Aid for Haiti

nancyk58 · November 22, 2010

HAITI's SECOND CITY CAP HAITIEN HIT BY CHOLERA

NEWS ON 21 NOVEMBER 2010 IN RELATION TO NATURAL DISASTERS

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11806520

HAITI's SECOND CITY CAP HAITIEN HIT BY CHOLERA

21 November 2010 Last updated at 14:07 GMT

Report by Wendy Urquhart:

Aid agencies in Haiti say an outbreak of cholera has now spread to all parts of the country's second city.

So far it has claimed nearly 1,200 lives - and medical teams are struggling to stop it spreading further.

nancyk58 · November 22, 2010

We Donated to Haiti Relief and We're Angry

http://www.change.org/disasteraccountability/petitions/view/we_donated_to_haiti_relief_and_were_angry

We Donated to Haiti Relief and We're Angry

Targeting: Gail J. McGovern (President and CEO, American Red Cross), Neal Keny-Guyer (CEO, Mercy Corps), Raymond C. Offenheiser (President, Oxfam America)

Started by: DISASTER ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

The leadership of the major disaster relief and aid organizations operating in Haiti allowed cholera to become a threat because they did not do their jobs.

The international community and Haitian government failed to sufficiently invest in clean water and sanitation after the quake. Now, living conditions are so deplorable and infrastructure so poor, the situation is ripe for a cholera epidemic. The cholera death toll is expected to soar into the thousands.

Cholera is caused by contamination of water or food with human feces containing the V. cholerae bacterium. Around 90% of cases produce mild or moderate diarrhea and dehydration. But among the severe cases, left untreated, as many as one out of every two people will die - some in a matter of hours. The World Health Organization reported that cholera outbreaks are "closely linked to inadequate environmental management" and that "typical at-risk areas include peri-urban slums, where basic infrastructure is not available, as well as camps for internally displaced people or refugees, where minimum requirements of clean water and sanitation are not met." See the WHO's fact sheet - http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs107/en

As many as 1.5 million people in Haiti are living in camps like these that were set up by relief and aid organizations and the Haitian government. At the very least, the fact that these organizations' leadership did not see cholera coming or failed to thwart it demonstrates a Katrina-esque failure of initiative.

Each of these organizations stated that they worked on Water and Sanitation after the Haiti earthquake. As of July 2010 - six months after the Haiti earthquake, American Red Cross raised $464 million and spent $117 million; Catholic Relief Services raised $140.8 million and spent $30.6 million; Oxfam America raised $29 million and spent $11 million; Salvation Army raised $20.5 million and spent $6.8 million; Food for the Poor raised $20.5 million and spent $10.7 million; Mercy Corps raised $14.9 million and spent almost $2.9 million; International Medical Corps raised $13 million and spent $4.5 million. World Vision raised $192 million worldwide and spent $56 million worldwide and CARE raised $36.5 million worldwide and spent $9.6 million worldwide.

See the Chronicle of Philanthropy's accounting of how much was raised and how much was spent: http://philanthropy.com/article/How-Charities-Are-Helping/66243/

It is the individual aid workers on the ground that deserve our gratitude for doing the back-breaking work to help those in need. Meanwhile, the headquarters of these major relief/aid organizations raised billions of dollars using emotional, heart-wrenching and urgent appeals, prioritized how they spent that money, and apparently chose to spend less than half. Potentially billions of post-earthquake relief dollars, intended for the Haitian people, are just sitting in U.S. and foreign banks.

The question remains: Why are conditions so poor, after all that has been donated, that cholera is still such a threat?

If you donated, or you are a U.S. taxpayer and your tax dollars supported Haiti relief efforts, join with us to demand more transparency and public accountability in the Haiti relief efforts.

These stories by the BBC, CBS News, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal are also particularly compelling.

Petition Text

The Cholera Epidemic In Haiti Should Not Be Happening

Dear Executives of Major Aid/Relief Organizations:

We Donated and We're Angry.

Earthquake survivors in Haiti should not be dying from cholera.

The survivors of the devastating January '10 earthquake in Haiti should be the beneficiaries of billions of disaster relief dollars. That was our intention when we donated. Billions of dollars should have been able to improve conditions enough to provide clean water and sanitation services. That was our intention when we donated.

Your organization raised over one million dollars for Haiti relief. Some relief/aid organizations raised nearly half a billion dollars.

• We want a detailed, public accounting of how you spent the money you raised.

• We want more transparency.

• We want regular, factual information about what large relief organizations are doing, how much they're spending, and where they're operating. We want specifics - not just aggregate figures, anecdotes, blog stories, and Facebook and Twitter updates.

We'd like to know why conditions are so poor that cholera is such a threat, despite all that has been donated, 10 months after the earthquake.

We donated and we're angry.[Your name]

nancyk58 · November 24, 2010

ON 24 NOVEMBER 2010 IN RELATION TO NATURAL DISASTERS

NEWS ON 24 NOVEMBER 2010 IN RELATION TO NATURAL DISASTERS

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11826323

24 November 2010 Last updated at 02:27 GMT

HAITI CHOLERA SPREADING FASTER THAN PREDICTED, UN SAYS

The cholera epidemic in Haiti is spreading twice as fast as had been estimated and is likely to result in hundreds of thousands of cases in the coming months, the UN says.

The UN's humanitarian co-ordinator for Haiti, Nigel Fisher, said aid agencies would have to "ratchet up" their response and send more medical staff.

The Haitian government says 1415 PEOPLE ARE CONFIRMED TO HAVE DIED.

The epidemic has complicated preparations for elections next Sunday.

Mr Fisher said more than 200,000 cases of infection could be recorded in the first three months instead of six months as first estimated.

"This epidemic is moving faster and we are in unknown territory in Haiti just because this is moving so fast. There is no immunity to it", he said.

Mr Fisher added that the Haitian government would have to increase pressure on local authorities to find places for more treatment centres and to dispose of bodies.

There has been some opposition to the placing of treatment centres from residents who fear they could bring the infection into their neighbourhoods.

The UN under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, Valerie Amos, who is visiting Haiti, told the BBC there was an urgent need to train Haitian health workers, who have no previous experience of dealing with cholera.

"We need to get the message out there to the people that this is something that can be dealt with. We need to make sure they know about hand-washing and proper sanitation, and we need to get supplies in", she said.

Election challenge

Campaigning is meanwhile in full swing for Sunday's elections, when Haitians will elect a new president and legislative members.

Some human rights groups and four of the 19 presidential candidates have called for the elections to be postponed because of the cholera epidemic.

But the UN mission in Haiti, Minustah, says the conditions for a successful vote are good.

"The government and the vast majority of candidates are really determined that these elections be held as planned," said the head of Minustah, Edmond Mulet.

"As in the past we might see some intimidation or burning of ballots or polling stations, but we are prepared on the security side to face those challenges".

There have been outbreaks of violence between rival political factions in the run-up to the vote.

On Tuesday two people were shot dead in a clash between supporters of two candidates in the town of Beaumont in south-western Haiti.

Last week there was also rioting directed against UN peacekeepers from Nepal, who some Haitians have accused of bringing cholera into the country.

The UN says there is no evidence to support the accusation.

Sunday's elections are seen as a crucial step towards giving Haiti a stable government that can lead recovery efforts after January's massive earthquake, which killed about 230,000 people and shattered the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Some 19 candidates are vying to succeed current president, Rene Preval and it is likely that the election will go to a second round run-off on 16 January.

Most candidates have insisted that the elections, which will also choose 99 deputies and 10 senators, should go ahead as planned.

SVT on 22.11.10: 4 PEOPLE INFECTED BY CHOLERA IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC (OR MAYBE DEAD?)

Danish DR1: 200,000 CASES OF CHOLERA IN HAITI

According to Jon Kim Andrus – Deputy Director of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) – Haiti’s Health Ministry has recorded 56,901 cases of cholera.

The infected are treated in hospitals and as out-patients.

1,415 have DIED due to the cholera epidemic.

Cholera is found in 8 of Haiti’s 10 provinces / regions.

German ARDtext: HAITI’S NUMBER OF CHOLERA DEATHS RISES TO MORE THAN 1,400

According to Fisher, UN coordinator for humanitarian assistance, probably 2,000 have already died of cholera.

