"I don't know if I'm going to come back later. If I come back later it might not be safe. That's why people vote early," said Ricardo Magloire, a Cap Haitien radio journalist whose polling station at a school was still not taking ballots after people had waited more than an hour.
At another voting place in the St. Philomene neighborhood, a woman complained that young men were taking advantage of the chaos to vote multiple times. The allegation could not be confirmed because a crowd of one candidate's supporters swarmed around two AP journalists and forced them to leave the area, threatening a photographer.
One man was shot to death at a polling place in rural Artibonite, Radio Vision 2000 reported, though no details were available.
The victor in all this gets a five-year term at the helm of a disastrous economy and leadership of an increasingly angry and suffering population worn down by decades of poverty, the earthquake, a recent hurricane and now a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 1,600 people.
Yet there is an unprecedented opportunity: the new president will oversee the largest capital spending spree in Haiti's history, the $10 billion pledged in foreign reconstruction aid after the quake. Very little of the money has been delivered so far, as many donor nations are waiting to see who will take over the government.
Donors also want to see if how the election goes off.
Associated Press writers Jonathan M. Katz reported this story in Port-au-Prince and Ben Fox in Cap-Haitien. AP writer Jacob Kushner in Port-au-Prince also contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/28/v-fullstory/1946745/election-in-haiti-beset-by-cholera.html#ixzz16eOW2lo1
Election in Haiti beset by cholera, confusion
Skirmishes raise specter of violent Haiti election
By JONATHAN M. KATZ and BEN FOX
Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Haiti's election ended in discord Sunday, with nearly all the major presidential candidates calling for the vote to be voided over fraud and U.N. peacekeepers lamenting "numerous incidents that marred the elections."
Sunday evening found crowds surging through the streets carrying tree branches and campaign posters, some protesting problems with the balloting but most jubilantly claiming victory for their candidates.
Twelve of the 19 candidates for president endorsed a joint statement denouncing the voting as fraudulent and calling on their supporters to show their anger with demonstrations against the government and the country's Provisional Electoral Council, known as the CEP.
"It is clear that the government of Rene Preval, in agreement with the CEP, is putting into execution the plan hatched to tamper with the elections ... with the help of the official political party and its candidate, Jude Celestin," independent candidate Anne Marie Josette Bijou read as nearly every other candidate nodded in agreement.
The statement included all of the major contenders but one: Jude Celestin, who is backed by the Unity party of President Rene Preval.
Preval twice sailed into office with the backing of ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's supporters, but was branded a traitor for not returning his predecessor from exile. Frustrations grew as Haiti's economy remained one of the world's worst. When the laconic leader disappeared from sight following the Jan. 12 earthquake, frustration boiled into anger.
Until tapped as a candidate by Preval, Celestin was the little-known head of the state-run construction company whose dump trucks carted many of the quake's estimated 300,000 dead to mass graves. His well-funded campaign, the first under Preval's newly created party, included airplanes trailing banners with his name and dropping leaflets that fluttered like yellow-and-green birds over tent camps for the quake homeless.
A text message sent to Haitian cell phones Saturday summed up the primary message of Celestin's campaign: "Let's assure stability." His campaign workers already referred to him as "The President."
But support for the other candidates was far more passionate. Some opinion polls put Mirlande Manigat, 70-year-old former first lady whose husband was helped to power and then deposed by a military junta, as the likely winner. Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, known for jazzy, sarcastic dance music, had thousands of urban youths toting his pink signs and shouting to "Vote for the bald head!"
In other races, ninety-six contenders were competing for 11 Senate seats and more than 800 others were seeking to fill the 99-seat lower house.
But the day was thrown into chaos around 2 p.m. when nearly the entire presidential ballot took the stage in the ballroom of an upscale hotel to roars from their followers. Individual cheers melded into a single chant of "Haiti! Haiti!" before the crowd burst into Haiti's national anthem.
The statement called on people to protest, concluding that the fraud was a ploy by "the corrupt government of Preval" to "perpetuate his power and keep the people hostage to continue their misery."
The crowd errupted in cheers and chanted "Arrest Preval!" as the rival candidates joined hands and raised their arms in triumph.
Demonstrators were already in the streets, some outside the gates of the hotel, as body-armored U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police moved out in trucks and a U.N. helicopter circled the election headquarters.
Thousands continued protesting peacefully into the night, some throwing rocks at police who fired back tear gas. People danced through the major cities of Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien, carrying posters of their candidates and chanting their names, most celebrating Martelly, the popular musician.
The electoral council never suspended voting, though the presence of protesters on the street from early afternoon likely affected turnout in the capital. In an evening news conference, the council praised the day's voting and denounced the candidates' protest, saying after repeated questioning from local media that the challenge was not a legal document.
"The CEP cannot accept things that are not formal and are not legal," said council official Pierre Louis Opont.
The officials said there had only been irregularities at 56 voting centers and said they would investigate them, but made it clear that the balloting would stand.
Swiping back at the challengers, Opont added: "If they declare that one of these candidates won, are they going to say they don't want to be elected?"
Preliminary results were not expected until Dec. 7, and all but the most confident supporters of individual candidates expected to see a run-off for races at all levels.
The international community expressed serious concern.
Representatives of the major international donors, including the ambassadors of the U.S., Canada, France and the European Union, met after the candidates declaration to discuss the situation, said Organization of American States Assistant Secretary-General Albert Ramdin, who is in Haiti to monitor the elections.
"We are all concerned about the possibility of violence because we don't want to see people lose lives in a process that should be democratic," Ramdin said.
The United Nations said that it "and the international community expressed their deep concern at the numerous incidents that marred the elections." The chief OAS/Caribbean Community observer, Colin Granderson, added that observers were "in the process of evaluating and analyzing the information gathered on the conduct of the vote."
Even before their reports are issued, the united front of so many presidential candidates cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the election, the first since the quake killed hundreds of thousands, destroyed much of the capital and sent the moribund economy into a tailspin.
Tensions are already high following a series of deadly clashes earlier this month between U.N. peacekeepers and demonstrators who suspected them of bringing a rapidly spreading cholera outbreak.
Voters throughout the country showed up at polling stations only to find them closed hours after their scheduled opening, or to be turned away because their names were not on lists. Even Celestin was initially turned away.
There were also sporadic reports of violence and intimidation, as well as a ballot box being stolen and its contents strewn about in the capital's Cite Soleil slum.
In the town of Grande Riu Du Nord, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) east of Cap-Haitien, youths sacked a polling station and scattered thousands of ballots. Photos obtained by the AP showed that some of the ballots apparently had been filled out. More were burned in a road. The motives in the attack were unknown.
Voter rolls were filled with the dead, and many living citizens were struggling to figure out if and where they could vote.
Observers from dozens of parties crowded voting areas and furious voters were turned away from stations where poll workers could not find their names on lists.
"I don't know if I'm going to come back later. If I come back later it might not be safe. That's why people vote early," said Ricardo Magloire, a Cap Haitien radio journalist whose polling station at a school was still not taking ballots after people had waited more than an hour.
At another voting place in the St. Philomene neighborhood, a woman complained that young men were taking advantage of the chaos to vote multiple times. The allegation could not be confirmed because a crowd of one candidate's supporters swarmed around two AP journalists and forced them to leave the area, threatening a photographer.
One man was shot to death at a polling place in rural Artibonite, Radio Vision 2000 reported, though no details were available.
The victor in all this gets a five-year term at the helm of a disastrous economy and leadership of an increasingly angry and suffering population worn down by decades of poverty, the earthquake, a recent hurricane and now a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 1,600 people.
Yet there is an unprecedented opportunity: the new president will oversee the largest capital spending spree in Haiti's history, the $10 billion pledged in foreign reconstruction aid after the quake. Very little of the money has been delivered so far, as many donor nations are waiting to see who will take over the government.
Donors also want to see if how the election goes off.
Associated Press writers Jonathan M. Katz reported this story in Port-au-Prince and Ben Fox in Cap-Haitien. AP writer Jacob Kushner in Port-au-Prince also contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/28/v-fullstory/1946745/election-in-haiti-beset-by-cholera.html#ixzz16eOW2lo1
Haiti Engineering Strategic Plan
Our Strategic plan is available on line. Please use the link below:
http://www.haitiengineering.org/media/Haiti%20Engineering%20Strategic%20Plan%207-26-10.pdf
~HGL~
http://www.haitiengineering.org/media/Haiti%20Engineering%20Strategic%20Plan%207-26-10.pdf
~HGL~
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Haiti: Grants to repay an odious debt ?
Haiti: Grants to repay an odious debt ?
18 January by Sophie Perchellet, Éric Toussaint
There is a great risk that one of the largest relief operations in history will be similar in nature to the tsunami relief efforts in 2004, unless a radically different approach to a reconstruction model is adopted. Haiti was partially destroyed by an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale. We have all shed tears and the media, as they bombard us with apocalyptic images, report on financial pledges generous States have made. We know that Haiti needs to be rebuilt, this country hard-hit by poverty and “its curse”. Therefore, at the moment, the focus is on Haiti. Comments fail to look beyond the terrible earthquake. We are told that it is one of the poorest countries in the world without any explanations provided. We are led to believe that poverty just happened, that it is a situation beyond remedy: “Haiti is an accursed land”.
There is no doubt that this recent natural disaster has lead to considerable and unforeseeable material and human damage. Emergency aid is therefore needed and everyone can agree on this point. However, this earthquake was not the root cause of poverty and squalor. This country needs to be re-built because it has been stripped of its means to rebuild itself. Haiti is neither a free nor a sovereign country. In recent years, its domestic policy choices have been made by a government constantly under pressure by orders coming from outside the country and by manoeuvres carried out by the local elites.
At best, Haiti is described as a violent, poor and repressive country. There are few comments remembering the independence gained in 1804, after a hard-fought struggle against Napoleon’s French armies. Rather than focusing on their humane approach and their fight for Human Rights, savagery and violence are the traits attributed to Haitians. Eduardo Galeano talks about “the white curse.” “At the border where the Dominican Republic ends and Haiti begins, there is a large sign with the following warning: The bad path. On the other side, it is black hell. Blood and hunger, poverty, plagues |1|.”
It is therefore necessary to look back at the struggle for emancipation waged by the Haitian population, because in retaliation against this double-faceted revolution, both anti-slavery and anti-colonial in nature, the country inherited the ransom France demanded for independence, amounting to 150 million francs (that is, France’s annual budget at the time). In 1825, France decided that “The current inhabitants of the French part of Santo Domingo will pay into France’s Federal deposit and consignment offices, the sum of one hundred and fifty million francs, to be paid in five instalments, year after year, with the first term due 31 December 1825. The money will be used to compensate the former colonists who will demand compensation. |2| ” That is equivalent to approximately 21 billion dollars nowadays. From the outset Haiti had to pay a very high price. Debt became the neo-colonial instrument used to maintain access to this country’s many natural resources.
