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Haiti earthquake: As Obama meets Préval, US quietly pulls out of Haiti

Go to Original (Christian Science Monitor) >


As President Obama meets with Haitian President René Préval in Washington, Haitians worry that the US reduction of troops (from 20,000 after the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake to 9,000 now) may cause instability.

Haiti earthquake: Haitian President Rene Préval delivers remarks during a joint news conference with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (not pictured) at the State Department in Washington, Tuesday. (Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP) 

---

By Kathie Klarriech Correspondent
posted March 10, 2010 at 11:37 am EST

Port-au-Prince, Haiti —

As President Obama hosts Haitian President René Préval at the Oval Office today, the two will discuss how the US can best help rebuild the impoverished Caribbean country after the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake – which the Inter-American Development Bank called “the most destructive natural disaster in modern times” – killed more than 220,000 Haitians and left more than 1 million homeless.

Meanwhile, the US is quietly, but quickly drawing down the number of troops it sent to Haiti in the quake's wake.

Over the past few weeks, the US has cut the number of troops from 20,000 to some 6,000 on the ground and another 3,000 at sea.

The USS Comfort, a naval hospital ship that arrived days after the quake and treated thousands of Haitians, headed to Baltimore on Tuesday, ending its role in Operation Unified Response-Haiti.

“Our mission was tied to our ability to facilitate humanitarian aid and disaster relief,” said Public Affairs Officer Col. Billy J. Buckner. “We’re adjusting our forces so that we can continue to do that – helping to secure sites for shelter and food distribution. So far the situation has been calm and stable.”

But last week's downpours in Haiti increased concern that time is running out for the 1 million homeless to get shelter before the rainy season begins in April. And many Haitians are concerned that the withdrawal of American troops shows a waning interest in helping Haiti, and that their absence will leave people vulnerable to gangs and street violence.

“It’s not time for them to leave yet,” says Reynold Daughin, a US resident who lost his wife and two-year-old child in the quake. Mr. Daughin is staying in a tent camp downtown, where he has set up a screen and speakers to show films. “I’m trying to provide something positive for people, so that they have something entertaining to do at night. Things may look stable, but they’re not. Anything can happen.”

Reynold Richet lives in a nearby tent camp in the Bel Aire section of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. He also thinks it’s too early for the Americans to leave.

When US troops came in 1994 to facilitate the return of ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide, they headed up the UN-led peacekeeping force. “Back then they built bridges and schools,” he said. “Why aren’t they doing that now when the situation is far worse?”

The US mission was, and still is, focused on humanitarian relief.

Although troops helped open the sea and airport after the earthquake, and were ready, if needed, to prevent an outbreak of violence following the quake, there was no need to use them in that capacity.

As they draw down, they are training other troops to take over their posts.

Most recently they passed off a distribution site to Brazilian and Jordanian UN troops without incident.

Other organizations, such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), has not needed military protection for its distributions, but the UN reported that a food convoy was looted last week en route to the capital.

Obama says conditions in Haiti still dire

Go to Original (Reuters) >

10 Mar 2010 17:39:41 GMT

Source: Reuters

 
WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday conditions in quake-stricken Haiti remained dire and promised that the United States would be a reliable partner in reconstruction efforts. 

Obama, speaking at the White House after meeting with Haitian President Rene Preval, said only a global response to the country's crisis could help it recover. 

"The situation on the ground remains dire and people should be under no illusions that the crisis is over," Obama said with Preval standing at his side. 

Obama said many Haitians were still in desperate need of shelter, food, and medicine -- a situation that would only grow worse with the onset of spring rains. 

"The challenge now is to prevent a second disaster, and that's why at this very moment, thousands of Americans, both civilian and military, remain on the scene at the invitation of the Haitian government," he said. 

Obama did not offer any figures for future U.S. financial support to Haiti. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday the United States had already put some $700 million into Haitian reconstruction efforts. 

Preval praised the swiftness and size of the international response to the disaster and expressed gratitude to Obama for making the U.S. rescue and relief effort a priority. 