According to the government more than 60,000 Haitians have been infected since mid-October. About 25,000 of them are still being treated.

nancyk58 · November 30, 2010

After-the-earthquake-looming-aids-crisis-in-haiti

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-29/after-the-earthquake-looming-aids-crisis-in-haiti/full/

As activists and celebrities get ready to mark World AIDS Day tomorrow, Lisa Armstrong reports from Haiti, and discovers a health disaster in the making.

Nadine and her two young children live in a small tent in Port au Prince, on the plot where their house stood before the earthquake. They don’t have much—the tent is surrounded by rubble and anchored with cracked cement blocks—but the inside is neat. Nadine has set up a twin bed and a single mattress, an old television and a fan. The children have adopted two cats, one white, one black. And on afternoons, Nadine’s daughter and her friends sit on the floor of the tent and play cards.

Nadine and her children fled the vast tent city, Champs de Mars, in the fall, after police shot tear gas into the encampment in response to a violent protest. Now, in this little tent, 37-year-old Nadine has tried to create what, in the absence of an actual structure, at least feels like a home for her 7-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son. And while life here is safer and better than it was in the camp, Nadine says that she doesn’t think a new government, or anything else the Haitian people have been promised, will make a difference, particularly for people like her.

Nadine is HIV positive, and according to the United Nations, there are as many as 120,000 people like her in Haiti. Many, like Nadine, have been living under tarps and in tents since the January earthquake that devastated the country—conditions that experts warn could lead to a major health disaster.

Nadine, who doesn’t want her last name used because the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS in Haiti, has to worry more than most when she cannot find food or water, or when the rain drips into her tent at night, soaking her clothes. With her weakened immune system, the drastic drop from the day’s blazing heat to the damp cold at night can make her catch a cold, and then tuberculosis. She has to have clean water as cholera would quickly kill her. And she needs food to take her anti-retroviral drugs to keep full-blown AIDS at bay.

After her house collapsed during the January earthquake, Nadine first came to Champs de Mars with her children, hoping to find food and shelter. But she wasn’t lucky enough to get a tent or food distribution cards, and ended up living with five other relatives under a tarp. She and her children often went without food, and the filth, rapes, and other violence in the camp left Nadine with little hope. And fleeing the camp didn’t improve her outlook.

“Sometimes I feel depressed and I say, well, why don't I go? Why don't I leave this world?” says Nadine. “There is no hope coming, especially for those people like me living with HIV. I thought that the government could help us, but that’s not what happened.”

Haiti used to be a model for combating AIDS. Experts at first thought the epidemic might wipe out a third of the population. But instead the country became a surprising success story: Thanks to significant financial support from the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief as well as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria prevalence rates fell from 9.4 percent in 1993 to 2.2 percent in 2008.

January’s earthquake, however, destroyed many health facilities, and experts are afraid that with the high rates of rape, prostitution, and promiscuity in the camps, there will be an explosive increase in the number of new HIV infections.

“I think we could well have 200,000 to 300,000 affected by HIV,” says Esther Boucicault, founder of Foundation Esther Boucicault Stanislas, a grassroots HIV/AIDS organization. “Because what can you do in a tent? Nothing. Nothing, no entertainment, nothing. The only thing you can do is sex. So you have sex.”

Doctors doing HIV testing at a clinic at one of Haiti’s many tent camps are seeing at least 15 to 20 new cases each day in that one camp alone, says Beatrice Dalencourt Turnier, a social mobilization officer at The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Shortly after the earthquake, Turnier and her team tried to distribute condoms in the camps, but those in charge of the emergency response did not see this as a priority. “Once somebody has access to food, to water, to shelter, the next need is affection and sex,” says Turnier. “But it's very difficult for people that work in an emergency to understand that. When people are giving out food and you're telling them they need to give condoms, it's like ‘Why do you want to bother me with that?’”

For those already living with HIV, the immediate challenge after the earthquake was getting access to anti-retroviral drugs. While some of the larger organizations that serve people with HIV were able to resume distribution of the vital drugs in the weeks after the earthquake, many smaller organizations were destroyed, leaving their clients without medication, food, and other services.

Nadine was able to get her medication after four days from one of Haiti’s largest HIV/AIDS organizations, but it has been hard for her to take her twice-daily dosage of drugs because she doesn’t want anyone to know she is HIV positive, because of the stigma.

“I have to hide myself to take my medication, but finally, when people discover I am taking medicine they ask why. I say I am taking the medicine to have an appetite to eat more,” she says.

Nadine discovered she was HIV positive almost eight years ago, when she was pregnant with her daughter. While her husband initially stayed with her after the diagnosis, he left Nadine and their children three years ago. She has never had steady work, in part because of the HIV, and now works as a vendor, selling food with her cousin in downtown Port au Prince to earn a little money. However, her family does not know that she is HIV positive, and on the days when she is sick and cannot work, her aunt calls her lazy, and refuses to give her leftover food so that she and her children can eat.

“Some organizations before the quake used to give us money to pay for school for the kids. And also they used to give us some food,” says Nadine. “After the quake they stopped. They say they don’t have money anymore. It’s not good because they know we are not working; that we need money; that we need food. I don’t have money for school fees, so my children cannot go to school.”

The problem is a simple lack of funding. The smaller organizations often do not have the connection to international aid sources that some of the larger organizations have.

Boucicault, the AIDS activist who is HIV positive herself, hopes that whoever is elected as the new president of Haiti will do a better job of providing for those living with HIV. If international aid stops flowing, she says, “all the people in Haiti living with HIV will die, because the government has never taken care of them.”

Nadine for her part is gathering the necessary paperwork to immigrate to New York, where her grandmother lives. She knows that it will be difficult, but it is her only source of hope.

“President Obama said that… even though you have HIV you would be able to have your residence in the States,” says Nadine. “In the meantime, I accept the way life is, and my kids also. We have to accept life the way it is.”

This reporting project was supported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Lisa Armstrong covers humanitarian issues around the world. She has written for magazines, newspapers and organizations including The Washington Post, National Geographic, Parade, USA Weekend, O Magazine, Unicef and the World Bank.

nancyk58 · December 3, 2010

NEWS ON HAITI ON 3 DECEMBER 2010

NEWS ON HAITI ON 3 DECEMBER 2010

Swedish SVT: HAITI: AT LEAST 12 MURDERS AFTER ALLEGED MAGIC

Gangs in the south-western Haiti have killed at least 12 people in the last couple of days. According to the police, the victims were accused of having carried/brought cholera to a region that had not been affected before and of having tried to spread the infection via magic.

The cholera continues to spread, but is less mortal than before.

Earlier 9% of the infected died compared to 2.3% now.

The figures are stated by PAHO - the Pan-American Health Organization - the Latin-American branch of WHO.

So far 1817 died. 80,860 cases have been reported. 36,000 of these required treatment at a hospital.

PAHO estimates that 400,000 will be infected in the the coming 12 months.

Swedish SVT: UN THREATENS TO STOP ITS HAITI SUPPORT

UN will withdraw its support if Haiti's government does not respect the result of the election.

"The international community will witdraw its HAITI support, and Haiti will no longer be able to take advantage of international resources if the result of the election is not respected", said Edmond Mullet, who is in charge of the UN efforts.

12 of 18 candidates running demanded that the result of the election should be declared null and void / invalid after a campaign in favour of the candidate from the ruling party, Jude Celestin.

nancyk58 · December 6, 2010

Article in relation to HAITI

SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST HAITI's WOMEN

posted by: Natasha N.

NOTE: In the aftermath of the earthquake, women in Haiti have faced a formidable outbreak of sexual violence.

Guest blogger Liesl Gerntholtz, Researcher at Human Rights Watch, interviewed a young rape survivor as part of an investigation into sexual and other violence against women in the country. This is part three of a series of guest posts.

Driving through Port-au-Prince's Parc Jean Marie Vincent camp, the first thing I notice is how massive and congested it is. After that, the smell and the heat hit me. I had come to the camp to interview a young rape survivor, as part of a Human Rights Watch mission to Haiti to investigate sexual and other violence against women in the continuing aftermath of the earthquake.

Sexual violence often increases in emergencies, when normal structures have broken down and women struggle to meet basic needs for food, water, shelter and hygiene.

A Rape Victim's StoryI met "Gentile" in an empty tent, giving us at least a little privacy. We sat in the oppressive heat, and she quietly described how, a few nights earlier, she had been grabbed by five men and taken into a nearby house. There she was raped, forced to perform oral sex, and brutally beaten. When she finally managed to escape, the men chased her and beat her in the street, where a man finally rescued her and took her to his home. Later that morning, she returned to the streets, as she literally has nowhere else to go.