The payment of this ransom is therefore the founding element of the Haitian State. In legal terms, this means that it was contracted by a despotic regime and this contract was used against the interests of the people. First France, then the United States, whose sphere of influence expanded to Haiti from 1915, are entirely responsible for this.
Now, whilst it would have been possible to face up to their painful responsibilities of the past in 2004, the Régis Debray Commission |3| report preferred to scrap the idea of repaying this sum on the pretext that it was “legally unfounded” and that this action would open a “Pandora’s box.” The Haitian government’s request was rejected by France: no compensation was warranted. Moreover, France does not recognize the role it played in the shameful present it gave to the dictator in exile “Baby Doc” Duvalier, by granting him political refugee status and thus, immunity.
The Duvaliers’ rule began with the help of the United States in 1957: it lasted till 1986, when the son “Baby Doc” was thrown out of power by a popular uprising. The violent dictatorship, broadly supported by Western countries, ravaged the country for almost 30 years. It was marked by an exponential growth in its debt. Between 1957 and 1986, foreign debt had multiplied by 17.5. At the time Duvalier fled, it amounted to 750 million dollars. It then rose, through interest and penalties, to over 1,884 million dollars |4|. This debt, far from serving the interests of the impoverished population, was actually aimed at enriching the ruling regime: it is therefore an odious debt. A recent inquiry reveals that the Duvalier family’s personal wealth (well protected by their western bank accounts) amounted to 900 million dollars, or in other words, a greater sum than the total debt of the country at the time “Baby Doc” fled. A trial is currently taking place before the Swiss courts for the restitution of goods and assets to the state of Haiti, embezzled during the Duvalier dictatorship. For the moment, these assets remain frozen by the Swiss bank UBS, which has put forward unacceptable conditions for the restitution of these funds. |5| Jean-Bertrand Aristide, by contrast, was enthusiastically elected, however he was soon accused of corruption, before being put back in office as a United States puppet and finally ousted by the US army. So Aristide, unfortunately, is not innocent in relation to debt and embezzlement of funds. Furthermore, according to the World Bank, between 1995 and 2001, the debt service, that is to say capital and the reimbursed interests, had reached the considerable sum of 321 million dollars.
All current financial aid announced following the earthquake is already lost to the debt repayment!
According to recent estimates, the Inter-American Development Bank and the IMF, with 417.5 and 165 million dollars respectively, are the largest multilateral creditors of Haiti. The World Bank, in the meantime, stand in third place with loans amounting to 38.8 million dollars. Under their leadership, the government applied “structural adjustment plans”, now disguised as “Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers” (PRSP). In exchange for contracting more loans, Haiti has been given some insignificant amount of debt relief or cancellations, which cast the creditors in a positive light. The Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC), for which Haiti was accepted, is a typical odious-debt laundering manoeuvre, as was the case with the Democratic Republic of Congo |6|. Odious debt is replaced by new so-called legitimate loans. CADTM views these new loans as a key part of odious debt as they are used to pay off the old debt. The offence continues to be committed.
In 2006, when the IMF, the World Bank and the Paris Club accepted that the HIPC initiative include Haiti, the whole stock of public foreign debt totalled 1,337 million dollars. At the time of completion of the initiative (in June 2009), the debt totalled 1,884 million. The cancellation of a debt totalling 1,200 million dollars was decided so as to “make the debt bearable”. Meanwhile, the structural adjustment plans wreaked havoc, especially in the agricultural sector, the effects of which reached its peak at the time of the 2008 food crisis. Haitian peasant farming suffered from US agricultural goods dumping. “The macro-economic policies supported by Washington, the UN, the IMF and the World Bank do not concern themselves at all with the need to develop and protect domestic markets. The only concern of their policies is to produce at the lowest price for exportation on the global markets. |7|” It is therefore a scandal to hear the IMF say that they are, “ready to play their role with the appropriate support in these areas of competence. |8|”
As stated in the recent international appeal, “Haiti calls for solidarity and the respect for the sovereignty of the people”: “ Together with many Haitian organizations, over recent years we have denounced the military occupation of the country by United Nations (UN) troops and the impacts of the domination imposed via the mechanisms of debt, free trade, the looting of its natural habitat and the invasion of transnational interests. The vulnerability of the country to natural tragedies – provoked to a large extent by the environmental devastation, the non-existence of basic infrastructure, and the systematic weakening of the state’s capacity to act - should not be seen as something disconnected from these policies, which have historically undermined the sovereignty of the people.
Now is the time for the governments that form part of the MINUSTAH, the UN and in particular France and the United States, the governments of Latin America, to revise this action that is contrary to the basic needs of the Haitian people. We demand of those governments and international organizations that they substitute the military occupation with a true mission of solidarity, and that they take action to ensure the urgent cancellation of the debt that is still being collected of Haiti.” |9|
Irrespective of the debt issue, it is feared that the aid will take the same form as that provided after the tsunami hit several Asian countries at the end of December 2004 (Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh) or after cyclone Jeanne hit Haiti in 2004. Promises were not kept and a large part of the funds were used to line the pockets of foreign or local elites. The majority of these “generous donations” came from the creditor countries. Rather than giving donations, it would be preferable that they cancel Haiti’s debt: totally, unconditionally and immediately. Can we really speak of donations when we know that this most of this money will either be used to repay foreign debt or to implement “national development projects” decided on the basis of the interests of these creditors or local elites? It is clear that without these immediate donations, it will not be possible to secure repayment of this debt, at least half of which corresponds to odious debt. The major international conferences, whether G8 or G20 expanded to include IFIs, will not produce any progress whatsoever in terms of Haiti’s development rather, they will rebuild instruments to help them secure neo-colonial control of the country. The purpose is ensuring that debt repayments continue, the basis for submission, as has been the case since the recent debt relief initiatives.
On the contrary, in order for Haiti to rebuild itself in dignity, national sovereignty is the fundamental issue. A total and unconditional debt cancellation for Haiti must be the first step towards a more general course of action. A new alternative development model to the IFIs and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA signed in December 2009, the Hope II Accord…), is necessary and urgent. The most industrialized countries, which have systematically exploited Haiti, beginning with France and the United States, must pay compensation towards a fund aimed at financing the reconstruction of the country, controlled by the Haitian people’s organizations.
Translated by Francesca Denley in collaboration with Marie Lagatta.
Footnotes
|1| http://www.cadtm.org/Haiti-la-maled...
|2| http://www.haitijustice.com/jsite/i...
|3| http://www.haitijustice.com/jsite/i...
|4| http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft... (page 43)
|5| http://www.cadtm.org/Le-CADTM-exige...
|6| See the CADTM magazine, In favour of an audit of Congolese debt, Liège, 2007 online: http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?page=...
|7| See http://www.cadtm.org/Haiti-Le-gouve...
|8| http://www.liberation.fr/monde/0101...
|9| http://www.cadtm.org/Solidarity-and...
P.S.
Sophie Perchellet is vice-president of CADTM France. Eric Toussaint, president of CADTM Belgium (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, www.cadtm.org ). He is the author of Bank of the South. An Alternative to the IMF-World Bank, VAK, Mumbai, India, 2007; The World Bank, A Critical Primer, Pluto Press, Between The Lines, David Philip, London-Toronto-Cape Town 2008; Your Money or Your Life, The Tyranny of Global Finance, Haymarket, Chicago, 2005.
18 January by Sophie Perchellet, Éric Toussaint
There is a great risk that one of the largest relief operations in history will be similar in nature to the tsunami relief efforts in 2004, unless a radically different approach to a reconstruction model is adopted. Haiti was partially destroyed by an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale. We have all shed tears and the media, as they bombard us with apocalyptic images, report on financial pledges generous States have made. We know that Haiti needs to be rebuilt, this country hard-hit by poverty and “its curse”. Therefore, at the moment, the focus is on Haiti. Comments fail to look beyond the terrible earthquake. We are told that it is one of the poorest countries in the world without any explanations provided. We are led to believe that poverty just happened, that it is a situation beyond remedy: “Haiti is an accursed land”.
There is no doubt that this recent natural disaster has lead to considerable and unforeseeable material and human damage. Emergency aid is therefore needed and everyone can agree on this point. However, this earthquake was not the root cause of poverty and squalor. This country needs to be re-built because it has been stripped of its means to rebuild itself. Haiti is neither a free nor a sovereign country. In recent years, its domestic policy choices have been made by a government constantly under pressure by orders coming from outside the country and by manoeuvres carried out by the local elites.
At best, Haiti is described as a violent, poor and repressive country. There are few comments remembering the independence gained in 1804, after a hard-fought struggle against Napoleon’s French armies. Rather than focusing on their humane approach and their fight for Human Rights, savagery and violence are the traits attributed to Haitians. Eduardo Galeano talks about “the white curse.” “At the border where the Dominican Republic ends and Haiti begins, there is a large sign with the following warning: The bad path. On the other side, it is black hell. Blood and hunger, poverty, plagues |1|.”
It is therefore necessary to look back at the struggle for emancipation waged by the Haitian population, because in retaliation against this double-faceted revolution, both anti-slavery and anti-colonial in nature, the country inherited the ransom France demanded for independence, amounting to 150 million francs (that is, France’s annual budget at the time). In 1825, France decided that “The current inhabitants of the French part of Santo Domingo will pay into France’s Federal deposit and consignment offices, the sum of one hundred and fifty million francs, to be paid in five instalments, year after year, with the first term due 31 December 1825. The money will be used to compensate the former colonists who will demand compensation. |2| ” That is equivalent to approximately 21 billion dollars nowadays. From the outset Haiti had to pay a very high price. Debt became the neo-colonial instrument used to maintain access to this country’s many natural resources.
The payment of this ransom is therefore the founding element of the Haitian State. In legal terms, this means that it was contracted by a despotic regime and this contract was used against the interests of the people. First France, then the United States, whose sphere of influence expanded to Haiti from 1915, are entirely responsible for this.
Now, whilst it would have been possible to face up to their painful responsibilities of the past in 2004, the Régis Debray Commission |3| report preferred to scrap the idea of repaying this sum on the pretext that it was “legally unfounded” and that this action would open a “Pandora’s box.” The Haitian government’s request was rejected by France: no compensation was warranted. Moreover, France does not recognize the role it played in the shameful present it gave to the dictator in exile “Baby Doc” Duvalier, by granting him political refugee status and thus, immunity.