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Editing by Sandra Maler)

Chomsky Post-Earthquake: Aid Should go to Haitian Popular Organizations, not to Contractors or NGOs

Go to Original (The Indypendent) >

By Keane Bhatt
March 8, 2010 | Posted in IndyBlog | Email this article By Keane Bhatt

For decades, Noam Chomsky has been an analyst and activist working in support of the Haitian people. In addition to his revolutionary linguistics career at MIT, he has written, lectured and protested against injustice for 40 years. He is co-author, along with Paul Farmer and Amy Goodman of Getting Haiti Right This Time: The U.S. and the Coup. His analysis “The Tragedy of Haiti” from his 1993 book Year 501: The Conquest Continues is available for free online. This interview was conducted in late February by phone and email. The interviewer thanks Peter Hallward for his kind assistance. This was first published in ¡Reclama! magazine.

Keane Bhatt: Recently, you signed a letter to the Guardian protesting the militarization of emergency relief. It criticized a prioritization of security and military control to the detriment of rescue and relief.

Noam Chomsky: I think there was an overemphasis in the early stage on militarization rather than directly providing relief. I don’t think it has any long-term significance … the United States has comparative advantage in military force. It tends to react to anything at first with military force, that’s what it’s good at. And I think they overdid it. There was more military force than was necessary; some of the doctors that were in Haiti, including those from Partners in Health who have been there for a long time, felt that there was an element of racism in believing that Haitians were going to riot and they had to be controlled and so on, but there was very little indication of that; it was very calm and quiet. The emphasis on militarization did probably delay somewhat the provision of relief. I went along with the general thrust of the petition that there was too much militarization.

KB: If this militarization of relief was not intentionally extreme but rather just a default response of the United States, is it just serendipity that there is a massive troop presence available to manage the rapidly mounting popular protests post-earthquake? Surprisingly large, politicized group comprised of survivors has already mobilized around demanding Aristide’s return, French reparations instead of charity, and so on.

NC: So far, at least, I don’t know of any employment of the troops to subdue protests. It might come, but I suspect a more urgent concern is the impending disaster of the rainy season, terrible to contemplate.

KB: Regarding relief work, aside from Partners in Health, Al Jazeera noted that the Cuban medical team was the first to set up medical facilities among the debris and constitutes the largest contingent of medical workers in Haiti, something that preceded the earthquake. If their performance in Pakistan [earthquake of 2005] is any indicator, they will probably be the last to leave. Cuba seems to have an exemplary, decades-long conduct in foreign assistance.

NC: Well, the Cubans were already there before the earthquake. They had a couple hundred doctors there. And yes, they sent doctors very quickly; they had medical facilities there very quickly. Venezuela also sent aid quite quickly; Venezuela was also the first country and the only country at any scale to cancel totally the debt. There was considerable debt to Venezuela because of PetroCaribe, and it’s rather striking that Venezuela and Cuba were not invited to the donors’ meeting in Montreal. Actually the prime minister of Haiti, Bellerive, went out of his way to thank three countries: the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Venezuela for their rapid provision of aid. What Al Jazeera said about Pakistan is quite correct. In that terrible earthquake a couple of years ago, the Cubans were really the only ones who went into the very difficult areas high up in the mountains where it’s very hard to live. They’re the ones who stayed after everyone else left. And none of that gets reported in the United States. But the fact of the matter is, whatever you think about Cuba, its internationalism is pretty dramatic. And the people who’ve been working in Haiti for years have been awestruck by Cuban medical aid as they were in Pakistan, in fact. That’s an old story. I mean, the Cuban contribution to the liberation of Africa is just overwhelming. And you can find that in scholarship, but the public doesn’t know anything about it.

KB: On that point, you’ve talked about how “states are not moral agents. They act in their own interests. And that means the interests of powerful forces within them.” How does the history of exemplary humanitarian work as Cuban state policy relate to that thought?