Gentile, whose name I have changed for her protection, was lucky, if that is the right word, to meet up with a human rights advocate in the camp. He took her to a hospital, where she received some medical treatment. She was not sure what medication she had been given, as the doctor who helped her did not speak Creole and there was not one to translate what he was saying. As Gentile told me, "I really need somebody to be with me in this suffering… I am not sleeping… I feel weak."

Women's Safety Continues to be Compromised

During our mission, we were in 15 of the largest camps for displaced Haitians, and we documented a number of gang rapes in Parc Jean Marie Vincent camp alone. The camps are unsafe places, and many women live with strangers, having lost contact with family members and friends. Their access to food and water is compromised. They bathe and wash children in public places. There is no separation of facilities for women and men-and no lighting-so these are unsafe after dark.

Violence against women was a problem in Haiti long before the earthquake, with rape only recognized as a crime in 2005.

However, much can be done to protect women from sexual violence during the reconstruction of Haiti. Aid agencies continue to take steps to address these concerns: highlighting the need for lighting and security in the camps, safe food distribution, private washing facilities and latrines, access to health services for women who are assaulted and raped.

The International Violence Against Women Act

As the work continues, it is essential to re-build the capacity of local women's organizations that can lead the struggle against violence. Many have lost key activists and other staff members, and the remaining members have personal losses and their offices have been destroyed. Strengthening these groups and individuals will be key to protecting Haitian women and girls during rebuilding.

nancyk58 · December 6, 2010

Swedish SVT and Danish DR1: CHOLERA DEATH TOLL IN HAITI PASSES 2,000 - ACCORDING TO HAITI's HEALTH MINISTRY 2,013 HAVE DIED

The epidemic has infected about 90,000 people.

6 weeks after the first cholera case for more than 100 years was recorded in Haiti, data show that the death toll continues to rise at a worrying speed.

According to figures from the Health Ministry, 88,789 cases of cholera have been recorded and 2,013 have died of cholera in Haiti since the end of October.

According to UN experts, the actual death toll can be considerably higher.

nancyk58 · December 7, 2010

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 7.12.10

Swedish SVT: HAITI: UN CAMP WAS THE SOURCE OF CHOLERA

The devestating cholera epidemic in HAITI started in a camp for UN soldiers from NEPAL. This is the conclusion in a French - not yet public - expert report, so AFP.

The suspicion that UN soldiers were the source of the outbreak of cholera that has so far killed more than 2,000 Haitians triggered violent clashes. The suspicion has been confirmed by a Swedish diplomat, but dismissed by the UN.

An acknowledged French epidemiologist has found out that the infection spread when faeces (stools) were emptied into the ARTIBONITE river near the UN camp in Mirebalais.

nancyk58 · December 8, 2010

News on 8 December 2010 in relation to HAITI

NEWS on 8 December 2010 in relation to HAITI

Danish TV2 news / Swedish SVT and German ZDFtext: VIOLENCE AND UNREST AFTER HAITI ELECTION RESULTS

Haitians demonstrate after the early reports of the results of the presidential election in Haiti. The 70-year-old former first lady and opposition leader MIRLANDE MANIGAT is in the lead with so far 31% of the votes after the first round which took place on 28.11.10. JUDE CELESTIN from the party in power got 22%. According to the electoral council Celestin got 7,000 more votes than the third candidate, popstar MICHEL MARTELLY. This information led to suspicion of election fraud according to AFP. The headquarter of the government party is on fire. A second round is scheduled on 16.01.11.

Demonstrators have set up barricades of tyres. Tyres are burning in several quarters in the capital, Port-au-Prince according to AFP reporters / journalists. They also reported episodes of shots. At least one person has been killed. Local radio stations report similar protests in other Haitian towns / cities.

Swedish SVT: The NEPALESE army dismisses the rumour that Nepalese soldiers were to blame for the spread of cholera.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11950240

8 December 2010 Last updated at 20:10 GMT

HAITI RULING PARTY HQ SET ALIGHT BY ELECTION PROTESTERS

Demonstrators have set fire to the headquarters of Haiti's ruling party, amid large-scale protests against the results of presidential elections.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Port-au-Prince, accusing the ruling party of rigging the vote in favour of its candidate, Jude Celestin.

He finished in second place ahead of pop star Michel Martelly, who was pushed out of the second round run-off.

President Rene Preval called for an end to the protests in a national address.

Demonstrations erupted in several cities soon after the results were announced on Tuesday night.

In Port-au-Prince, supporters of Mr Martelly started fires and set up barricades.

Thousands of young people resumed the protests in the capital early on Wednesday in the capital and other cities.

Witnesses described flames leaping from the headquarters of the governing Inite (Unite) coalition after it was set alight.

Protesters told the Associated Press news agency that security guards had shot demonstrators as they attacked the building, but there were no confirmed reports of injuries.

"The people came out to vote for Martelly because [leading candidate Mirlande] Manigat and Celestin are not going to sort anything out. Martelly was ahead and they have stolen the elections," one protester said.

The AFP news agency reported that one protester was shot dead and two others were wounded as supports of Mr Martelly and Mr Celestin brawled with each other in the second city, Cap Haitien.

Officials have not yet confirmed numbers of casualties.

Mr Celestin is regarded as Mr Preval's hand-picked successor, and the incumbent defended the election result in his national radio address.

But he urged Mr Celestin and Mr Martelly to ask their supporters to call off the protests.

Results 'inconsistent'

Most observers say the first round of the voting was grossly mismanaged.

Former first lady Mirlande Manigat won 31% of the vote and Mr Celestin 22%. Mr Martelly polled just over 21% - about 6,800 votes short of Mr Celestin.

The US embassy in Haiti said on Tuesday it was concerned the results were "inconsistent" with vote counts observed around the country.

The close result has led to calls that Mr Martelly also be included in the run-off.

Mr Martelly has said he will not accept a place in the run-off if Mr Celestin is present. He has until 10 December to appeal against the result.

At the scene

Tim Mansel BBC News, Port-au-Prince

There was sporadic gunfire throughout the night in Port-au-Prince after the election result was announced. As dawn broke, several columns of black smoke were rising into the air from tyres that had been set alight by demonstrators, obscuring views of the city beneath us.

The chants of the demonstrators break through sporadically, and there have been several explosions in the last few hours and reports of groups of demonstrators on the streets, armed with sticks and machetes. Some barricades have already been cleared, but others are still being erected.

Streets that would normally be full of traffic are empty, as many people have stayed at home. Flights in and out of the airport have been cancelled and the UN has told all its personnel to stay at home.

There are further reports of unrest from several other parts of the country.

From other news sites

• Yahoo! UK and Ireland: Four dead as Haiti vote protests turn ugly

• Reuters UK: Haiti protesters rampage against election results

• CNEWS: Haitians protest election run-off

• ONE News: Election run-off protests erupt in Haiti

• Irish Times: Haiti election to go to run-off

nancyk58 · December 9, 2010

News on 9 December 2010 in relation to HAITI

Danish DR1: UNREST CLOSED HAITI's AIRPORTS

HAITI's airports have been closed after VIOLENT CLASHES that COST 4 HUMAN LIVES. The unrest was caused by dissatisfaction with the results of last month's elections in the Caribbean nation.

Officials in the airport in Port-au-Prince say that all airports in HAITI are closed at the same time as THOUSANDS DEMONSTRATE IN TOWNS AND CITIES IN ALL OF HAITI.

The airline American Airlines has cancelled its flights to HAITI until the end of Thursday.

Danish DR1: CHOLERA SPREADING FAST IN HAITI

According to American Centre for Disease Control, cholera is spreading fast in HAITI, and the centre recommends a rapid international effort to contain the epidemic.

American experts say that cholera is recorded in all parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince where hundred thousands of Haitians are still living in tent camps and huts with poor sanitary conditions after the earthquake in January 2010.

The epidemic which started 2 months ago has so far COST 2,120 HUMAN LIVES according to official figures. 91,770 have been INFECTED of which 43,245 have been hospitalized for treatment.

nancyk58 · December 10, 2010

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 10.12.10

Danish DR1: 500,000 HOMELESS HAITIANS HAVE LEFT TENT CAMPS

About 500,000 homeless Haitians have left the miserable tent camps that have housed many families made homeless by the powerful earthquake on 12 January 2010.

The number of Haitians in the camps reached their peak in the summer of 2010 when more than 1.5 million homeless Haitians lived in the 1,200 camps.