The Duvaliers’ rule began with the help of the United States in 1957: it lasted till 1986, when the son “Baby Doc” was thrown out of power by a popular uprising. The violent dictatorship, broadly supported by Western countries, ravaged the country for almost 30 years. It was marked by an exponential growth in its debt. Between 1957 and 1986, foreign debt had multiplied by 17.5. At the time Duvalier fled, it amounted to 750 million dollars. It then rose, through interest and penalties, to over 1,884 million dollars |4|. This debt, far from serving the interests of the impoverished population, was actually aimed at enriching the ruling regime: it is therefore an odious debt. A recent inquiry reveals that the Duvalier family’s personal wealth (well protected by their western bank accounts) amounted to 900 million dollars, or in other words, a greater sum than the total debt of the country at the time “Baby Doc” fled. A trial is currently taking place before the Swiss courts for the restitution of goods and assets to the state of Haiti, embezzled during the Duvalier dictatorship. For the moment, these assets remain frozen by the Swiss bank UBS, which has put forward unacceptable conditions for the restitution of these funds. |5| Jean-Bertrand Aristide, by contrast, was enthusiastically elected, however he was soon accused of corruption, before being put back in office as a United States puppet and finally ousted by the US army. So Aristide, unfortunately, is not innocent in relation to debt and embezzlement of funds. Furthermore, according to the World Bank, between 1995 and 2001, the debt service, that is to say capital and the reimbursed interests, had reached the considerable sum of 321 million dollars.
All current financial aid announced following the earthquake is already lost to the debt repayment!
According to recent estimates, the Inter-American Development Bank and the IMF, with 417.5 and 165 million dollars respectively, are the largest multilateral creditors of Haiti. The World Bank, in the meantime, stand in third place with loans amounting to 38.8 million dollars. Under their leadership, the government applied “structural adjustment plans”, now disguised as “Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers” (PRSP). In exchange for contracting more loans, Haiti has been given some insignificant amount of debt relief or cancellations, which cast the creditors in a positive light. The Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC), for which Haiti was accepted, is a typical odious-debt laundering manoeuvre, as was the case with the Democratic Republic of Congo |6|. Odious debt is replaced by new so-called legitimate loans. CADTM views these new loans as a key part of odious debt as they are used to pay off the old debt. The offence continues to be committed.
In 2006, when the IMF, the World Bank and the Paris Club accepted that the HIPC initiative include Haiti, the whole stock of public foreign debt totalled 1,337 million dollars. At the time of completion of the initiative (in June 2009), the debt totalled 1,884 million. The cancellation of a debt totalling 1,200 million dollars was decided so as to “make the debt bearable”. Meanwhile, the structural adjustment plans wreaked havoc, especially in the agricultural sector, the effects of which reached its peak at the time of the 2008 food crisis. Haitian peasant farming suffered from US agricultural goods dumping. “The macro-economic policies supported by Washington, the UN, the IMF and the World Bank do not concern themselves at all with the need to develop and protect domestic markets. The only concern of their policies is to produce at the lowest price for exportation on the global markets. |7|” It is therefore a scandal to hear the IMF say that they are, “ready to play their role with the appropriate support in these areas of competence. |8|”
As stated in the recent international appeal, “Haiti calls for solidarity and the respect for the sovereignty of the people”: “ Together with many Haitian organizations, over recent years we have denounced the military occupation of the country by United Nations (UN) troops and the impacts of the domination imposed via the mechanisms of debt, free trade, the looting of its natural habitat and the invasion of transnational interests. The vulnerability of the country to natural tragedies – provoked to a large extent by the environmental devastation, the non-existence of basic infrastructure, and the systematic weakening of the state’s capacity to act - should not be seen as something disconnected from these policies, which have historically undermined the sovereignty of the people.
Now is the time for the governments that form part of the MINUSTAH, the UN and in particular France and the United States, the governments of Latin America, to revise this action that is contrary to the basic needs of the Haitian people. We demand of those governments and international organizations that they substitute the military occupation with a true mission of solidarity, and that they take action to ensure the urgent cancellation of the debt that is still being collected of Haiti.” |9|
Irrespective of the debt issue, it is feared that the aid will take the same form as that provided after the tsunami hit several Asian countries at the end of December 2004 (Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh) or after cyclone Jeanne hit Haiti in 2004. Promises were not kept and a large part of the funds were used to line the pockets of foreign or local elites. The majority of these “generous donations” came from the creditor countries. Rather than giving donations, it would be preferable that they cancel Haiti’s debt: totally, unconditionally and immediately. Can we really speak of donations when we know that this most of this money will either be used to repay foreign debt or to implement “national development projects” decided on the basis of the interests of these creditors or local elites? It is clear that without these immediate donations, it will not be possible to secure repayment of this debt, at least half of which corresponds to odious debt. The major international conferences, whether G8 or G20 expanded to include IFIs, will not produce any progress whatsoever in terms of Haiti’s development rather, they will rebuild instruments to help them secure neo-colonial control of the country. The purpose is ensuring that debt repayments continue, the basis for submission, as has been the case since the recent debt relief initiatives.
On the contrary, in order for Haiti to rebuild itself in dignity, national sovereignty is the fundamental issue. A total and unconditional debt cancellation for Haiti must be the first step towards a more general course of action. A new alternative development model to the IFIs and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA signed in December 2009, the Hope II Accord…), is necessary and urgent. The most industrialized countries, which have systematically exploited Haiti, beginning with France and the United States, must pay compensation towards a fund aimed at financing the reconstruction of the country, controlled by the Haitian people’s organizations.
Translated by Francesca Denley in collaboration with Marie Lagatta.
Footnotes
|1| http://www.cadtm.org/Haiti-la-maled...
|2| http://www.haitijustice.com/jsite/i...
|3| http://www.haitijustice.com/jsite/i...
|4| http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft... (page 43)
|5| http://www.cadtm.org/Le-CADTM-exige...
|6| See the CADTM magazine, In favour of an audit of Congolese debt, Liège, 2007 online: http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?page=...
|7| See http://www.cadtm.org/Haiti-Le-gouve...
|8| http://www.liberation.fr/monde/0101...
|9| http://www.cadtm.org/Solidarity-and...
P.S.
Sophie Perchellet is vice-president of CADTM France. Eric Toussaint, president of CADTM Belgium (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, www.cadtm.org ). He is the author of Bank of the South. An Alternative to the IMF-World Bank, VAK, Mumbai, India, 2007; The World Bank, A Critical Primer, Pluto Press, Between The Lines, David Philip, London-Toronto-Cape Town 2008; Your Money or Your Life, The Tyranny of Global Finance, Haymarket, Chicago, 2005.
Friday, April 16, 2010
American Red Cross Announces Spending Plan for Relief and Recovery in Haiti
WASHINGTON, Monday, March 29, 2010 — The American Red Cross today announced its long-term recovery plan for spending the rest of the nearly $400 million it has received in Haiti donations.
The announcement comes two days before an international donor’s conference hosted by the United Nations to discuss ways that governments and non-governmental organizations can help rebuild Haiti, which was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12.
“The crisis is far from over in Haiti, and the American Red Cross will continue to support the brave and resilient people of this country until the last dollar donated for Haiti is spent,” said Gail McGovern, president and CEO of the American Red Cross. “It would not have been possible to provide so much help in this extremely difficult situation without the tremendous outpouring of support from the American public.”
To date, the American Red Cross has raised $396 million for the Haiti relief and development efforts. In just 11 weeks, the American Red Cross has already spent or allocated a record $106.4 million, with approximately 52 percent of the funds being used for food, water and relief supplies; 36 percent for shelter; 8 percent have been dedicated for health and family services; and 4 percent for livelihoods through cash grants and loans.
Today’s announcement provided the broad outline of the expected plans of the American Red Cross for spending the remainder of that money over the next three-to-five years to support families and communities recover from this devastating tragedy.
“The American Red Cross is committed to getting more aid to Haiti and its people as quickly as possible, and to do so in the most transparent and practical way possible to meet longer-term needs such as restoring water and sanitation systems, providing adequate shelter and creating sustainable livelihoods,” said David Meltzer, senior vice president for International Services at the Red Cross.
Meltzer said that the American Red Cross expects to spend a total of approximately $200 million for emergency relief, such as the provision of emergency food supplies, tarps, tents, relief supplies, financial assistance programs and the initial transitional shelters – mostly in the 12 months following the earthquake. The remainder of the nearly $400 million raised to date, also approximately $200 million, will go toward long-term recovery over the following several years.
The biggest share – expected to be between 35-40 percent – of the planned American Red Cross spending for the recovery period will be for shelter, with the effort undertaken in coordination with a number of other organizations working to provide shelter in Haiti. The Red Cross focus will shift from the current provision of emergency shelter materials such as hundreds of thousands of tarps and tents, to providing transitional shelters capable of lasting a few years and that offer more living space to residents and then, finally, to building permanent shelters. Plans to devote tens of millions of dollars to the provision of safe, durable, housing to Haitians depend upon the relevant authorities identifying land upon which the transitional and permanent homes can be built.
Another top priority for the recovery phase—estimated to be approximately 20-25 percent – will be water and sanitation projects in Haiti. In addition, the American Red Cross plans to place a growing emphasis – estimated to be between 15-20 percent of the American Red Cross’ spending on Haiti’s recovery – on helping families rebuild their lives through cash grants, loans and other financial assistance that they can use to buy essential items and empower them as they work to rebuild their lives.
Other spending areas in the multi-year American Red Cross plan will include developing health programs, building the capacity of the Haitian Red Cross to provide humanitarian assistance to the Haitian people, and helping Haitian communities prepare for future disasters such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes.
The allocations in the American Red Cross plan most likely will shift somewhat in the years ahead in order to be responsive to the fluid situation in Haiti and the evolving needs of the Haitian people.
The American Red Cross relief and recovery plan is part of a broader coordinated effort with the global Red Cross network as well as with other aid groups. A recent preliminary assessment by the United Nations and World Bank estimated that it will cost $11.5 billion over three years to rebuild Haiti, an amount that is far more than any single organization can manage alone.
Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross, will represent the international Red Cross and Red Crescent network at the U.N. Donor Conference on March 31. The international Red Cross and Red Crescent network will pledge its continued collaboration as part of the global effort to help the Haitian people, and also will call on the Haitian government and international community to find solutions to the lack of available land in Haiti for transitional and permanent shelter.
“The needs in Haiti remain immense and the challenges are widespread – both in emergency relief and for long-term recovery,” McGovern said. “Help is reaching people, but we are especially concerned about a possible second humanitarian disaster, with makeshift camps containing hundreds of thousands of Haitians for whom it has not been possible to provide shelters capable of fully protecting them from the severe weather conditions of the rainy season or a hurricane.”
The Red Cross network and other organizations have distributed hundreds of thousands of tarps and tents to more than 1 million people or roughly 75 percent of the estimated 1.3 million survivors without a place to live following the earthquake. Efforts are on track to get tarps or tents to the remainder by May 1st.
In the meantime, the American Red Cross and other groups are working to mitigate the impact of the rains through disaster preparedness activities such as pre-positioning of relief stocks, replacing dug-in toilets with elevated ones, supporting communities along with the Haitian Red Cross volunteers to dig new drainage gullies and keep old ones clear, putting in place Early Warning Systems and looking for ways to establish safe havens.
