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Questions? E-mail haiti(at)cepr.net.
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James Parks posts on the AFL-CIO blog that trade unionists from all over the world are meeting this week in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to discuss rebuilding Haiti. Parks writes "Unions have already made it clear the reconstruction and future development of Haiti must include social protections, creation of decent work and respect for workers’ rights."
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The Washington Post reported on Sunday on the possible effects of the rainy season on the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons. Relief agencies are in a race against time to dredge canals and build retaining walls to protect those in the camps. Anthony Banbury, who was the second in command for the UN in Haiti, told the Post, "The rainy season is a freight train headed right at us." The Post describes what the rains do to the camps:
In post-earthquake Port-au-Prince, rainstorms -- including several brief ones over the past week -- lift refuse out of piles and spread it across streets and camps. With the ooze -- an awful melange of rotting fruit, chicken bones and human waste -- comes a smell that brings to mind
spoiled milk and gangrenous wounds.
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Mark Schuller reports from Haiti on the aid efforts thus far, stressing the need for human rights to be respected. Schuller looks at the shelter situation as well as sanitation and food aid. In all three areas there are significant problems, according to Shuller. The camps are crowded, and the rains are putting strain on the shelter and turning the ground into mud. Food aid done by the large NGOs has bypassed local groups who have more knowledge of specific needs inside the camps. In the Solino camp of 6,000 that Schuller visited, there is not one single latrine. Where there are latrines the lines are long and there are even reports that in some camps they have began to charge a fee to use the bathroom.
There are also reports that at a camp on school grounds residents are feeling as though they are being starved out, being denied there rights to shelter, food and sanitation in an effort to get them to relocate. Schuller writes that the St. Louis de Ganzague school, "is a long-standing institution that educates the children of the so-called "political class."" Samuel Remy, from one of the camp committees, told Schuller:
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AFP reports today that the UN has abruptly changed plans on the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Haitians before the rainy season. The new plan, based on recent surveys, will relocate just 9,000 who are the most at risk. AFP reports:
Until recently, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had been saying that 218,000 people living in so-called red sites around the capital Port-au-Prince would have to move.
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Dan Harris reports for ABC News on the amount of donations from Americans that have not yet been spent by aid organizations. Harris writes:
Since January's earthquake, Americans have already given $800.9 million in private donations to help the country rebuild. The money has gone to 23 charities that ABC News has been tracking. Only about 37 percent of the money has been spent. Nearly $588 million in donations is still sitting on the sidelines, as millions of Haitians continue to suffer.
Charities say that spending too quickly would risk creating waste and robbing money from the long-term work that must be done. But while they plan for the long-term, there is an immediate crisis.
More than a million people are homeless and a fifth of them still have no shelter, with the rainy season officially starting Friday and the hurricane season just around the corner.
Harris also points out that only half of the 9,000 latrines that are needed have been built.
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