Haitians are leaving the camps to look for alternatives to the overcrowded and miserable camps. The long rainy season has made their stay in the camps almost unbearable. But also the fear of the cholera epidemic has made many Haitians look for alternatives.

According to the UN, many have returned home!!

Swedish SVT: NEW COUNTING OF THE VOTES FOR THE 3 LEADING CANDIDATES IN HAITI's ELECTION

The votes for the 3 leading candidates in Haiti's election will be counted again after violent clashes caused by the official result which placed the current president's candidate as no. 2 (and in the second round) instead of the popular popsinger Michel Martelly who was placed as no. 3 in the official result.

At least 4 died on Wednesday, and the protests continued yesterday.

nancyk58 · December 10, 2010

BBC World News on the situation in HAITI on 10.12.10

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11964180

10 December 2010 Last updated at 06:27 GMT

HAITI ORDERS RECOUNT OF DISPUTED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Election officials in Haiti say they will review the disputed result of last month's presidential election.

There will be an immediate vote recount in the presence of the top three candidates - Mirlande Manigat, Jude Celestin and Michel Martelly - and international observers.

The announcement follows violent demonstrations by supporters of Mr Martelly, the third-placed candidate.

He alleges the count was rigged to deny him a second-round run-off place.

The Provisional Election Council said it had "decided to immediately launch a rapid and exceptional process to verify at the counting centre the tally sheets linked to the 2010 presidential elections".

Since the polls on 28 November, more than half of the 19 candidates have called for the result to be annulled.

Meanwhile, a second medical study has traced the outbreak of cholera in Haiti - which has killed 2,000 people since October - to UN peacekeepers from South Asia.

The research published in the New England Journal of Medicine supports the link, which was reported last month by the US Centers for Disease Control. The UN has denied the claim.

Burning barricades

Election results announced on Tuesday night gave 31% to the former first lady, Ms Manigat, with the governing party candidate, Mr Celestin, in second place with 22%.

Mr Martelly came third with 21%, about 6,800 votes short of Mr Celestin.

The strongest protests have come from supporters of pop star Mr Martelly, known to his supporters as "Sweet Micky," who was widely expected to go through to the second round.

Violence erupted almost immediately after the results were made public.

Thousands of supporters of Mr Martelly took to the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, setting up burning barricades and clashing with UN peacekeepers.

On Wednesday, the headquarters of the governing party in Port-au-Prince was set on fire and the international airport was closed because of the unrest.

There was also violence in several other cities.

Canada on Thursday said it was closing its embassy in Port-au-Prince, due to the protests in the country's capital.

Mr Martelly urged his supporters to hold only non-violent protests.

He accused the election commission of "plunging the country into crisis with its incorrect results".

The outgoing president Rene Preval appealed for calm and defended the result.

Mr Celestin is widely seen as Mr Preval's hand-picked successor.

Most observers said the first round of voting was grossly mismanaged, with widespread irregularities.

The US embassy said on Tuesday it was concerned the results were "inconsistent" with vote counts around the country.

The run-off is due to take place on 16 January.

A successful election is seen as crucial to establishing an effective government in Haiti after years of instability.

Whoever becomes president will face the task of rebuilding the country after the devastating earthquake that killed around 230,000 people last January, as well as battling a cholera epidemic.

Separately, former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin is due to visit the country this weekend with the relief organisation Samaritan's Purse, aides of the former vice-president nominee said.

ANALYSIS

Mark Doyle

BBC International development correspondent

Most independent observers were sceptical when the government's presidential candidate Jude Celestin came through the first round of voting at the expense of streetwise pop star Michel Martelly.

Two days of anti-government protests followed, which led to the closure of the airport and other businesses.

On Wednesday the protesters got support from the highly influential US embassy in Port-au-Prince.

The results of the first round, the embassy said, were inconsistent with the projections made by respected local and international observers. It was probably this pressure from the US embassy which led the electoral commission to order a recount.

What happens next is far from clear. One option, depending on the result of the recount, is that first round may turn out to have been so close that not two but three candidates may stand in the decisive second round runoff.

nancyk58 · December 11, 2010

News in relation to HAITI on 11.12.10

Swedish SVT: HAITI's PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES DO NOT WANT THE VOTES TO BE RECOUNTED

Mirlande Manigat who got most of the votes in the first round of the presidential election in Haiti no longer wants the votes to be recounted. The electoral council proposed that the votes should be recounted.

As the proposal for recounting the votes did not contain any details as to how to recount the votes or which role the candidates should play she does not want to be involved.

Nor does the popsinger Michel Martelly who was officially declared as the third most popular candidate want the votes to be recounted. He is convinced that President Préval and his candidate Jude Celestin manipulated the election.

nancyk58 · December 17, 2010

News on 17 December 2010 in relation to HAITI

Danish TV2 News, Live and German ZDFtext: UN WILL INVESTIGATE ORIGIN OF CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN HAITI

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has set up a committee which is to investigate the reason for the cholera outbreak in HAITI and its origin.

So far about 2,000 Haitians (TV2 News mentioned: 2,400) died of cholera. Thousands are affected.

In November 2010 rumours of UN soldiers having brought the cholera to HAITI sparked violent clashes. Official investigations have so far not found the origin of the cholera.

nancyk58 · December 18, 2010

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 17 AND 18 DECEMBER 2010

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12021400

17 December 2010 Last updated at 18:57 GMT

Ki-Moon: "We want to make the best effort to get to the bottom of this and find answers that the people of Haiti deserve"

The United Nations has set up an independent panel to investigate the source of cholera in Haiti.

The move comes after accusations that UN peacekeepers from South Asia introduced the disease to the poverty-stricken country.

The UN has previously denied any connection.

More than 2,000 people have died and thousands more have been infected by cholera in Haiti since the outbreak began in October.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said the scientific panel was necessary to "find answers that the people of Haiti deserve".

"There are several theories of the origins of the cholera outbreak in Haiti - not all reports have reached the same conclusion," he said at a news conference on Friday.

"There remain fair questions and legitimate concerns which demand the best answers that science can provide," he added.

He said the panel would be "completely independent" and have full access to UN premises and personnel.

'South Asia strain'

NEPALESE peacekeepers became the object of local suspicion partly because cholera is very rare in Haiti but endemic in Nepal.

In November, the US Center for Disease Control found that the cholera strain in Haiti most closely resembled a South Asian strain.

A leaked study by epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux on behalf of the French and Haitian governments also suggested the strain had been imported from South Asia.

Sources who saw the report said it had evidence the outbreak was caused by river contamination by Nepalese troops.

But Mr Ban said that initial reports by the UN suggested that peacekeepers from Nepal were not responsible.

The Nepalese army denies the accusation, but said earlier this month that soldiers were not tested for cholera before they went.

The UN has said that health officials now estimated that 650,000 people in Haiti could become infected with cholera over the next six months.

Nearly 100,000 people in the country have already contracted the disease.

From other news sites

• France24: HAITI: UN launches inquiry into Haiti cholera epidemic 7 hrs ago

• Al Jazeera: UN to probe Haiti cholera outbreak 17 hrs ago

• Irish Times: UN to investigate Haiti cholera 21 hrs ago

• CNBC: UN panel to investigate Haiti cholera outbreak 21 hrs ago

• Yahoo!: U.N. chief launches probe of Haiti cholera epidemic 22 hrs ago

nancyk58 · December 23, 2010

News on 22 + 23 December 2010 in relation to HAITI

German ZDFtext and Swedish SVT: 2,600 HAITIANS HAVE SO FAR DIED DUE TO CHOLERA IN HAITI SINCE OCTOBER AND MORE THAN 121,000 HAVE BEEN TREATED

A total of 2,591 Haitians have died due to the cholera outbreak. 121,518 have been treated for cholera according to the authorities. AFP reports that the cholera infection probably has come from abroad. Recently 50 died each day due to cholera compared to between 60 and 80 each day in November. The cholera outbreak caused protests against UN soldiers because they might have brought the disease to Haiti. The United Nations investigates the source of the cholera outbreak.