“We believe that coordination among the U.S. government, the Haitian government, UN and international NGOs is critical to maximizing donor dollars and getting aid to people of Haiti as efficiently as possible and the American Red Cross is committed to participating in such coordination efforts,” McGovern said.
The announcement comes two days before an international donor’s conference hosted by the United Nations to discuss ways that governments and non-governmental organizations can help rebuild Haiti, which was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12.
“The crisis is far from over in Haiti, and the American Red Cross will continue to support the brave and resilient people of this country until the last dollar donated for Haiti is spent,” said Gail McGovern, president and CEO of the American Red Cross. “It would not have been possible to provide so much help in this extremely difficult situation without the tremendous outpouring of support from the American public.”
To date, the American Red Cross has raised $396 million for the Haiti relief and development efforts. In just 11 weeks, the American Red Cross has already spent or allocated a record $106.4 million, with approximately 52 percent of the funds being used for food, water and relief supplies; 36 percent for shelter; 8 percent have been dedicated for health and family services; and 4 percent for livelihoods through cash grants and loans.
Today’s announcement provided the broad outline of the expected plans of the American Red Cross for spending the remainder of that money over the next three-to-five years to support families and communities recover from this devastating tragedy.
“The American Red Cross is committed to getting more aid to Haiti and its people as quickly as possible, and to do so in the most transparent and practical way possible to meet longer-term needs such as restoring water and sanitation systems, providing adequate shelter and creating sustainable livelihoods,” said David Meltzer, senior vice president for International Services at the Red Cross.
Meltzer said that the American Red Cross expects to spend a total of approximately $200 million for emergency relief, such as the provision of emergency food supplies, tarps, tents, relief supplies, financial assistance programs and the initial transitional shelters – mostly in the 12 months following the earthquake. The remainder of the nearly $400 million raised to date, also approximately $200 million, will go toward long-term recovery over the following several years.
The biggest share – expected to be between 35-40 percent – of the planned American Red Cross spending for the recovery period will be for shelter, with the effort undertaken in coordination with a number of other organizations working to provide shelter in Haiti. The Red Cross focus will shift from the current provision of emergency shelter materials such as hundreds of thousands of tarps and tents, to providing transitional shelters capable of lasting a few years and that offer more living space to residents and then, finally, to building permanent shelters. Plans to devote tens of millions of dollars to the provision of safe, durable, housing to Haitians depend upon the relevant authorities identifying land upon which the transitional and permanent homes can be built.
Another top priority for the recovery phase—estimated to be approximately 20-25 percent – will be water and sanitation projects in Haiti. In addition, the American Red Cross plans to place a growing emphasis – estimated to be between 15-20 percent of the American Red Cross’ spending on Haiti’s recovery – on helping families rebuild their lives through cash grants, loans and other financial assistance that they can use to buy essential items and empower them as they work to rebuild their lives.
Other spending areas in the multi-year American Red Cross plan will include developing health programs, building the capacity of the Haitian Red Cross to provide humanitarian assistance to the Haitian people, and helping Haitian communities prepare for future disasters such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes.
The allocations in the American Red Cross plan most likely will shift somewhat in the years ahead in order to be responsive to the fluid situation in Haiti and the evolving needs of the Haitian people.
The American Red Cross relief and recovery plan is part of a broader coordinated effort with the global Red Cross network as well as with other aid groups. A recent preliminary assessment by the United Nations and World Bank estimated that it will cost $11.5 billion over three years to rebuild Haiti, an amount that is far more than any single organization can manage alone.
Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross, will represent the international Red Cross and Red Crescent network at the U.N. Donor Conference on March 31. The international Red Cross and Red Crescent network will pledge its continued collaboration as part of the global effort to help the Haitian people, and also will call on the Haitian government and international community to find solutions to the lack of available land in Haiti for transitional and permanent shelter.
“The needs in Haiti remain immense and the challenges are widespread – both in emergency relief and for long-term recovery,” McGovern said. “Help is reaching people, but we are especially concerned about a possible second humanitarian disaster, with makeshift camps containing hundreds of thousands of Haitians for whom it has not been possible to provide shelters capable of fully protecting them from the severe weather conditions of the rainy season or a hurricane.”
The Red Cross network and other organizations have distributed hundreds of thousands of tarps and tents to more than 1 million people or roughly 75 percent of the estimated 1.3 million survivors without a place to live following the earthquake. Efforts are on track to get tarps or tents to the remainder by May 1st.
In the meantime, the American Red Cross and other groups are working to mitigate the impact of the rains through disaster preparedness activities such as pre-positioning of relief stocks, replacing dug-in toilets with elevated ones, supporting communities along with the Haitian Red Cross volunteers to dig new drainage gullies and keep old ones clear, putting in place Early Warning Systems and looking for ways to establish safe havens.
“We believe that coordination among the U.S. government, the Haitian government, UN and international NGOs is critical to maximizing donor dollars and getting aid to people of Haiti as efficiently as possible and the American Red Cross is committed to participating in such coordination efforts,” McGovern said.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Caltrans Employees Step up to Help Rebuild Haiti
CALTRANS NEWS
MARCH 2010
Caltrans Employees Step up to Help Rebuild Haiti
By Herby Lissade, Chief, Office of Emergency Management
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti. The epicenter was located about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince. This enormous earthquake caused death and destruction that our part of the world had not seen in recent history. A tsunami, caused by the earthquake, also claimed lives along Haiti’s coast.
Pre-earthquake concrete homes under construction. These homes, located outside of Port-au-Prince, withstood the earthquake. However, the quake destroyed many concrete structures within the city.
More than 200,000 people lost their lives in the January 12 earthquake, almost all due to substandard building construction. Those who survived but had serious injuries, such as crushed limbs, soon succumbed to their injuries due to inadequate or nonexistent health care. Since the earthquake hit, the death toll has climbed to more than 300,000.
Help has poured in from all over the world to assist the people of this little island, including employees at Caltrans who would like to go to Haiti to help. The Caltrans Office of Emergency Management has received many inquiries from Caltrans employees of all classifications who want to assist Haiti in some way.
Caltrans cannot officially deploy employees to Haiti unless the California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA) mission tasks the Department. CalEMA has done a great job preparing state agencies and departments for possible events in California similar to the one in Haiti. Caltrans has plans in place to respond to such an event, if one occurs here and affects our transportation system. CalEMA may also task Caltrans to assist beyond the limits of our transportation system. In the case of Haiti, Caltrans was on standby to provide equipment operators for debris removal and registered engineers, architects, and geologists as part of CalEMA’s Safety Assessment Program (SAP). The SAP sends groups of professionals, postdisaster, to assess infrastructure for recovery efforts, or simply put, to get people back into their homes as quickly as possible.
Caltrans has adopted the SAP as part of its Continuation of Operations Plan, commonly known as COOP, to help assess our infrastructure for all hazards we may encounter. The recent earthquake in Haiti was a reminder that California may experience a similar event. Caltrans took this as an opportunity to expand our SAP cadre. This is essential in predisaster planning for postdisaster recovery. It’s our goal to have every registered professional at Caltrans trained in the program.
As private citizens, many of us have donated money to Haitian relief funds, such as the International Red Cross. These nonprofit, nongovernment agencies are doing a great job feeding Haitians and providing them with much-needed health care. Some of you have expressed a desire to do more and apply your training and skills to assist the people of Haiti. So, Caltrans employees and professionals in New York and Florida, as private citizens, came together to form Haiti Engineering, Inc.
The engineers, planners, and others who make up Haiti Engineering do so for the greater good. Haiti Engineering is a nonprofit organization with highly skilled professionals who donate their time and expertise to assist the people of Haiti. We are here for the long haul. We partner with engineers and other professionals in Haiti to bring positive change.
Haiti Engineering’s vision is to help reconstruct an island nation not to pre-earthquake conditions, but to one that can sustain its people at levels that are acceptable in a modern nation.
While our mission is ambitious, we think it is achievable. Haiti Engineering’s mission is to bring together a group of professionals to develop a plan to help restore the infrastructure throughout the island nation of Haiti. We are planning to prepare the island for all hazards that they might encounter by using emergency management techniques and methods. We hope to instill in the people that they are the most important resource on the island, the “Human Capital.”
Finally, our goal is to create a 10-year master plan to help reconstruct the infrastructure in Haiti. The goal is to make the efforts sustainable for the island inhabitants for generations to come.
I would like to share what helped create Haiti Engineering, Inc. Shortly after the earthquake, Director Randy Iwasaki contacted me. He asked me how the quake impacted my family and if Caltrans had a plan to help Haiti that the Department could send to the Governor’s Office. It’s no surprise that our state was so responsive and wanted to help. California is earthquake country. We live with and prepare for these events. The Governor was sending urban search and rescue teams from California to Haiti as part of the first responder contingent. To paraphrase Director Iwasaki, technology exists that could mitigate the impacts of such an event. Caltrans has used that technology throughout our state, to harden our transportation infrastructure, and that technology could easily be applied to Haiti. Engineering techniques and construction inspection could have lessened the loss of life from the quake. Those Proven engineering methods have saved lives in California and will continue to do so if, or when, a major earthquake hits us here.
This movie theater in Port-au-Prince is an example of the common concrete structures throughout the city.
The earthquake in Haiti has affected my family and friends; I lost family members in the quake. It’s been a wake up call that life is precious and short. I plan to visit Haiti during March to reconnect with family members who I haven’t seen in years. I am going to take the opportunity to assess the quake’s damage first hand and assess which projects Haiti Engineering can try to fund through donations and deliver help. I will also see how Caltrans can apply the lessons learned from the Haitian response efforts to strengthen the Department’s response in a similar event.
In the end, Haiti Engineering hopes to help build structures, make recommendations to aid in rebuilding Haiti’s infrastructure, and assist where we can. In doing so, we hope to not only enrich the lives of those in Haiti, but enrich our own lives.
Caltrans employees are stepping up to lend a hand, not just within our state or across our great country, but between nations—something for which we can be truly proud.
You can visit the Haiti Engineering, Inc. Web site at www.HaitiEngineering.org.
MARCH 2010
Caltrans Employees Step up to Help Rebuild Haiti
By Herby Lissade, Chief, Office of Emergency Management
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti. The epicenter was located about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince. This enormous earthquake caused death and destruction that our part of the world had not seen in recent history. A tsunami, caused by the earthquake, also claimed lives along Haiti’s coast.
Pre-earthquake concrete homes under construction. These homes, located outside of Port-au-Prince, withstood the earthquake. However, the quake destroyed many concrete structures within the city.
More than 200,000 people lost their lives in the January 12 earthquake, almost all due to substandard building construction. Those who survived but had serious injuries, such as crushed limbs, soon succumbed to their injuries due to inadequate or nonexistent health care. Since the earthquake hit, the death toll has climbed to more than 300,000.
