I'm shaken every time I see something about them in my Globe.
"In Haiti, grand plans give way to $500 and a push out the door" by William Booth | Washington Post, February 26, 2012
PORT-AU-PRINCE - International aid worker Emmett Fitzgerald has to get 20,000 very poor people squatting in front of the National Palace to pack up their tarpaulins and tin, their plastic buckets and soiled mats - to empty the most notorious camp in Haiti and go home.
The hard part: What home?
There is not enough money and not enough time to build cities of tomorrow in Haiti today. So the 4,641 families that have lived for the past two years in the Champ de Mars park in downtown Port-au-Prince will get $500 to return to the kind of desperate housing they had before the earthquake.
Where did all those billions in aid dollars go? Whose pockets were lined?
In Haiti, that is considered good news.
“We’re not talking about a house. We’re talking about renting a room, space on the floor, with a roof, access to water, a communal kitchen, maybe a toilet,’’ Fitzgerald said. As program coordinator for the International Organization for Migration, he is working with the Haitian government to clear the Champ de Mars camp, with a $20 million grant from the Canadian government.
If that sounds grim, the residents of Champ de Mars are the lucky ones. Given the magnitude of the housing crisis, combined with donor fatigue and lack of investment, the promise of constructing new public housing to absorb the homeless in Haiti has collided with reality.
WTF do you mean LACK of INVESTMENT?
Where did ALL THOSE BILLIONS GO, dammit!!!!!
Most of the estimated 135,000 families still in camps will not be offered a shelter arrangement. Some camps will become “formalized’’ as permanent slums.
As we ALWAYS KNEW THEY WOULD!
The displaced will mostly have to fend for themselves.
NOTHING NEW to a HAITIAN!
Why not allow the residents to remain in Champ de Mars? Because the tarp shanties are overcrowded fire hazards that will blow down in the first hurricane, the Haitian government says. There is no running water or electricity. There is another reason, too: The Champ de Mars camp is an embarrassment.
Damn right!
Two years after the world’s worst urban disaster in a generation, about 515,000 Haitians linger in 707 camps scattered across the capital. Although it is not unusual for refugees fleeing conflict to be stuck in camps for years, as Somali refugees in Kenya or Palestinians in Lebanon have been, rarely are people displaced by natural disasters for so long, and almost never in a camp in the central plaza of a capital city....
They join a select company there, and I'm shocked by the fleeting reference to Palestinian refugees. My first thought regarding the neglect of Haitians is it is because they are black -- another reason their recovery and rebuild fund was looted by globalist elites.
A report by Nicole Phillips of the University of San Francisco School of Law found it likely that many of the displaced persons who had left tent cities are now living in conditions worse than those found in the camps....
The very definition of hell, isn't it?
International donors, including the US government, have helped renovate just 6,000 homes in two years....
Where did all that g**-damn money go!!!!!!!???
The ambitious plans of last year - with seaside promenades built of earthquake rubble and boulevards lined with three-story mixed-use commercial and residential developments - gather dust on government shelves, relics of a more naive era.
The “exemplar communities’’ of foam homes, geodesic domes, and innovative cabanas designed by world-class architects, promoted by the “Build Back Better’’ mantra of Bill Clinton and his Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, are on hold.
Saint Bill stole the money?
All the while, the camps are quickly deteriorating. As of last month, there was no committed funding for emptying camp latrines. Almost all health services have been removed.
But they are still better than.... aw, hell!
--more--"
Ready for a political earthquake?
"Haitian prime minister resigns; Move could hurt reconstruction" by Trenton Daniel | Associated Press, February 25, 2012
What reconstruction? They haven't even cleaned up the rubble from two years ago.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille abruptly resigned yesterday after less than five months on the job in a political setback for President Michel Martelly, whose struggle to fill the top government post has hampered earthquake reconstruction and other development efforts....
Conille’s resignation, which came after weeks of rumors of strife between him and other administration officials and in Parliament, poses a new challenge to a government struggling to rebuild from a devastating January 2010 earthquake while confronting the poverty and instability that predated the disaster.
“Clearly, it is another crisis, another self-inflicted wound that damages the capacity of the Haitian government to overcome enormous challenges,’’ said Mark Schneider, a senior vice president and Haiti expert with the nonprofit think tank International Crisis Group in Washington.
The president of Haiti’s Senate, Simon Dieuseul Desras, warned that the loss of the prime minister would create a political vacuum.
That why Duvalier is hanging round?
“This is not what the population was waiting for, that the National Palace and president’s office are in conflict,’’ Desras said. “Today is a waste of time. We must start all over again, and we don’t know how long it will take to have another prime minister again.’’
At least two candidates were being considered as a replacement, including Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Lamothe and Ann-Valerie Milfort, the interim head of the now-defunct Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak.
Conille, a physician who once served as an aide to Bill Clinton in the former US president’s role as UN envoy to Haiti, was ratified by the opposition-dominated Parliament in October after Martelly’s two previous choices for prime minister failed to win support from lawmakers, delaying the formation of a government by about five months.
Un-flipping-real! All our guys!
The absence of the person in charge of the day-to-day government operations could discourage donors from fulfilling pledges to help Haiti rebuild from the 2010 earthquake, further stalling reconstruction efforts.
As if there were any.
It could also put a number of reconstruction contracts on hold and further postpone the appointment of important government positions that Haiti desperately needs to fill, Schneider said....
Conille’s resignation might have been prompted by a dispute among government officials about whether any of them have dual nationality, which the nation’s constitution prohibits for senior government officials. Many officials in Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean spend considerable time overseas.
Say what? AmeriKa has a bit of a problem with that and a certain small, Middle Eastern state's citizens.
A commission of lawmakers has been investigating claims that Martelly administration officials might have US or other foreign citizenship. Conille and other officials surrendered their passports and other documents to the commission, but the findings have not been announced.
Conille said after a news conference last week that he and Martelly were on good terms despite rumors to the contrary.
“I have a good working relationship with the president,’’ he said. “Haiti is a big country of rumors. I think we have a very frank and honest relationship where we discuss things.’’
Senator Kely Bastien said he saw signs of division between Conille and his government last week when the number two official went before Parliament to answer lawmakers’ questions about dual nationality but didn’t show up with his entire Cabinet....
--more--"