NC: Well, I think it’s just been a core part of the Cuban revolution to have a very high level of internationalism. I mean, these cases you’ve mentioned are cases in point, but the most extreme case was the liberation of Africa. Take the case of Angola for example, and there are real connections between Cuba and Angola — much of the Cuban population comes from Angola. But South Africa, with U.S. support, after the fall of the Portuguese empire, invaded Angola and Mozambique to establish their own puppet regime there. They were trying to protect Namibia, to protect apartheid, and nobody did much about it; but the Cubans sent forces, and furthermore they sent black soldiers and they defeated a white mercenary army, which not only rescued Angola but it sent a shock throughout the continent — it was a psychic shock — white mercenaries were purported to be invincible, and a black army defeated them and sent them back fleeing into South Africa. Well that gave a real shot in the arm to the liberation movements, and it also was a lesson to the white South Africans that the end is coming. They can’t just hope to subdue the continent on racist grounds. Now, it didn’t end the wars. The South African attacks in Angola and Mozambique continued until the late 1980s, with strong U.S. support. And it was no joke. According to the U.N. estimates they killed a million and a half people in Angola and Mozambique, nothing slight. Nevertheless, the Cuban intervention had a huge effect, also on other countries of Africa. And one the most striking aspects of it is that they took no credit for it. They wanted credit to be taken by the nationalist movements in Africa. So in fact none of this was even known until an American researcher, Piero Gleijeses unearthed the evidence from the Cuban archives and African sources and published it in scholarly journals and a scholarly book, and it’s just an astonishing story but barely known — one out of a million people has ever heard of it.

KB: You mentioned the Venezuelan debt cancellation. At the same time, the G7 is in the process of eliminating bilateral debt. Why is that?

NC: Well they’re talking about it, yeah. The Venezuelans were first. And they just completely canceled the debt. G7 refused. In the Montreal meeting, they refused to even discuss it. Later, they indicated that they might do something. Maybe they’re embarrassed by the Venezuelan action. But I’m not sure how it’s playing out. As far as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is concerned — the IMF is basically an offshoot of the U.S. Treasury Department—they’ve talked about it but so far they have not agreed, as far as I can discover, to cancel the debt.

KB: Bellerive, Prime Minister of Haiti, thanked the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Venezuela. The D.R. has been lauded for its relief efforts: providing food, materials and medical care, for example. But at the same time there are reports from the border of Dominican troops forcibly deporting family members of Haitian patients and sometimes even the patients themselves, in Jimaní, for example. What is your take on these contrary developments taking place and is there any historical context that you would like to add?

NC: Well, what the Dominican Republic does is up to Dominicans to decide, but the much more striking thing from my perspective, is that the United States has not brought in any — barely any refugees — even for medical treatment. And that was harshly condemned by the dean of the University of Miami Medical School who thought it was just criminal not to bring Haitians to Miami where there’s marvelous medical facilities while they have to do surgery with, you know, hacksaws in Haiti. And in fact one of the first U.S. reactions to the earthquake was to send in the Coast Guard to ensure that there wouldn’t be any attempt to flee from Haiti. I mean, that’s atrocious. The United States is the richest country in the world, it’s right next door to Haiti. It should be offering every possible means of assistance to Haitians. Furthermore there’s a little bit of background here. I mean, the earthquake in Haiti was a class-based catastrophe. It didn’t much harm the wealthy elite up in the hills, they were shaken but not destroyed. On the other hand the people who were living in the miserable urban slums, huge numbers of them, they were devastated. Maybe a couple hundred thousand were killed. How come they were living there? They were living there because of — it goes back to the French colonial system — but in the past century, they were living there because of U.S. policies, consistent policies.

KB: You’re talking about the forcible decimation of peasant agriculture in the 1990s?

NC: It started with Woodrow Wilson. When Wilson invaded all of Hispaniola, Haiti and the D.R., the Wilson invasion was pretty brutal in both parts of Hispaniola. But it was much worse in Haiti. And the reasons were very clearly stated.

KB: Racism.