Help has poured in from all over the world to assist the people of this little island, including employees at Caltrans who would like to go to Haiti to help. The Caltrans Office of Emergency Management has received many inquiries from Caltrans employees of all classifications who want to assist Haiti in some way.
Caltrans cannot officially deploy employees to Haiti unless the California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA) mission tasks the Department. CalEMA has done a great job preparing state agencies and departments for possible events in California similar to the one in Haiti. Caltrans has plans in place to respond to such an event, if one occurs here and affects our transportation system. CalEMA may also task Caltrans to assist beyond the limits of our transportation system. In the case of Haiti, Caltrans was on standby to provide equipment operators for debris removal and registered engineers, architects, and geologists as part of CalEMA’s Safety Assessment Program (SAP). The SAP sends groups of professionals, postdisaster, to assess infrastructure for recovery efforts, or simply put, to get people back into their homes as quickly as possible.
Caltrans has adopted the SAP as part of its Continuation of Operations Plan, commonly known as COOP, to help assess our infrastructure for all hazards we may encounter. The recent earthquake in Haiti was a reminder that California may experience a similar event. Caltrans took this as an opportunity to expand our SAP cadre. This is essential in predisaster planning for postdisaster recovery. It’s our goal to have every registered professional at Caltrans trained in the program.
As private citizens, many of us have donated money to Haitian relief funds, such as the International Red Cross. These nonprofit, nongovernment agencies are doing a great job feeding Haitians and providing them with much-needed health care. Some of you have expressed a desire to do more and apply your training and skills to assist the people of Haiti. So, Caltrans employees and professionals in New York and Florida, as private citizens, came together to form Haiti Engineering, Inc.
The engineers, planners, and others who make up Haiti Engineering do so for the greater good. Haiti Engineering is a nonprofit organization with highly skilled professionals who donate their time and expertise to assist the people of Haiti. We are here for the long haul. We partner with engineers and other professionals in Haiti to bring positive change.
Haiti Engineering’s vision is to help reconstruct an island nation not to pre-earthquake conditions, but to one that can sustain its people at levels that are acceptable in a modern nation.
While our mission is ambitious, we think it is achievable. Haiti Engineering’s mission is to bring together a group of professionals to develop a plan to help restore the infrastructure throughout the island nation of Haiti. We are planning to prepare the island for all hazards that they might encounter by using emergency management techniques and methods. We hope to instill in the people that they are the most important resource on the island, the “Human Capital.”
Finally, our goal is to create a 10-year master plan to help reconstruct the infrastructure in Haiti. The goal is to make the efforts sustainable for the island inhabitants for generations to come.
I would like to share what helped create Haiti Engineering, Inc. Shortly after the earthquake, Director Randy Iwasaki contacted me. He asked me how the quake impacted my family and if Caltrans had a plan to help Haiti that the Department could send to the Governor’s Office. It’s no surprise that our state was so responsive and wanted to help. California is earthquake country. We live with and prepare for these events. The Governor was sending urban search and rescue teams from California to Haiti as part of the first responder contingent. To paraphrase Director Iwasaki, technology exists that could mitigate the impacts of such an event. Caltrans has used that technology throughout our state, to harden our transportation infrastructure, and that technology could easily be applied to Haiti. Engineering techniques and construction inspection could have lessened the loss of life from the quake. Those Proven engineering methods have saved lives in California and will continue to do so if, or when, a major earthquake hits us here.
This movie theater in Port-au-Prince is an example of the common concrete structures throughout the city.
The earthquake in Haiti has affected my family and friends; I lost family members in the quake. It’s been a wake up call that life is precious and short. I plan to visit Haiti during March to reconnect with family members who I haven’t seen in years. I am going to take the opportunity to assess the quake’s damage first hand and assess which projects Haiti Engineering can try to fund through donations and deliver help. I will also see how Caltrans can apply the lessons learned from the Haitian response efforts to strengthen the Department’s response in a similar event.
In the end, Haiti Engineering hopes to help build structures, make recommendations to aid in rebuilding Haiti’s infrastructure, and assist where we can. In doing so, we hope to not only enrich the lives of those in Haiti, but enrich our own lives.
Caltrans employees are stepping up to lend a hand, not just within our state or across our great country, but between nations—something for which we can be truly proud.
You can visit the Haiti Engineering, Inc. Web site at www.HaitiEngineering.org.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Haiti’s Misery
Haiti’s Misery
Published: March 25, 2010
The emergency in Haiti isn’t over. It’s getting worse, as the outside world’s attention fades away.
Misery rages like a fever in the hundreds of camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of the 1.3 million people left homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake. The dreaded rains have already swamped tents and ragged stick-and-tarp huts. They have turned walkways into mud lakes and made difficult or impossible the simple acts of collecting and cooking food, washing clothes, staying clean and avoiding disease. The rainy season peaks in May.
Worsening the weather crisis are the unchecked sexual assaults and rapes in the camps, where families are squeezed side by side in flimsy quarters and women and girls are left unprotected after dark.
A new report from Amnesty International affirms that security is inadequate, that police and soldiers are often missing, that every nightfall brings terror. Victims stay silent because rapists go uncaught and unpunished; what little policing exists is focused on other priorities.
Both the shelter and safety crises demand an urgent response, and while feelings of urgency abound in Haiti, their impact is only sporadically felt. The little country is swarming with well-intentioned organizations, each trying to do their little bit of help. One group is trying to distribute thousands of flashlights to women and girls. It’s a kind and practical gesture, but what they really need are shelters from sexual violence, and adequate policing. Haiti has neither, Amnesty International reports.
Any effective solution would need to be coordinated with the government of Haiti, whose leaders have been absent from the lives of Haitian citizens since the disaster. When former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton visited the capital of Port-au-Prince this week, they joined President René Préval in touring the camp in Champ de Mars, across the street from the slumped-over presidential palace. Screams of frustration greeted them. Where have you been? Why have you not helped us?
From the first days of this disaster, someone should have been racing to find places to build sturdy housing away from the densely crowded, quake-shattered capital. But the Haitian government only this week took the necessary step of invoking eminent-domain power to seize land. Sites have been identified, but the number of places available for new housing is still zero. Only a few hundred people have been moved from the camps.
We understand the government has been working hard to prepare for a donor conference next week, where big ideas for the future will be discussed. But back in old Haiti, land of tents and tarps, workers have been putting fresh coats of plaster and blue paint on buildings on the United Nations compound in Port-au-Prince, and the rest of the world is moving on.
Some United States troops have started going home. Overmatched workers for United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations are toiling away, many of them heroically. But ultimately progress must be judged by results. New ways must be found to solve problems, and urgency sustained. Haiti is in danger of becoming what it always was, a nagging blot on the conscience, a neglected project that never gets done.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 26, 2010, on page A26 of the New York edition.
Published: March 25, 2010
The emergency in Haiti isn’t over. It’s getting worse, as the outside world’s attention fades away.
Misery rages like a fever in the hundreds of camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of the 1.3 million people left homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake. The dreaded rains have already swamped tents and ragged stick-and-tarp huts. They have turned walkways into mud lakes and made difficult or impossible the simple acts of collecting and cooking food, washing clothes, staying clean and avoiding disease. The rainy season peaks in May.
Worsening the weather crisis are the unchecked sexual assaults and rapes in the camps, where families are squeezed side by side in flimsy quarters and women and girls are left unprotected after dark.
A new report from Amnesty International affirms that security is inadequate, that police and soldiers are often missing, that every nightfall brings terror. Victims stay silent because rapists go uncaught and unpunished; what little policing exists is focused on other priorities.
Both the shelter and safety crises demand an urgent response, and while feelings of urgency abound in Haiti, their impact is only sporadically felt. The little country is swarming with well-intentioned organizations, each trying to do their little bit of help. One group is trying to distribute thousands of flashlights to women and girls. It’s a kind and practical gesture, but what they really need are shelters from sexual violence, and adequate policing. Haiti has neither, Amnesty International reports.
Any effective solution would need to be coordinated with the government of Haiti, whose leaders have been absent from the lives of Haitian citizens since the disaster. When former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton visited the capital of Port-au-Prince this week, they joined President René Préval in touring the camp in Champ de Mars, across the street from the slumped-over presidential palace. Screams of frustration greeted them. Where have you been? Why have you not helped us?
From the first days of this disaster, someone should have been racing to find places to build sturdy housing away from the densely crowded, quake-shattered capital. But the Haitian government only this week took the necessary step of invoking eminent-domain power to seize land. Sites have been identified, but the number of places available for new housing is still zero. Only a few hundred people have been moved from the camps.
We understand the government has been working hard to prepare for a donor conference next week, where big ideas for the future will be discussed. But back in old Haiti, land of tents and tarps, workers have been putting fresh coats of plaster and blue paint on buildings on the United Nations compound in Port-au-Prince, and the rest of the world is moving on.
Some United States troops have started going home. Overmatched workers for United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations are toiling away, many of them heroically. But ultimately progress must be judged by results. New ways must be found to solve problems, and urgency sustained. Haiti is in danger of becoming what it always was, a nagging blot on the conscience, a neglected project that never gets done.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 26, 2010, on page A26 of the New York edition.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Stars and Stripes
Lt. Gen. Keen: Our man on the ground in Haiti
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
Online Edition, Saturday, March 27, 2010
Lt. Gen. Ken Keen looked down from a helicopter circling over earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince last Wednesday and saw a patchwork of multicolored tents that had sprouted among the Haitian capital's rusting corrugated iron roofs and collapsed buildings to house hundreds of thousands left homeless by the disaster. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Lt. Gen. Ken Keen looked down from a helicopter circling over Port-au-Prince on a recent Wednesday and saw the big picture: a patchwork of multicolored tents that had sprouted amid the Haitian capital’s rusting corrugated iron roofs and collapsed buildings to house hundreds of thousands left homeless by January’s earthquake and aftershocks.
In a city where earthquake rubble still spills onto roads that are clogged with traffic and street vendors, a helicopter is often the quickest way for the Joint Task Force–Haiti commander to get from point A to point B.
The former paratrooper and special operations soldier, who spent much of his career training troops in Central America to fight communists, has been working without pause since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, supervising the massive U.S. military relief effort.
Keen was in Haiti on the day of the earthquake in his role as military deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command, talking to Haitian officials about disaster response. He has vivid memories of the giant temblor, which struck while he was chatting with U.S. Ambassador Kenneth H. Merten at his Port-au-Prince residence.
“We were sitting on the veranda on the back porch and there was a huge crash,” said Keen, of Hayden, Ky. “I heard what sounded like an [improvised explosive device] going off.”
The shaking, which started just before 5 p.m., got worse as the pair staggered into the yard, he said.