Danish DR1 + TV2 news and Swedish SVT: 40 people lynched following the cholera epidemic in HAITI

Haitian gangs lynched at least 40 people in 2 weeks after an election characterized by irregularities and after the cholera outbreak. The musician Michel Martelly has allegedly been beaten by Jude Celestin - the current president Préval's candidate - after election fraud. Mirlande Manigat and Jude Celestin are the candidates in the second round of the election.

nancyk58 · December 28, 2010

News on 28 December 2010 in relation to HAITI

The death toll in HAITI has risen to more than 2,700 - German ZDFtext

In the 10 weeks since the cholera outbreak, more than 2,700 Haitians have died, and almost 130,000 people were infected according to Haiti's Health Ministry. 40 people die each day due to cholera. International health experts think that up to 400,000 people could be infected in the coming 12 months.

HAITI is still suffering from the consequences of the earthquake on 12.1.10. when at least 250,000 died and 1.5 million Haitians were made homeless.

On 27.12.10 I posted REVIEW 2010 IN RELATION TO NATURAL DISASTERS.

Link: http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/showthread.php?t=74684

nancyk58 · December 30, 2010

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI on 30.12.10

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI

Swedish SVT: HAITI: ALMOST 3,000 DEAD AS A RESULT OF CHOLERA

2,901 have died due to cholera according to Haiti's health ministry.

The number of deaths per day is now the highest since the cholera outbreak in mid-October. On 19.12.10 100 died. The highest number of deaths in one day in November was 80.

150,000 have been infected.

nancyk58 · December 31, 2010

NEWS ON 31.12.10 in relation to natural disasters

NEWS ON 31.12.10 in relation to natural disasters

German ZDFtext: ALREADY MORE THAN 3,300 CHOLERA DEATHS IN HAITI

The cholera death toll in HAITI has risen rapidly. Up to 26.12.10 as many as 3,333 cholera deaths have been recorded according to Haiti's Health Ministry. Almost 150,000 have been infected since the cholera outbreak. Each day more than 30 people die due to cholera according to information given.

Cholera broke out in central Haiti in mid-October - and that was for the first time in more than 100 years. Despite massive information campaigns, many Haitians in the countryside do not know how to act in the case of infection.

nancyk58 · January 6, 2011

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 5.1.11

NEWS IN RELATION TO HAITI ON 5.1.11

Updated Number of Cholera deaths in Haiti as on 29.12.10: 3,481 according to the Haitian Health Ministry and the number of infected was 157,300 since the cholera outbreak 10 weeks ago.

Each day more than 22 die due to cholera which is less than earlier when the number of cholera deaths per day was 60. Experts think that far more Haitians have died and are infected than stated by the Haitian authorities.

Despite extensive campaigns many Haitians do not know what to do if infected.

nancyk58 · January 6, 2011

NEWS on 6.1.11 IN RELATION TO HAITI

Danish TV2 TTV + LIVE: THOUSANDS RAPED IN HAITI

Rape has become an increasing problem in HAITI since the earthquake on 12.1.10. This appears from an AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL report.

Apart from the grief following the loss of family members and property / home, many women and girls in the camps go to sleep every night fearing sexual assaults.

The number of rape victims can be counted in thousands according to Amnesty International.

It was bad enough before the earthquake when 50 rapes where reported each day - but after the earthquake the number of rapes has exploded.

Swedish SVT: HAITI: According to OXFAM ONLY 5% of the debris has been removed - here almost one year after the devastating earthquake. The reason for this is hesitation and delays despite promises aid from the outside world!

nancyk58 · January 7, 2011

AMNESTY International report on RAPES in HAITI - 6.1.11

AMNESTY International has published a report on RAPES in HAITI - 6.1.11

http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/hundreds-of-women-and-girls-raped-in-haitian-refugee-camps/

Hundreds of Women and Girls Raped in Haitian Refugee Camps

posted by: Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

A year after the Haiti earthquake, Amnesty International reports that women and girls in Haitian refugee camps, where more than a million people still live, remain vulnerable to predators and armed gangs, who have perpetrated hundreds of rapes, even on children as young as four or five. These women are particularly likely to experience sexual assault because of the lack of security in refugee camps, and their attackers are even more likely to go unpunished.

Although sexual violence was fairly widespread in Haiti before the earthquake, the breakdown of the country's infrastructure and justice system made it much more difficult for rapists to be caught or punished. Rapists act with reckless abandon, even "ripping through tents with knives and razor blades."

"Most of the women told us that they don't go to the police because they don't think it's worth it," the author of the report, Gerardo Ducas, told the BBC. And needless to say, there are few resources for women who have been raped, so they must suffer the trauma of the attack alone.

The women's tragic stories speak for themselves, and show the extent of the sexual violence crisis in Haiti. One woman said that she and a friend were bound, gagged and sexually assaulted in front of their children; another woman was raped soon after giving birth to her child.

"I cried, I yelled, but nobody came, there was nobody," she said. "After they finished, they beat me. They beat me so much that you can see scars on my skin and my knee."

A fourteen-year-old girl was raped when she went to the toilet. “A boy came in after me and opened the door. He gagged me with his hand and did what he wanted to do…He hit me. He punched me. I didn’t go to the police because I don’t know the boy, it wouldn’t help. I feel really sad all the time…I’m afraid it will happen again," she said.

Amnesty International has repeatedly asked the international community to improve security in the camps and ensure that police have the power to apprehend rapists. But they also point out that for any long-term solution, women in the camps have to be involved. We can only hope that this new report highlights the desperate need for action on behalf of the women in Haitian refugee camps.

nancyk58 · January 8, 2011

A situation report from tent camps in HAITI, Part I

In the spoiler below you will find Part I of a situation report from HAITI 8 months after the devastating earthquake on 12.1.10.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/haiti-rape-earthquake-mac-mcclelland

AFTERSHOCKS: WELCOME TO HAITI's RECONSTRUCTION HELL

Dispatches from the tent cities, where rape gangs and disaster profiteers roam.

— By Mac McClelland

January/February 2011 Issue

When Alina happened upon a group of men—too many to count—raping a girl in the squalid Port-au-Prince camp where she and other quake victims lived, she couldn't just stand there. Maybe it was because she has three daughters of her own; maybe it was some altruistic instinct. And the 58-year-old was successful, in a way, in that when she tried to intervene, the men decided to rape her instead, hitting her ribs with a gun, threatening to shoot her, firing shots in the air to keep other people from getting ideas of making trouble as they kept her on the ground and forced themselves inside her until she felt something tear, as they saw that she was bleeding and decided to go on, and on, and on. When it was over, Alina lay on the ground hemorrhaging and aching, alone. The men were gone, but no one dared to help her for fear of being killed.

"We had this rape problem before the earthquake," Yolande Bazelais tells me. She is the president of FAVILEK (the Creole acronym stands for Women Victims Get Up Stand Up), an organization founded by women who were raped (PDF) during the 1991 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. We're sitting under a blue tarp in the driveway of another NGO's office, because FAVILEK doesn't have one, with four of the other founders and my translator, Marc. He works with FAVILEK sometimes, running rape-related errands, taking victims like Alina to the hospital or the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), an international lawyers' group, for legal support. "Now," Bazelais says, "we have double problems."

It's a terrifying statement, considering that a survey taken before the earthquake estimated that there were more than 50 rapes a day just in Port-au-Prince, based on just the reported rapes—and more than half of the victims were minors. That's how it's been for as long as anyone can remember, with the perpetrators ranging from neighbors to street thugs to, as the FAVILEK founders can attest, police and paramilitaries who use rape as a tool of intimidation and terror.

But nearly a year after the 7.0 earthquake that shook some 280,000 buildings to the ground and killed or maimed nearly twice that many people, FAVILEK's insufficient resources are stretched thinner than ever. The organization says that displacement camps are hornet's nests of sexual violence.

The French military policemen hanging around my hotel say the same thing. They are soldiers of MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, and their faces darken when they talk about the camps. "Every day it is like this: fighting, a lot of violence, murder, a lot of rape," they say, shaking their heads. "A lot of rape." A 43-page report by the IJDH says so, too, with a pile of testimonials like Alina's. And there's Marc, whose phone is always ringing, who's "like an ambulance" because "people are always calling me to say someone got raped"—like the woman calling about her teenage daughter today. Marc, who waves at somebody on the street as we drive around Port-au-Prince and yells, "I used to work with that guy!" then explains that the guy quit immediately because he really didn't want to hear about five-year-olds being raped. FAVILEK gets three or four calls a week about new cases, and that's just from the dozen camps the organization attempts to cover. There are 1,300 camps in all.