NC: Yeah. The State Department said, well, the Dominicans have some European blood so they’re not quite so bad. But the Haitians are pure nigger. So Wilson sent the marines to disband the Haitian parliament because they wouldn’t permit U.S. corporations to buy up Haitian lands. And he forced them to do it. Well, that’s one of the many atrocities and crimes. Just keeping to this, that accelerated the destruction of Haitian agriculture and the flight of people from the countryside to the cities. Now that continued under former President Reagan. Under Reagan, USAID and the World Bank set up very explicit programs, explicitly designed to destroy Haitian agriculture. They didn’t cover it up. They gave an argument that Haiti shouldn’t have an agricultural system, it should have assembly plants; women working to stitch baseballs in miserable conditions. Well that was another blow to Haitian agriculture, but nevertheless even under Reagan, Haiti was producing most of its own rice when Clinton came along. When Clinton restored Aristide — Clinton of course supported the military junta, another little hidden story … he strongly supported it in fact. He even allowed the Texaco Oil Company to send oil to the junta in violation of presidential directives; Bush Sr. did so as well — well, he finally allowed the president to return, but on condition that he accept the programs of Marc Bazin, the U.S. candidate that he had defeated in the 1990 election. And that meant a harsh neoliberal program, no import barriers. That means that Haiti has to import rice and other agricultural commodities from the U.S. from U.S. agribusiness, which is getting a huge part of its profits from state subsidies. So you get highly subsidized U.S. agribusiness pouring commodities into Haiti; I mean, Haitian rice farmers are efficient but nobody can compete with that, so that accelerated the flight into the cities. And it wasn’t that they didn’t know it was going to happen. USAID was publishing reports in 1995 saying, yes this is going to destroy Haitian agriculture and that’s a good thing. And you get the flight into the cities and you get food riots in 2008, because they can’t produce their own food. And now you get this class-based catastrophe. After this history — it’s only a tiny piece of it — the United States should be paying massive reparations, not just aid. And France as well. The French role is grotesque.

KB: May I ask, regarding Aristide’s languishing in exile, was he right to go back to Haiti in 1994 in the way that he did, with U.S. troops? Also, was he right to agree, under enormous pressure of course, to the neoliberal reforms laid out in the Paris Accords?

NC: Well, I happened to be in Haiti almost at that time — 1993. I was there for a while; this was the peak of the terror. And I’ve been in a lot of awful places in the world. Some of the worst, in fact. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like the misery and the terror that was going on in Haiti under the junta, with Clinton’s backing at that time. And there was a lot of discussion, I talked for example to the late Father Gerard Jean-Juste, one of the most popular figures in Haiti, who the government recently forced out, he was then underground in a church but Haitian friends took me to him. He was very close to large parts of the population. I talked to labor leaders who’d been beaten and tortured but were willing to talk, and to activists and others. And what most of them said is, Father Jean-Juste for example, what he said is, “Look, I don’t want a marine invasion, I think it’s a bad idea. But on the other hand,” he said, “my people, the people in the slums — La Saline, Cite Soleil and so on, they just can’t take it anymore.” He said, “the torture is too awful, the terror is too awful. They’ll accept anything that’ll put an end to it.” And that was the dilemma. I don’t have an answer to that.

KB: Was Aristide wrong to argue against calls (made by some of his more militant supporters) for armed struggle inside Haiti to restore democracy after the 1991 coup?

NC: Not in my opinion. Armed struggle would have led to a horrendous slaughter.

KB: On Feb. 17, Sarkozy was greeted to street protests by thousands of Haitians holding up images of Aristide, demanding his return, and demanding reparations for what the French extorted in exchange for recognizing Haiti’s independence. At that same address, Preval was shouted down and he withdrew into his jeep. With this kind of sentiment brewing in Haiti right now, do you see Aristide’s return as an important priority, or is it something that might be desirable but not that pressing?

NC: Well, the answer to that question is going to be given in Washington. The United States and France, the two traditional torturers of Haiti, essentially kidnapped Aristide in 2004 after having blocked any international aid to the country under very dubious pretexts, not credible grounds, which of course extremely harmed this fragile economy. There was chaos and the U.S. and France and Canada flew in, kidnapped Aristide — they said they rescued him, they actually kidnapped him — they flew him off to Central Africa, his party Fanmi Lavalas is banned, which probably accounts for the very low turnout in the recent elections, and the United States has been trying to keep Aristide not only from Haiti, but from the entire hemisphere.

KB: By which way is Aristide compelled to remain exiled? How exactly is his persona non grata status in the hemisphere maintained and by whom? What is preventing him from flying into a sympathetic country near Haiti, like Venezuela, for example?