“It literally was shaking like in an Indiana Jones movie where you could barely stand up,” Keen said. “You had to brace yourself to keep from falling.”
Somehow the 1930s-era hilltop residence, near the Petionville Golf Club, remained standing. But as the soldier stared out over the city, he could see dust begin to rise.
“Buildings had collapsed and you could hear a lot of panic in the streets below,” he said. “It was clear there were going to be significant casualties.”
Soon, injured Americans started staggering into the ambassador’s residence and Haitian government officials arrived on motorcycles looking for U.S. military assistance. The first thing that Haitian President Rene Preval asked for was help running the capital’s airport — a vital link to aid from the outside world, Keen said.
Special Forces airmen hit the ground within hours of the earthquake and had control of the airspace over Port-au-Prince 29 minutes later, he said, adding that the U.S. Air Force controlled up to 180 fixed and rotary wing flights daily during the height of the relief effort before the airspace was handed back to Haitians in early March.
“We knew we had Americans injured,” Keen said. “Probably some severely injured, so we had SOUTHCOM put Coast Guard cutters with aircraft on them to get into range to medevac folks to Guantanamo Bay or the Dominican Republic.”
By first light on Jan. 13, Keen recalled, Coast Guard aircraft were landing in Haiti to evacuate seriously injured U.S. personnel; ships like the USS Carl Vinson and USS Bataan had been ordered to assemble; and the global response force, which included a brigade from the 82nd Airborne Division, was alerted.
“Travel across the city was slow because of rubble and crowds blocking roads,” he said. “Every third building, it seemed, had collapsed or was severely damaged. Streets looked like scenes out of World War II. It became evident to me that this was going to be a tremendous challenge for the international community and for any of us to address the immediate need for support.”
U.N. forces in Port-au-Prince were struggling to find their feet after the collapse of their headquarters with heavy loss of life, Keen said. However, he added, their presence helped stabilize the situation.
“From a point of security, the U.N. troops, with what they had, were in the streets,” he said. “Some of it was trying to look for their own troops or civilians, but I think their presence in the city had an effect. We did not have massive looting or massive violent activities going on in the first few days.”
Keen’s goal, at that stage, was to get as much assistance to Haiti as fast as possible, he said.
“Thousands of lives had already been lost and more needed medical assistance,” he said. “Some of the hospitals were treating people but they were overwhelmed immediately with trauma injuries. Our priorities were saving lives and search and rescue.”
Keen can cite statistics that show U.S. military intervention, which at its height involved the deployment of 22,000 personnel, saved many lives: Search and rescue teams pulled 120 people alive out of the rubble, JTF–Haiti medical staff conducted 90,000 patient encounters and doctors performed more than 800 surgeries on the USNS Comfort hospital ship, he said.
On Jan. 14, Keen visited Port-au-Prince’s University Hospital.
“It was like a little war zone,” he said. “There were people lying out in the street with compound factures and crush injuries. They had run out of anesthetic and they were operating without power and working around the clock.”
The JTF–Haiti commander sent a platoon from the 82nd to the hospital to control the crowds, which, Keen said, have cooperated with soldiers throughout the mission.
“The Haitian people are extremely grateful,” he said. “They will wait in lines all day if they are told what is going to happen and what to expect.”
When the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived in Haiti, the Marines were sent to the town of Leogane, which had been nearly destroyed, he said.
The day after the disaster, Keen sent an engineer to find out what it would take to reopen Port-au-Prince’s badly damaged seaport so that larger quantities of aid could flow in. Two weeks later, with the help of U.S. Army landing craft and engineers, the seaport was receiving cargo. Aid also came overland from San Isidro Air Base in the Dominican Republic, Keen said.
“It was a matter of food and water,” he said. “You had a population of three million people affected and no potable water accessible to them.”
Throughout the relief effort, U.S. forces in Haiti have worked with U.N. troops — which now number 8,000 personnel from 18 nations — whenever possible, Keen said.
The Brazilian commander of U.N. military forces in Haiti, Maj. Gen. Floriano Peixoto Vieira Neto, who was out of the country when the earthquake struck, said he’s been friends with Keen since the pair parachuted together in Brazil in 1984.
“At that time, as captains, we couldn’t have imagined that in the future we would be together executing one of the most important tasks of our lives,” the Brazilian said of Keen, with whom he also worked during a visit to Fort Benning, Ga., in 1988.
“The fact that Lt. Gen. Keen and I have known each other for more than 20 years has affected the results here,” he said, adding that the U.S. military forces are a welcome addition to the U.N. efforts in Haiti.
By last week, Keen’s forces had dwindled to about 3,300 troops on the ground, and his focus had moved to protecting Haitians from floods and mudslides expected next month when monsoon rains are due to arrive. JTF–Haiti staff said their commander’s goal is zero deaths from floods and mudslides.
In the past two months Keen has left Haiti once — to attend the funeral of one of his officers who was killed in a hotel collapse during the earthquake.
“I’ll leave when the JTF mission is over,” he said.
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
Online Edition, Saturday, March 27, 2010
Lt. Gen. Ken Keen looked down from a helicopter circling over earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince last Wednesday and saw a patchwork of multicolored tents that had sprouted among the Haitian capital's rusting corrugated iron roofs and collapsed buildings to house hundreds of thousands left homeless by the disaster. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Lt. Gen. Ken Keen looked down from a helicopter circling over Port-au-Prince on a recent Wednesday and saw the big picture: a patchwork of multicolored tents that had sprouted amid the Haitian capital’s rusting corrugated iron roofs and collapsed buildings to house hundreds of thousands left homeless by January’s earthquake and aftershocks.
In a city where earthquake rubble still spills onto roads that are clogged with traffic and street vendors, a helicopter is often the quickest way for the Joint Task Force–Haiti commander to get from point A to point B.
The former paratrooper and special operations soldier, who spent much of his career training troops in Central America to fight communists, has been working without pause since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, supervising the massive U.S. military relief effort.
Keen was in Haiti on the day of the earthquake in his role as military deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command, talking to Haitian officials about disaster response. He has vivid memories of the giant temblor, which struck while he was chatting with U.S. Ambassador Kenneth H. Merten at his Port-au-Prince residence.
“We were sitting on the veranda on the back porch and there was a huge crash,” said Keen, of Hayden, Ky. “I heard what sounded like an [improvised explosive device] going off.”
The shaking, which started just before 5 p.m., got worse as the pair staggered into the yard, he said.
“It literally was shaking like in an Indiana Jones movie where you could barely stand up,” Keen said. “You had to brace yourself to keep from falling.”
Somehow the 1930s-era hilltop residence, near the Petionville Golf Club, remained standing. But as the soldier stared out over the city, he could see dust begin to rise.
“Buildings had collapsed and you could hear a lot of panic in the streets below,” he said. “It was clear there were going to be significant casualties.”
Soon, injured Americans started staggering into the ambassador’s residence and Haitian government officials arrived on motorcycles looking for U.S. military assistance. The first thing that Haitian President Rene Preval asked for was help running the capital’s airport — a vital link to aid from the outside world, Keen said.
Special Forces airmen hit the ground within hours of the earthquake and had control of the airspace over Port-au-Prince 29 minutes later, he said, adding that the U.S. Air Force controlled up to 180 fixed and rotary wing flights daily during the height of the relief effort before the airspace was handed back to Haitians in early March.
“We knew we had Americans injured,” Keen said. “Probably some severely injured, so we had SOUTHCOM put Coast Guard cutters with aircraft on them to get into range to medevac folks to Guantanamo Bay or the Dominican Republic.”
By first light on Jan. 13, Keen recalled, Coast Guard aircraft were landing in Haiti to evacuate seriously injured U.S. personnel; ships like the USS Carl Vinson and USS Bataan had been ordered to assemble; and the global response force, which included a brigade from the 82nd Airborne Division, was alerted.
“Travel across the city was slow because of rubble and crowds blocking roads,” he said. “Every third building, it seemed, had collapsed or was severely damaged. Streets looked like scenes out of World War II. It became evident to me that this was going to be a tremendous challenge for the international community and for any of us to address the immediate need for support.”
U.N. forces in Port-au-Prince were struggling to find their feet after the collapse of their headquarters with heavy loss of life, Keen said. However, he added, their presence helped stabilize the situation.
“From a point of security, the U.N. troops, with what they had, were in the streets,” he said. “Some of it was trying to look for their own troops or civilians, but I think their presence in the city had an effect. We did not have massive looting or massive violent activities going on in the first few days.”
Keen’s goal, at that stage, was to get as much assistance to Haiti as fast as possible, he said.
“Thousands of lives had already been lost and more needed medical assistance,” he said. “Some of the hospitals were treating people but they were overwhelmed immediately with trauma injuries. Our priorities were saving lives and search and rescue.”
Keen can cite statistics that show U.S. military intervention, which at its height involved the deployment of 22,000 personnel, saved many lives: Search and rescue teams pulled 120 people alive out of the rubble, JTF–Haiti medical staff conducted 90,000 patient encounters and doctors performed more than 800 surgeries on the USNS Comfort hospital ship, he said.
On Jan. 14, Keen visited Port-au-Prince’s University Hospital.
“It was like a little war zone,” he said. “There were people lying out in the street with compound factures and crush injuries. They had run out of anesthetic and they were operating without power and working around the clock.”
The JTF–Haiti commander sent a platoon from the 82nd to the hospital to control the crowds, which, Keen said, have cooperated with soldiers throughout the mission.
“The Haitian people are extremely grateful,” he said. “They will wait in lines all day if they are told what is going to happen and what to expect.”
When the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived in Haiti, the Marines were sent to the town of Leogane, which had been nearly destroyed, he said.
The day after the disaster, Keen sent an engineer to find out what it would take to reopen Port-au-Prince’s badly damaged seaport so that larger quantities of aid could flow in. Two weeks later, with the help of U.S. Army landing craft and engineers, the seaport was receiving cargo. Aid also came overland from San Isidro Air Base in the Dominican Republic, Keen said.
“It was a matter of food and water,” he said. “You had a population of three million people affected and no potable water accessible to them.”
Throughout the relief effort, U.S. forces in Haiti have worked with U.N. troops — which now number 8,000 personnel from 18 nations — whenever possible, Keen said.
The Brazilian commander of U.N. military forces in Haiti, Maj. Gen. Floriano Peixoto Vieira Neto, who was out of the country when the earthquake struck, said he’s been friends with Keen since the pair parachuted together in Brazil in 1984.
“At that time, as captains, we couldn’t have imagined that in the future we would be together executing one of the most important tasks of our lives,” the Brazilian said of Keen, with whom he also worked during a visit to Fort Benning, Ga., in 1988.
“The fact that Lt. Gen. Keen and I have known each other for more than 20 years has affected the results here,” he said, adding that the U.S. military forces are a welcome addition to the U.N. efforts in Haiti.