It's the first thing you see when you step out of Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport: just across the street, a sea of tarps held together with sticks and strings, white plastic and blue plastic and gray plastic side by side by side under the glaring sun. Maybe there are some clothes drying in the very narrow paths between shelters. Probably there are people bathing in the open. The bigger settlements sport walls of portable toilets. Within Port-au-Prince, every spare patch of land from the airport to anywhere is covered in tent settlements. More than a million people live like that, no lights, no security. The tent cities are hot, hungry, and packed, and tension is the only thing in town being built.

The FAVILEK founders say they need two agents in each of the 1,300 camps instead of a dozen total. And even if they had the agents, and could pay them, which they can't, they'd still need the resources to help the victims. The other day, a woman was raped and choked nearly to death. She called to say she was in hiding, but FAVILEK couldn't help her—it doesn't have any funds to pay for moving her someplace safe. Nor could it cover the cost of, say, anxiety medication for Alina, who says, "I have heart palpitations and sometimes I begin to shake uncontrollably." We sit outside in metal folding chairs, the FAVILEK founders swatting mosquitoes off my bare ankles as they tell me how it's a struggle even to take care of their own: Last night yet another agent's tent was ripped down by pro-rape thugs.

Not that these women, now in their forties and fifties, survivors all, are easily intimidated. One of them had her legs smashed in addition to being raped. One was shot. She gets frustrated at some point while I'm asking questions and says, "We meet with white people, and white people, and white people." She starts raising her voice, and two of the other four put their hands out to calm her, literally holding her back, but smiling knowingly. White people make promises but nothing ever ever happens, she says. She is tired. She is exhausted. At least they could have given us an office. And if you, white girl, think you're actually going to make yourself useful, I'll give you my goddamn email address...

They have gotten some whistles donated, at least, one of the other women says; they're effective sometimes. I don't bother asking if the cops are trying to help prevent rape, because all of 18 rape cases were brought before a judge in Port-au-Prince in 2009. Earlier today, Marc and I went to pick up an activist from camp because an "escapee"—a prisoner who was released from his cell during the quake—threatened to shoot her and some of her coworkers for standing up for rape victims, and when she went to file a complaint with the police, the officer said, "He should've killed you all." Earlier today, Marc and I drove past a man in a blue button-down shirt who was identified by a victim as a rapist, and Marc tore around the block and jumped out to go collect the license-plate number of the shiny SUV the man was getting into, but then Marc said he didn't know what he was going to do with it, because a guy who drives a car like that is probably friends with cops.

Earlier today, a female doctor turned to me during a consult with a rape victim and demanded: Do I understand the situation? Do I understand that this is what happens to girls like this one, who have children but are not married? That this isn't one of those tragedies, like when an innocent girl is raped?

But what about the government or the UN? I ask the FAVILEK founders. What about the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission led by the country's prime minister and Bill Clinton? Do they have any kind of plan for protecting the women in the camps?

Marc's translating services are rendered moot when five heads shake instant hard "no"s.

"I'M BLACK, and Haitian, and I wouldn't go where you're going right now, in the dark," Marc says when we're on our way to the Petionville golf course on the eastern edge of Port-au-Prince. Well, it used to be a golf course. Now it's packed with 55,000 homeless people and is known as "Sean Penn's camp," because the actor's aid group, J/P HRO (Jenkins/Penn Haitian Relief Organization), runs it.

We've had this plan for Marc to drop me off here to meet someone all day. So his sudden concern about my getting out of the car is a little unsettling.

"I'm sayin', there's a reason all the aid organizations get their people outta there by like six," Marc explains. But when I resist blowing off the meeting, he allows that this camp might be a little safer than others.

Daniel, my new friend who lives here and invited me over, says the same reassuring thing when I meet him on a busy side street, across from the Planet Creole radio station, and we start walking into camp, which unlike most of the others is lit by a few floodlights on impossibly high poles. I squint into the glare as Daniel leads me toward his house. "Did I call it a house? I'm sorry, should I say tent?" he says, and laughs. He leads me past row after row of stick-supported plastic until we arrive at our destination. "And here we are," he says in near-perfect English. He spent some time in the States, before getting deported. "My piece of Tent City."

But "tent" isn't accurate, either. Daniel's shelter, like the rest, is several sheets of sturdy plastic cobbled together. The ceiling is uneven, low, and leaky. The shelter is built on a steep dirt slope. Daniel says water gets in from all directions when it rains. And oh, how it rains: hard monsoon-season buckets pouring in through gaps in the roof and the sides, the earth floor liquefying, a mud flood forming under the higher-up rows of lean-tos until it collapses under its own weight and slides fast downhill into the tents pitched below. That's the kind of water the displaced have got too much of: the kind that keeps people standing all night, so as not to wake up drowning.

Inside Daniel's place, the only source of light is a flashlight aimed at the gray tarp overhead. The dim beam illuminates the USAID decal printed on it—which announces the gift as FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE—but little else. While I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, a child materializes at my left thigh.

This is my daughter, Melissa," Daniel says. "She's 10."

"Est-ce que je peux te donner un bisou?" she asks barely audibly. I sense the outline of braids in her silhouette, but can't be sure.

"Bien sûr," I tell her, she is welcome to give me a kiss, and I bend down to accept it, supersoft and tiny against my cheek. Daniel turns a bucket upside-down to offer me a seat. Everyone else gets on the floor, where Daniel has laid down some ceramic tiles he got from a religious charity he used to work for. There is just enough room for us four to sit; my shoulder touches Daniel's fiancée's; my feet touch his feet. Melissa lies across Daniel's lap.

"Fortunately," he says, "it's not that hot in here right now."

I nod. All our arms are slick and our faces are running with sweat. But "that hot" means as hot as it is during the day, when being under the plastic is like being in an oven, when I become so woozy and oppressed in the tents that I find myself either forgetting or reluctant to suck more hot air into my lungs.

Daniel is starting an organization called Redeem for Handicap. He talks about how when US soldiers set up in this camp after the quake, he helped run errands for them. He helped deliver babies. He did whatever he could to aid the aiders. But the Army is gone, and though Penn assures me that J/P HRO is in it for the long haul, Daniel's friends who work in the camp have heard that most of the other aid organizations will leave soon. "Already, it's been five months since we've gotten any food," he says. But they do have water in the camp now; you can fill up buckets at pumps. It used to make him really sick, and sometimes the bleach taste is quite strong.

Why? Daniel asks me. Am I thirsty? There's water that's better for drinking, but that's only for sale.

I am thirsty, but I hesitate to drink anything because Daniel doesn't want me to use the communal portable toilets. It's only eight o'clock, but it's dark, and plenty of gals before me have been assaulted on that trip to the bathroom. Also, "The toilets aren't used properly, and you might get a disease you aren't interested in catching," Daniel laughs.

That's why everything smells like urine. To avoid the communal toilets, Daniel's family uses a bucket in a corner. The three of them keep their plastic-walled hovel fantastically neat, and empty the bucket often, but at some point I inhale sharply and breathe in too much of its stink. I puke into my mouth, and pretend I didn't. I suggest that we go for a walk.

Outside, it's clear that plenty of other residents are improvising bathroom facilities, too. The air is still, and within seconds my nose and throat are coated with the reek of hot rotting shit. "People have a lot of needs here," Daniel tells me while I repeatedly spit as inconspicuously as possible.

"There's a lot of amputees because of the earthquake, right?" I ask, looking for my footing on the steep muddy trail. "How do they get around here?"

"Yeah, that's a problem," he says.

But he points out that the amputees are hardly the only ones struggling. There's a lady who lives right over here who lost her husband, Daniel gestures. She's got kids, and she's too sick to work, and she hasn't eaten in a week. And this tall smiley fellow now shaking my hand is difficult to understand because he's deaf from rubble that fell on his head. He needs a hearing aid. But Redeem for Handicap, or any other organization, can't raise money from the international community without a website...

The camp buzzes: people gathering in the wider paths, vendors cooking hot dogs and selling water, people who have run long electrical cords to steal power to play an awful remake of "We Are the World" over the steady, chattery thrum. It's early on a Friday night, but the noise is starting to die down, Daniel points out. People have to wake up early, lest they roast to death in their plastic ovens once the sun rises.

Suddenly, a skinny guy comes tearing up the path. He's asking Daniel, he's asking some guy behind Daniel, he's asking everyone nearby frantically: What should he do? Some thugs are threatening his family because they want the space and piece of tarp his family occupies. The thugs say they will set it all on fire if he doesn't move his family out. Is there anyone to talk to? Can he find a cop around here or what?