NC: He might be able to go to Venezuela, but if he tried to go to the Dominican Republic, for example, they wouldn’t let him in. And there’s good reason for that. International affairs is very much like the mafia, and the small storekeeper doesn’t offend the Godfather. It’s too dangerous. We can pretend it’s otherwise, but that’s the way it is. There was one country, I think it was Jamaica if I remember correctly, that did allow Aristide in, over serious U.S. pressure and protest. And not a lot of countries are willing to take the risk of offending the United States. It’s a dangerous, violent superpower. I don’t have to tell you, you know the history of the Dominican Republic. I don’t have to tell you about it — that’s the way it works.

KB: Using, as you’ve said, the historical U.S. legacy in the D.R., can we turn to recent Dominican history? As this humanitarian aid is provided on behalf of the D.R., and it fills in the vacuum left by a weak Haitian state, if we go back to the events leading up to the coup of 2004, it worked under U.S. aegis to actively destabilize Haiti by training the paramilitary rebels, Guy Philippe and Louis Jodel Chamblain…

NC: I know. And providing a base for them.

KB: Is there some kind of a contradiction to provide charity for people who you’ve actually worked to dismantle and destabilize?

NC: Well, you can call it a contradiction if you like, but it’s also a contradiction for Sarkozy and Clinton to appear in Haiti without abject apologies for the terrible crimes that France and the U.S. under Clinton, particularly, have carried out against Haiti. But they don’t do it. The head of Toyota has to go to Congress and apologize for hours because some people were killed by Toyota cars, but does Clinton have to go and apologize for what he did to Haiti? He dealt a death blow. Does Sarkozy have to apologize for the fact that Haiti was France’s richest colony and a source of a lot of France’s wealth and they destroyed the country and then posed an indemnity as a price for liberating themselves, which the country was never able to get out of?
A couple of years ago, in 2002 I think, Aristide appealed to France, to Chirac, to pay some remuneration for the huge debt that Haiti had to pay them…

KB: Twenty-one billion dollars…

NC: Yeah, for this huge debt that Haiti had to pay them. And they did set up a commission led by Regis Debray, a former radical. And the commission said that France has no need to give any compensation at all. In other words, first we rob and then destroy them, and then when they ask for a little bit of help, we kick them in the face. It’s not surprising.

KB: Although at the same time there are sources that say that while France put up an indifferent front, it was actually worried about a head of state bringing a legal case with overwhelming documentary evidence for international arbitration.

NC: Well, they really didn’t have to worry, because the way power politics works, the World Court can’t do anything. Look, there’s one country in the world at the moment which has refused to accept World Court decision — that’s the United States. Is anybody going to do anything about it?

KB: You mentioned Clinton, now U.N. special envoy to Haiti, who intends to woo foreign investors and continue on a low-wage textile focus for Haitian economic development. The lens of neoliberal economist Paul Collier, special adviser to the U.N. in 2009, dominates the U.N. perspective of Haiti. An advocate of sweatshop-led growth himself, he’s lavished praise on the much-resented MINUSTAH occupation force there, and has even said that the Dominican Republic “is not engaged in the sort of activities, such as clandestine support for guerrilla groups, that beset many other fragile states.” Can a true humanitarian like Paul Farmer — representing a different development model based on fair wages, public health, strengthening the Haitian state — influence the U.N. as deputy special envoy?

NC: It’s a hard choice. I don’t blame him for trying. We live in this world, not another one that we’d prefer, and sometimes it’s necessary to follow painful paths if we hope to provide at least a little help for suffering people. Like Father Jean-Juste and the marines.

KB: You’ve talked about how the media created an artificial distinction between the South American “Bad Left” and “Good Left,” omitting Brazil’s important collaboration with Venezuela in the interest of maintaining this view. However, with respect to Haiti, hasn’t Brazil legitimately earned a secure place within the ‘Good Left’? A center-left government of the South has spearheaded the MINUSTAH occupation and has pledged to increase its presence, after taking it over from the imperial architects of the coup (US, France, Canada). What factors made it so vigorous in supporting another deposed president of an equally geopolitically-unimportant country in recent times (Zelaya of Honduras)?