By last week, Keen’s forces had dwindled to about 3,300 troops on the ground, and his focus had moved to protecting Haitians from floods and mudslides expected next month when monsoon rains are due to arrive. JTF–Haiti staff said their commander’s goal is zero deaths from floods and mudslides.
In the past two months Keen has left Haiti once — to attend the funeral of one of his officers who was killed in a hotel collapse during the earthquake.
“I’ll leave when the JTF mission is over,” he said.
Nuncio of Haiti
Nuncio of Haiti
14-January-2010 -- Catholic News Agency
Nuncio to Haiti Gives First-hand Account of Destruction
Port au Prince, Haiti, Jan 13, 2010 (CNA).-
Speaking with the Vatican's Fides news agency, the Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, described the devastation in the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince. He reported on what he had observed of the situation of religious and government officials in the area and described widespread destruction.
Archbishop Auza stated his observations of the situation in the capital to Fides, saying, "Port-au-Prince is totally devastated. The cathedral, the archbishop's office, all of the big churches, all of the seminaries have been reduced to rubble."
The nuncio said that the resident priest at that cathedral had informed him of the likely death of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot as he was buried under rubble along with hundreds of priests and seminarians. Other news reports confirmed that the archbishop did pass away in the earthquake.
Auza reported that many government buildings had been razed. All of the Ministry buildings but one were on the ground, as were the Presidential Palace and the schools.
"Parliament with the Senators, the schools with the children, the supermarkets were reduced to nothing," the nuncio stated.
The nuncio had made his way across the city to see the Haitian President and "express his condolences and solidarity" and found that, because they had been outdoors, he and his family had been saved although their home had crumbled.
People who live in front of the collapsed U.N. headquarters had reported to Auza that the head of that mission, Hedi Annabi, was trapped inside with hundreds of others.
The nuncio said that he had returned to his residence later in the morning to find "Priests and Sisters in the street, no longer with homes. The Rector of the seminary saved himself, as did the Dean of studies, but the seminarians are under the rubble. You hear yells everywhere from underneath the rubble."
"The CIFOR (according to Fides, an institute of study for religious men and women) collapsed with students inside that were participating in a conference. The office of the nuncio resisted (the earthquake), there was no one injured, but all of us are in shock!" he said.
"So many things were broken, including the tabernacle, but we are more fortunate than others. Many relatives of the personnel are dead, their houses destroyed. Everyone is asking for help. We will have a problem with water and food before long. We cannot go inside and stay there for very long because the ground continues to shake, so we're camping out in the yard."
Nuncio in Haiti reports needs of country's seminarians
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Of Human Life - By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
Rome, Italy, Feb 26, 2010 / 02:54 pm (CNA).-
The Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, sent a report to the Pontifical Mission Societies this week describing the situation facing seminarians in the devastated country. He explained that the seminarians have “lost everything," adding that "putting them back to ‘normal’ life is a priority.”
According to the Fides News Agency, the archbishop said that, “The greatest needs of the seminarians are clothing, toiletries, tents to sleep in. Many of the seminarians have been sent back to their dioceses, but their dioceses are also extremely poor and in great need of assistance.
The archbishop went on to note that although some books from the library were saved, “We need to purchase Bibles and fundamental texts (Vatican II, Catechism of the Catholic Church etc.) The ones they had were all lost in the rubble.”
“The easiest, most flexible and fastest way to help these unfortunate seminarians is through financial aid that we can use according to the most urgent needs of the moment,” he added.
“Thank you also for your efforts in favor of our traumatized seminarians. We believe that putting the seminarians back to 'normal' life is a priority."
Fides reports that 15 seminarians, one professor and some staff members were killed by the January 12 earthquake.
14-January-2010 -- Catholic News Agency
Nuncio to Haiti Gives First-hand Account of Destruction
Port au Prince, Haiti, Jan 13, 2010 (CNA).-
Speaking with the Vatican's Fides news agency, the Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, described the devastation in the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince. He reported on what he had observed of the situation of religious and government officials in the area and described widespread destruction.
Archbishop Auza stated his observations of the situation in the capital to Fides, saying, "Port-au-Prince is totally devastated. The cathedral, the archbishop's office, all of the big churches, all of the seminaries have been reduced to rubble."
The nuncio said that the resident priest at that cathedral had informed him of the likely death of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot as he was buried under rubble along with hundreds of priests and seminarians. Other news reports confirmed that the archbishop did pass away in the earthquake.
Auza reported that many government buildings had been razed. All of the Ministry buildings but one were on the ground, as were the Presidential Palace and the schools.
"Parliament with the Senators, the schools with the children, the supermarkets were reduced to nothing," the nuncio stated.
The nuncio had made his way across the city to see the Haitian President and "express his condolences and solidarity" and found that, because they had been outdoors, he and his family had been saved although their home had crumbled.
People who live in front of the collapsed U.N. headquarters had reported to Auza that the head of that mission, Hedi Annabi, was trapped inside with hundreds of others.
The nuncio said that he had returned to his residence later in the morning to find "Priests and Sisters in the street, no longer with homes. The Rector of the seminary saved himself, as did the Dean of studies, but the seminarians are under the rubble. You hear yells everywhere from underneath the rubble."
"The CIFOR (according to Fides, an institute of study for religious men and women) collapsed with students inside that were participating in a conference. The office of the nuncio resisted (the earthquake), there was no one injured, but all of us are in shock!" he said.
"So many things were broken, including the tabernacle, but we are more fortunate than others. Many relatives of the personnel are dead, their houses destroyed. Everyone is asking for help. We will have a problem with water and food before long. We cannot go inside and stay there for very long because the ground continues to shake, so we're camping out in the yard."
Nuncio in Haiti reports needs of country's seminarians
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Of Human Life - By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
Rome, Italy, Feb 26, 2010 / 02:54 pm (CNA).-
The Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, sent a report to the Pontifical Mission Societies this week describing the situation facing seminarians in the devastated country. He explained that the seminarians have “lost everything," adding that "putting them back to ‘normal’ life is a priority.”
According to the Fides News Agency, the archbishop said that, “The greatest needs of the seminarians are clothing, toiletries, tents to sleep in. Many of the seminarians have been sent back to their dioceses, but their dioceses are also extremely poor and in great need of assistance.
The archbishop went on to note that although some books from the library were saved, “We need to purchase Bibles and fundamental texts (Vatican II, Catechism of the Catholic Church etc.) The ones they had were all lost in the rubble.”
“The easiest, most flexible and fastest way to help these unfortunate seminarians is through financial aid that we can use according to the most urgent needs of the moment,” he added.
“Thank you also for your efforts in favor of our traumatized seminarians. We believe that putting the seminarians back to 'normal' life is a priority."
Fides reports that 15 seminarians, one professor and some staff members were killed by the January 12 earthquake.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
ACT Situation Report: Haiti Earthquake 17 Mar 2010
ACT Situation Report: Haiti Earthquake 17 Mar 2010 11:51:00 GMT
Source: Action by Churches Together (ACT) - Switzerland
Elisabeth Gouel
Website: http://www.act-intl.org
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
Sitrep
Haiti - No 09/2010
Geneva, March 5, 2010
General situation: (OCHA)
The Government and humanitarian actors are coordinating to determine the scale of humanitarian needs in Nippes and Sud departments following floods on 27 February.
President Ren� Pr�val flew to the affected areas on 4 March in order to survey the damage. Priority needs following the earthquake of 12 January continue to be emergency shelter, site management, sanitation and food.
WFP and its partners will start its surge operation of general food distributions on 5 March.
The operation will target 1.9 million beneficiaries with a two week ration of rice and a one month ration of beans, corn-soy-blend, oil and salt.
Protection monitoring teams are visiting an average of eight displacement sites per day. Around 300 experts from Haiti and abroad have been working in Port-au-Prince on the Post Disaster Needs Assessment and Recovery Framework (PDNA).
The Clinton Foundation has donated, through the logistics cluster, 40 International (Penske) trucks of 10-15 metric tons capacity for inter-agency use. Another 140 smaller 1.5 - 2.5 metric ton vehicles were also donated and will be registered and insured by WFP for use by organizations with mid- to long-term projects in Haiti, as well as by government partners.
Information on the ACT Coordination:
- Carlos Rauda will cut short his mission as Rapid Support Team coordinator and leave Haiti on 7 March for Chile. A big thank you to all RST members who joined the team. NCA, as manager of the RST system, will be asked to help with an evaluation of the RST experience. An easy-to-administer questionnaire will be prepared and sent to members shortly.
- ACT Alliance is in discussion with candidates for coordination and communication team. A part time security advisor, Mr Guito Clervil, has started his work. The composition of the team will be discussed at the next phone call with members. Phone call is proposed to take place on Tuesday 9 March (please come forward with proposals for agenda).
- ACT General Secretary John Nduna is expected to arrive in Haiti on 7 March. A programme was prepared and circulated to the members. John will meet members, partners, church leaders, members of the Haitian Government and bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors. A communicator and a photographer will accompany him and send stories and pictures.
Information by sectors:
Communication: more stories have been produced by Emily Sollies (text) and Jonathan (pictures).
Psychosocial: Church of Sweden psychosocial and staff care is on-going.
Quality and Accountability: The HAP and Sphere support mission to ACT members in Haiti is concluded. As discussed, support will continue, possibly under the larger umbrella of NGO coordination support office.
The team provided a debrief in Geneva on 4 March. A report on the initial findings of the mission has been shared and a final report will be sent. The lessons are:
- the mission was positive as a support for members to check on the needs of members to integrate quality and accountability aspects in the planning and implementation. However, the timing of this mission was not optimal, since members had been busy with appeal preparation and were overstretched. The capacity of members and partners to be accountable to the affected population has been found wanting. There is need to work on providing quality services and to introduce feedback and complaint mechanisms for the population.
A plan on quality and accountability was developed and sent to the ACT Alliance. The institutional set-up for the support is still under discussion.
Specific Reports from ACT Members and Partners
Church World Service
Service Chretien d'Haiti (SCH) Monitors continue to provide psychosocial services to People with Disabilities (PWD) in the six areas around PaP. Monitors are registering/documenting cases in those areas. Monitors have been also supported by the CoS psychosocial team.
CWS and SCH continue to attend the sub-cluster meeting of Injury, Rehabilitation and Disability (IRD) in coordination with GoH ministry office.
CWS has delivered two Finn Ch Aid school tents to be used in the PWD program in coordination with CBM and Handicap International.
SCH guest house: House manager has been contracted and, with SCH staff,is getting guest house ready for ACT members this week. CWS has provided hygiene and baby kits and medicine boxes to NCA, CAID and LWF for distribution. More kits on the way for ACT members.
CWS partners and monitors have participated in the two HAP/Sphere workshops provided to ACT members.