You can't go anywhere in Port-au-Prince without seeing MINUSTAH soldiers. They do have a presence in this camp—those French MPs at my hotel had spent their day breaking up a fight among camp dwellers who cut open the side of a USAID tent here to rob it, just as gangs of rapists slice through the sides of tents all over the city to steal a woman, easy as pie. People complain that the troops don't do much to actually protect camp residents, or any Haitians; when the UN renewed its peacekeeping mandate in October, people rioted. Though Penn fought for and got a police substation in this camp, we haven't passed any police or soldiers or security on our long lap around it. Daniel suggests to the panicked man where the blue helmets might be. The man goes running down the path in that direction. I wonder if he's going to find them. If he does, I wonder how he's going to tell them what's going on; European, South American, and African MINUSTAH troops don't speak Creole, and do not come with translators.

"You won't find Haitian police in the camps because they're at your hotel," Marc jokes when I get back into his car a couple of hours later. And indeed, when we drive back to the Hotel Oloffson, through a couple miles of traffic that's a little less crazy this late at night, past intermittent houses that have been reduced to rubble, skirting piles of debris in the road, several men in uniform are standing guard at the high gate. Behind it, up a steep driveway, the hotel's pretty white face, a Gothic gingerbread mansion rising from among palm and pine trees. The open-air restaurant we sit down at on the front balcony is low-lit, populated with foreign and elite Haitian drinkers and diners, gorgeous. The conversation at my table? Less comforting.

Marc is explaining that when he finishes law school in two years, he wants to go into human rights advocacy. And he's venting that making a difference, or getting justice for women, is going to be hard to do without a functioning government and the court system and reeducation and things that'd eventually go with it. He, like other people, finds it hilarious when I ask if having new people in power after Haiti's elections is going to lead to a less corrupt, safer country. And he, like everyone else, insists that to avoid crimes against women, they first and foremost have got to be moved out of those tents, where anyone can see that there are women alone, women bathing in public because there's no place else to do it, women whose husbands or fathers died in the quake. But "There is no plan!" Marc exclaims, gesturing off the hotel's front porch in the direction of one of the camps, just across the street. "You need money to get your house fixed after the quake, and most of the people in there don't have the money. And if they get the money, they don't want to spend it on their house because they think the government is going to help them with a housing plan. But there is no government. And there is no plan!"

"A lot of people think people are going to be in those camps for decades," I say. "Do you?"

"Probably! This is eight months after the quake, and it's just gotten worse.""You know, they still don't have a comprehensive plan for rebuilding New Orleans. Do you remember Hurricane Katrina? That was five years ago," I say, holding up all the fingers on my right hand for effect. "Did you know that there are whole neighborhoods there that are still destroyed, where it looks like the storm was five weeks ago?"

Marc's eyes widen. "Really?" Yes, really. "In the United States?" He stares at me for a moment, then starts shaking his head. "That's crazy," he says. He shifts agitatedly in his chair and starts to say something else but gives up; he shifts and opens his mouth and gives up again. He goes back to head shaking, and I go to wondering why I said that, and then we drink in silence.

HOWEVER MUCH of a drag I may have been on Marc last time we hung out, boy am I happy to see him when he comes to pick me up three days later. The day before our reunion, a different driver told me he was taking me one place and then took me someplace else, a place in the middle of no place, where he got me into an apartment under false pretenses, closed me in, cornered me, and told me, when my BlackBerry beeped, that it must be my father calling to tell me to watch out, because I was about to get kissed. This morning, I am looking forward to not having to very carefully talk my way out of a scenario like that, then tolerating passenger-seat pawing as politely as I can bear, so as not to set the driver off while he's busy telling me that he won't emigrate after finishing his college degree because although life is better in the United States, this is the best time to become a businessman in Haiti, what with all the rebuilding that needs to be done.

Part II in the next post.

nancyk58 · January 8, 2011

Situation report from HAITI 4 months ago, Part II

In the spoiler below you will find Part II of a situation report from HAITI 8 months after the devastating earthquake on 12.1.10.

"What now, partner?" Marc asks me.

"Let's go to Corail."

No Haitians who've been there have anything nice to say about the tent city of Corail Cesselesse. It sounds apocalyptic, even, a too-long string of syllables, alliterative and meaningless. Cesselesse. Abscess. Cesspool. "They moved all those people out in the middle of the desert," Marc said about it the first time it came up. "Like Moses or some shit."

It takes two hours in traffic to get from the capital to this "model" displacement camp sprawled out under clouds at the foot of a green mountain range. And at first glance, it does look not so bad; the tents are actual tents, like little greenhouses, with a few feet of actual space in between them, even a few tiny prefab housing units under construction. That's if you're glancing at it like I am—like a person who doesn't know better. The second we get out of the car, Marc shakes his head. "There're no trees here."

It's dusty. Shadeless. The sun reflects relentlessly off the white tents and the white gravel laid between them. As we walk into the camp, the big and often sharp stones hurt my feet. And I, unlike the thousand naked babies walking around, have shoes on. This land is part of a plan—pushed by President René Préval (PDF) and facilitated by NGOs—to get people out of unstable, teeming, and still very ruined Port-au-Prince. This land is owned by a Haitian corporation, Nabatec, whose president happened to be appointed by the Haitian government as chief relocation adviser. For allowing its land to be used, Nabatec receives government compensation, and it just so happens to have enticed foreign companies, like a South Korean garment corporation, to build factories here. Activists worry that with Haiti's horrifying labor conditions, they're certain to be sweatshops. Not that Haitians here wouldn't be happy for the jobs. They haven't got much else going for them.

"We know the news reports that everything is great out here," one man yells when Marc tells him I'm press. "They say we have everything we need. But we have nothing but misery." He moved here from a Port-au-Prince camp several months ago because he says the International Organization for Migration—a multilateral group that works with governments on displacement issues—promised them they'd get food aid. The IOM, which did transport the people, says it said no such thing; President Préval banned comprehensive food aid in the country back in March because it's bad for local economies. (See "Aiding or Abetting.") Everyone can agree on one thing: that the location chosen by the chief relocation adviser blows. There are no trees. When it rains, the gravel floods.

Over there are tanks that Oxfam fills with treated water, but the people believe it can make you sick. The women are getting woman infections; everyone assumes the water is responsible for that, too. The NGOs—American Refugee Committee runs the camp; Oxfam and World Vision have a presence—know people think the treated water is unsafe, and wish the Haitian companies selling water to camp residents would stop telling them that; though complaints about the chlorine taste are legitimate, the other issues are signs of serious, unrelated health problems. And as if the water companies hadn't done enough damage, their trucks that lap the camp selling "safer" hydration play a monophonic pan-flute rendition of "My Heart Will Go On."

There's not a lot of money to buy the water with, of course. "They said there would be cash for work here. But the programs last a couple weeks, and then they're over. There's no work out here." The whole time we've been talking, in front of this low, rounded tent, the man has been holding a little bar of soap. He notices it anew and explodes: "I just bought this on credit!"

I've acquired a pantsless toddler, who has attached himself to my left hand with the hand he doesn't have stuffed in his mouth and follows me and Marc when we leave the man. As we continue on, a scuffle breaks out around my right leg; two children are fighting over which one gets to hold onto my right fingers. One child satisfies herself by grasping my watch. They flank me wordlessly as I walk, another contingent of five or six following behind, and stand by while residents holler at me that the rainstorms are still terrifying out here, and I should hear the wind whip down the mountain into the canvas. The prefab houses leak. They'll only last for three years, anyway. And after three years, I ask them? Everybody shrugs.

"YOU'RE HERE at a horrible time," my new buddy Mike says over cocktails at the Hotel Oloffson. He likes me because I remind him of the United States, where he was born. I like him because he's not the kind of rich Haitian man who drinks at the hotel and then feels it's okay to knock on my door late at night, or tells me at the bar I should have sex with him because he's the nice sort of guy who loses an erection when a woman starts to fight him off.

But Mike's made a bold statement, since many of his business associates have long kept their wives and kids in the safer Dominican Republic or United States, and since Mike's had a .45 tucked under his clothes for the whole 14 years since he joined his mother's family here. Whenever he travels to and from America, he has a hard time readjusting to Haiti. "But, you know, I put my horse blinders back on, and move on with my life."