CRWRC
An additional 200 households in Masson have been surveyed and data entered onto spreadsheets.
Distribution lists for food distribution have been prepared for distribution on Tuesday (9th March).
WASH activities for the town of Masson continue. Because of the high water table, the plan for emergency earthen latrine pits will have to be altered to include septic tanks and construction of these emergency pits. Latrines will take longer than expected to install. Well contractors to visit Masson this week so that wells for potable water may be drilled asap.
The Masson community development team leader has been active in the distributions along with the Masson CBO. He will also be attending the psychosocial workshop offered by ACT.
CRWRC staff met community leaders in order to gain information re temporary housing option decision. They have also been debriefed re the tarp distribution and are now planning the food distribution.
Prices and suggestions re temporary shelter have been collected for a decision regarding temporary shelter for households in Masson.
Hygiene and kitchen kits as well as rubble tool prices have been acquired and final decisions re these items will be made this coming week.
A plan for house inspections in Masson has been formulated and is planned to take place in the next couple of weeks.
Repairs to the ICTA school near Masson have begun - it is the future CRWRC relief office site.
Lutheran World Federation - World Service LWF Haiti Activity Report - 21 February to 5 March
The LWF Haiti program is continuing to provide daily drinking water to displaced settlements of Nerett and Saint Therese in P�tion-Ville. An assessment on water, sanitation and public hygiene has also been conducted in L�og�ne and Petit Goave. With the rains arriving, a focus on hygiene and sanitation is increasingly important.
Many activities have been carried out in the psychosocial sector. Two psychosocial assessments have been carried out in the operational areas of Gressier, L�og�ne, Grand Goave and Petit Goave. Four trainings were carried out with the two psychosocial assessment teams. A training was also conducted for 60 teachers who were looking for support in returning to school and relating to children after the earthquake - specifically dealing with how to address questions and fears about the earthquake. The psychosocial support assessment questionnaire has been finalized and translated into French and Creole. A recreation trip took place with national LWF staff to a nearby beach where psychosocial discussions took place regarding experiences during and after the earthquake, stress and reactions. Two psychosocial officers were recruited and began their LWF contracts with a psychosocial training on Thursday March 4.
An MOU has just been signed with a local partner organization RNDDH (R�seau National de D�fense des Droits Humains) who are currently carrying out assessments in the area that LWF will be establishing a new office base - L�og�ne. This implementing partner is currently identifying families who will benefit from the distribution of food and non food items planned for the week of March 15. These distributions will take place in Gressier, L�og�ne, Grand Goave and Petit Goave.
LWF Haiti is otherwise moving forward with the implementation of the ACT Appeal through identifying land for an office in L�og�ne, calling for tenders for NFIs to be distributed, and arrangements for transportation of said items upon procurement.
Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe (DKH)
DKH continued its distribution of relief good in Jacmel and Bainet. As of February 28, DKH has provided kits to 4950 people. Distribution roll out for another 560 families (about 3600 - 4000 people) is planned until March 9. The kits include: one tent, two sleeping mats, two blankets, one mosquito net, one balti, one dish to wash cloths and one dish for personal use.
Please refer to previous sitreps for more information on the entire ACT Response, as well as the ACT Appeal HTI101.
Any funding indication or pledge should be communicated to Jessie Kgoroeadira, ACT Chief Finance Officer (jkg@actalliance.org).
(ends)
ACT Alliance - Action by Churches Together - is a global alliance of churches and related agencies working together for positive and sustainable change in the lives of people affected by emergencies, poverty and injustice through coordinated and effective humanitarian, development and advocacy work.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
Source: Action by Churches Together (ACT) - Switzerland
Elisabeth Gouel
Website: http://www.act-intl.org
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
Sitrep
Haiti - No 09/2010
Geneva, March 5, 2010
General situation: (OCHA)
The Government and humanitarian actors are coordinating to determine the scale of humanitarian needs in Nippes and Sud departments following floods on 27 February.
President Ren� Pr�val flew to the affected areas on 4 March in order to survey the damage. Priority needs following the earthquake of 12 January continue to be emergency shelter, site management, sanitation and food.
WFP and its partners will start its surge operation of general food distributions on 5 March.
The operation will target 1.9 million beneficiaries with a two week ration of rice and a one month ration of beans, corn-soy-blend, oil and salt.
Protection monitoring teams are visiting an average of eight displacement sites per day. Around 300 experts from Haiti and abroad have been working in Port-au-Prince on the Post Disaster Needs Assessment and Recovery Framework (PDNA).
The Clinton Foundation has donated, through the logistics cluster, 40 International (Penske) trucks of 10-15 metric tons capacity for inter-agency use. Another 140 smaller 1.5 - 2.5 metric ton vehicles were also donated and will be registered and insured by WFP for use by organizations with mid- to long-term projects in Haiti, as well as by government partners.
Information on the ACT Coordination:
- Carlos Rauda will cut short his mission as Rapid Support Team coordinator and leave Haiti on 7 March for Chile. A big thank you to all RST members who joined the team. NCA, as manager of the RST system, will be asked to help with an evaluation of the RST experience. An easy-to-administer questionnaire will be prepared and sent to members shortly.
- ACT Alliance is in discussion with candidates for coordination and communication team. A part time security advisor, Mr Guito Clervil, has started his work. The composition of the team will be discussed at the next phone call with members. Phone call is proposed to take place on Tuesday 9 March (please come forward with proposals for agenda).
- ACT General Secretary John Nduna is expected to arrive in Haiti on 7 March. A programme was prepared and circulated to the members. John will meet members, partners, church leaders, members of the Haitian Government and bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors. A communicator and a photographer will accompany him and send stories and pictures.
Information by sectors:
Communication: more stories have been produced by Emily Sollies (text) and Jonathan (pictures).
Psychosocial: Church of Sweden psychosocial and staff care is on-going.
Quality and Accountability: The HAP and Sphere support mission to ACT members in Haiti is concluded. As discussed, support will continue, possibly under the larger umbrella of NGO coordination support office.
The team provided a debrief in Geneva on 4 March. A report on the initial findings of the mission has been shared and a final report will be sent. The lessons are:
- the mission was positive as a support for members to check on the needs of members to integrate quality and accountability aspects in the planning and implementation. However, the timing of this mission was not optimal, since members had been busy with appeal preparation and were overstretched. The capacity of members and partners to be accountable to the affected population has been found wanting. There is need to work on providing quality services and to introduce feedback and complaint mechanisms for the population.
A plan on quality and accountability was developed and sent to the ACT Alliance. The institutional set-up for the support is still under discussion.
Specific Reports from ACT Members and Partners
Church World Service
Service Chretien d'Haiti (SCH) Monitors continue to provide psychosocial services to People with Disabilities (PWD) in the six areas around PaP. Monitors are registering/documenting cases in those areas. Monitors have been also supported by the CoS psychosocial team.
CWS and SCH continue to attend the sub-cluster meeting of Injury, Rehabilitation and Disability (IRD) in coordination with GoH ministry office.
CWS has delivered two Finn Ch Aid school tents to be used in the PWD program in coordination with CBM and Handicap International.
SCH guest house: House manager has been contracted and, with SCH staff,is getting guest house ready for ACT members this week. CWS has provided hygiene and baby kits and medicine boxes to NCA, CAID and LWF for distribution. More kits on the way for ACT members.
CWS partners and monitors have participated in the two HAP/Sphere workshops provided to ACT members.
CRWRC
An additional 200 households in Masson have been surveyed and data entered onto spreadsheets.
Distribution lists for food distribution have been prepared for distribution on Tuesday (9th March).
WASH activities for the town of Masson continue. Because of the high water table, the plan for emergency earthen latrine pits will have to be altered to include septic tanks and construction of these emergency pits. Latrines will take longer than expected to install. Well contractors to visit Masson this week so that wells for potable water may be drilled asap.
The Masson community development team leader has been active in the distributions along with the Masson CBO. He will also be attending the psychosocial workshop offered by ACT.
CRWRC staff met community leaders in order to gain information re temporary housing option decision. They have also been debriefed re the tarp distribution and are now planning the food distribution.
Prices and suggestions re temporary shelter have been collected for a decision regarding temporary shelter for households in Masson.
Hygiene and kitchen kits as well as rubble tool prices have been acquired and final decisions re these items will be made this coming week.
A plan for house inspections in Masson has been formulated and is planned to take place in the next couple of weeks.
Repairs to the ICTA school near Masson have begun - it is the future CRWRC relief office site.
Lutheran World Federation - World Service LWF Haiti Activity Report - 21 February to 5 March
The LWF Haiti program is continuing to provide daily drinking water to displaced settlements of Nerett and Saint Therese in P�tion-Ville. An assessment on water, sanitation and public hygiene has also been conducted in L�og�ne and Petit Goave. With the rains arriving, a focus on hygiene and sanitation is increasingly important.
Many activities have been carried out in the psychosocial sector. Two psychosocial assessments have been carried out in the operational areas of Gressier, L�og�ne, Grand Goave and Petit Goave. Four trainings were carried out with the two psychosocial assessment teams. A training was also conducted for 60 teachers who were looking for support in returning to school and relating to children after the earthquake - specifically dealing with how to address questions and fears about the earthquake. The psychosocial support assessment questionnaire has been finalized and translated into French and Creole. A recreation trip took place with national LWF staff to a nearby beach where psychosocial discussions took place regarding experiences during and after the earthquake, stress and reactions. Two psychosocial officers were recruited and began their LWF contracts with a psychosocial training on Thursday March 4.
An MOU has just been signed with a local partner organization RNDDH (R�seau National de D�fense des Droits Humains) who are currently carrying out assessments in the area that LWF will be establishing a new office base - L�og�ne. This implementing partner is currently identifying families who will benefit from the distribution of food and non food items planned for the week of March 15. These distributions will take place in Gressier, L�og�ne, Grand Goave and Petit Goave.
LWF Haiti is otherwise moving forward with the implementation of the ACT Appeal through identifying land for an office in L�og�ne, calling for tenders for NFIs to be distributed, and arrangements for transportation of said items upon procurement.
Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe (DKH)
DKH continued its distribution of relief good in Jacmel and Bainet. As of February 28, DKH has provided kits to 4950 people. Distribution roll out for another 560 families (about 3600 - 4000 people) is planned until March 9. The kits include: one tent, two sleeping mats, two blankets, one mosquito net, one balti, one dish to wash cloths and one dish for personal use.
Please refer to previous sitreps for more information on the entire ACT Response, as well as the ACT Appeal HTI101.
Any funding indication or pledge should be communicated to Jessie Kgoroeadira, ACT Chief Finance Officer (jkg@actalliance.org).
(ends)
ACT Alliance - Action by Churches Together - is a global alliance of churches and related agencies working together for positive and sustainable change in the lives of people affected by emergencies, poverty and injustice through coordinated and effective humanitarian, development and advocacy work.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
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