I've called him out for these horse blinders in an article online. He's read my criticism of his and other local fancypants' failure to visit the displacement camps they drive past 47 times a day and their insistence that I spend more time at the beach. Now, he rightly calls me out for being an uppity bitch. Do I, like, wander into homeless shelters back in San Francisco because of my unceasing duty to expose humanitarian problems? "I enjoy the life that I have here, even though the city sucks," Mike says. "These are the headaches that come with the country."

Headaches like his friend's wife getting kidnapped from her house a few nights ago. The kidnappers demanded ransom; the cops who responded to the house call recommended paying it and left; money was exchanged, and now she's back with her family. "They didn't rape her," Mike says. "Can you imagine?" At this point, in this country, I really can't imagine someone not getting raped under those circumstances, no.

Richard Morse—hotel manager/Haitian-American musician/long-white-braid-wearer/friend of Jimmy Buffett/Huffington Post blogger/popular Twitter user @RAMhaiti—appears at our table to discuss this case. He and Mike are mumbling about a guy who was in here the other night, who seemed to know too much about the kidnapping to not have been involved. Richard turns his tall frame and friendly rosy cheeks in my direction after I watch the men conspire for a few minutes.

"I may sound paranoid, Mac, but you can be paranoid, or you can be killed." His tweets are often similarly ominous and vague. "People die around here. I've had my entire staff held in the kitchen at gunpoint." Anyhoo, he's got a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue that needs opening. Does Mike want a glass?

"She does," Mike says, pointing at me because I'm sitting here drinking Black like a sucker. He turns back to me when Richard leaves. "You know, before the quake, everyone said what Haiti needed was a bomb dropped on it so people would fix it. Obviously we were wrong. No one's ever gonna fix this. But I love it in this country. I don't know why. You need to get out of the city sometimes. That's why I live in the mountains. Up there, it's peaceful, beautiful. You"—and here he's referring to people in general, but also his creeping awareness that my nightly blind drunkenness is less good party-gal fun and more response to distress—"need a break."

I've just gotten back from one, actually. I spent the last two days in the Central Plateau, up in the northeast. It's not the gated mansions in the hills rimming the capital that Mike is talking about—it is in fact the poorest piece of the poor country—but it's a three-hour drive and another planet away from Port-au-Prince. No city grit or rubble dust, no New Delhi-style traffic; the scenery surrounding the winding, bone-crunching roads sometimes looks like New Zealand, green and rolly with distant cloud-shrouded mountains.

Not that the earthquake left the area entirely untouched, of course: It's now home to a massive influx of displaced people from Port-au-Prince who are exhausting the already scarce resources of the area. In response, US-based global aid agency Mercy Corps is running cash-for-work programs up there. When Haitian and visiting American staffers went to survey the progress, I tagged along.

You never know what's going to happen when you say "aid" in Haiti. A Haitian in a camp might rail about the lack of desperately needed supplies in his state-of-emergency life. A Haitian at a fabulous hotel bar might tell you that some of his employees milk the aid system though they're paid well and don't live in camps, or that there's this one flip-flop vendor he knows who was put out of business when a bunch of NGOs started distributing flip-flops after the quake. Some activists and economists say that although more people will die in the short term if all aid is terminated, leaving the country to work itself out could do enormous good, eventually. Anyone who's aware of it would probably criticize the bureaucratic slog that has kept the $1.15 billion in reconstruction aid the US promised from being delivered, and the hold Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has on further proposed rebuilding funds. A leader of the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development will definitely fume that aid is just another self-serving interference on the behalf of foreign interlopers, who are hijacking rebuilding plans for this country, and Haitians need to be in control of their own destiny. And if you don't believe they can handle that, you can just remind yourself that in 1804 they singlehandedly overthrew the French, which is—lest you forget—why America came to acquire that little thing called the Louisiana Purchase.

Mercy Corps' cash-for-work participants in the Central Plateau don't weigh in on these philosophical issues, but they seem pretty pumped to have jobs. I watch the NGO's visiting public information officer, Lisa Hoashi, chat up men and women holding shovels by the side of the dirt road they are building. One 24-year-old hadn't had a job in who knows how long, and he finds it very satisfying to work, even if it is only for 30 days. The local program supervisor admits that people call Mercy Corps "daddy"—like Haitians call Bill Clinton "governor" or "president"—because it made possible a road that the town had been asking the government to build for years. Another lady is glad to be able to send some of her kids to school with her wages; she hopes someday to be able to send all of them. Between this road-building initiative, and a forthcoming ag program, and the Kenbe-La ("hang in there") program—which distributes vouchers for locally produced rice, oil, and beans in exchange for work—Mercy Corps is attempting to both alleviate immediate misery and foster long-term sustainable development. The hope is that the crop-management training or increased ease of getting around will evolve into a better standard of living even after the aid workers leave.

But the participants have their concerns. "Is there anything you want to ask me?" Hoashi asks each of her interviewees when she's finished. Every single person comes up with the same worried question, and I hear it asked again days later at a training for elementary school teachers dealing with kids suffering from post-quake PTSD ("My students are very afraid of noise. Any rumbling truck passing by shakes them up..."): "How long does Mercy Corps plan on staying in Haiti?" How long before the other NGOs pull out? How long before the magazine writers and CNN hosts stop coming?

THE SKY OPENS UP fast and spectacularly in Haiti. One minute you're sitting in dusty, broiling traffic; then Mike's big shiny Mitsubishi pickup is being assaulted by wind-ripped leaves and hard-driving rain. At a stop, another American journalist and I press our faces against the passenger-side windows and stare at the displacement camp to our right, close enough to toss something in. The tarps are being torn from their tethers by the gusts.

It only rains for 10 minutes. Still, there are rivers of water and garbage running through the streets. Huge branches litter the road. ("Jesus!" Mike says. "Even the trees are built wrong in this country!") The power's out at the hotel, which happens with some frequency, but this time, it's not coming back on anytime soon. It's got to be 100 degrees in my room without an air conditioner or a fan. Between the last week and a half of recurring rape nightmares and the possibility that a drunk patron who comes knocking at my hotel cottage will see the looser security, I'm too scared to open my windows or balcony door. I can't imagine what it must be like in those unsafe, airless hotbox tents.

At least five camp dwellers in Port-au-Prince died in the storm. Thousands of shelters were destroyed. When I go see Daniel a couple of days later, he shows me that his was one of them. The back half of his "house" is a collapsed little pile of plastic; inside, under the remaining shelter, everything—clothes, sheets—is soaking wet. His fiancée is wiping and wiping at their ceramic tiles, but when anyone moves, more mud oozes up from beneath. "I guess it's actually good we don't have electricity in camp," Daniel says. "All that floodwater and all these people, with downed wires?" He keeps saying he's not sure which, but it must have been a hurricane or a tornado, and I keep telling him it wasn't even either. Just a rain shower.

His daughter Melissa is less radiant today. The storm terrified her, Daniel explains. Would that that were the scariest threat to her here. At 10, she wouldn't be the youngest reported rape victim from the camps. Not by eight years.

"She was shaking like a leaf," Daniel says as Melissa sits on rumpled fallen tarp, legs tucked up under an oversize white T-shirt.

She was shaking like Alina starts shaking when she least expects it. Like Alina, and the schoolchildren who break for the door at the rumble of a garbage truck. And Marc, who could hardly control his voice when he called to say that a woman died while waiting two weeks in the hospital for a doctor to see her. And an anti-rape activist who spoke from under a tarp that headquartered her organization, before they had to move because of death threats. "The way you saw the earth shake," she said, "that's how our bodies are shaking now."

This piece was supported in part by contributions from the Spot.Us community.

Mac McClelland is Mother Jones' human rights reporter, writer of The Rights Stuff, and the author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story From Burma's Never-Ending War

nancyk58 · January 8, 2011

on 7 December 2011 in relation to HAITI

Please find in the two previous posts Part I and Part II of an interesting and long situation report on HAITI 4 months ago describing life in tent camps where women live in fear of being raped by gangs and describing the conditions for the Haitians in the rainy season etc.

News on 7 December 2011 in relation to HAITI

Swedish SVT: UNICEF: HAITI's CHILDREN ARE LIVING IN CHAOS

After reports of stagnant rebuilding & reconstruction in quake-hit HAITI and sexual assaults in the tent camps, UNICEF (UN's organization for children) reports that Haiti's children are in a very difficult situation.

One year after the disaster, 380,000 children remain homeless.

Only one quarter of the lone children have been reunited with a parent or a relative.

More than half of the children do not go to school.

1.2 million children are to a high degree exposed to diseases and threats of (sexual) violence.

Aid for Haiti

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