NC: Good questions. I haven’t seen anything useful on Brazil’s decisions on these matters.

KB: Any comments on the U.S. media regarding Haiti following the earthquake? For example, Pat Robertson’s “pact with the devil,” David Brooks’ “progress-resistant culture,” pleas with transnational capital to create more sweatshops (Kirstof), Aristide being a despot and a cheat (Jon Lee Anderson). Even Amy Wilentz has compared Aristide to Duvalier in The New York Times.

NC: It’s been mainly awful, but I haven’t kept a record. The worst part is ignoring our own disgraceful role in helping to create the catastrophe, and consequent refusal to react as any decent person should — with massive reparations, directed to popular organizations. Same with France.

KB: I guess my final question is for the future: there have been a discouraging two decades, from 1990-2010, about the popular mobilization for political change in Haiti, and how to proceed, and I guess now that the Haitian people have struggled so hard through parliamentary democracy for 25 years and have so little to show for it, what are the lessons learned and possible strategies now that they’ve exhausted this parliamentary, democratic approach? Two coups d’etat and thousands tortured and murdered in this process.

NC: The lessons are, unfortunately, that a small weak country that is facing an extremely hostile and very violent superpower will not make much progress unless there’s a strong solidarity movement within the superpower that will restrain its actions. With more support within the United States, I think the Haitian efforts could have succeeded.

And that applies right now. 

Take the aid that’s coming in. 

There is aid coming in — we have to show we’re nice people and so on. 

But the aid ought to be going to Haitian popular organizations. 

Not to contractors, not to NGOs — to Haitian popular organizations, and they’re the ones that should be deciding what to do with it. 

Well you know, that’s not the agenda of G7. They don’t want popular organizations; they don’t like popular movements; they don’t like democracy for that matter. What they want is for the rich and powerful to run things. Well, if there was a strong solidarity movement in the United States and the world, it could change that.

BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS IN HAITI

Adapted from Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment
Courtesy Peter Hallward

• Aug. 14, 1791 A slave uprising begins in northern Saint-Domingue
  
• Feb. 4, 1794 Abolition of French colonial slavery
  
• Jan. 1, 1804 Saint-Domingue is renamed Haiti, and declares itself independent of France
  
• 1825 France recognizes Haitian independence for the payment of 150 million francs (later reduced to 90 million as compensation for lost property)
  
• 1915-34 The United States (under Woodrow Wilson) invades and occupies Haiti
  
• Sept. 22, 1957 Francois Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) becomes president
  
• April 21, 1971 Francois Duvalier dies and is succeeded by his son Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”)
  
• Feb. 7, 1986 “Baby Doc” is pushed out of Haiti by a popular uprising; General Henry Namphy takes power
  
• Dec. 16, 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide is elected with 67% of the vote; his prime minister is Rene Preval
  
• Sept. 30, 1991 General Raoul Cedras overthrows Aristide, who goes into exile; over the next few years several thousands of Aristide’s supporters are killed
  
• Summer 1993 The paramilitary death squad FRAPH is formed, led by Toto Constant and Jodel Chamblain
  
• Sept. 19, 1994 U.S. soldiers occupy Haiti for the second time; Aristide returns from exile
  
• Early 1995 Aristide disbands Haiti’s armed forces
  
• Mid-1995 Aristide’s party Fanmi Lavalas wins legislative elections
  
• Dec. 17, 1995 Rene Preval is elected with 88% of the vote
  
• Late 1996 Formation of Fanmi Lavalas in opposition to ex-Lavalas faction
  
• May 21, 2000 Fanmi Lavalas wins landslide victories at all levels of government; opponents form a U.S.-backed coalition called the Convergence Democratique
  
• Nov. 26, 2000 Aristide is re-elected with 92% of the vote
  
• July 28, 2001 First of many commando raids on police stations and other government facilities by ex-soldiers based in the Dominican Republic, led by Guy Philippe
  
• Dec. 17, 2001 Ex-soldiers attack the presidential palace, provoking popular reprisals against the offices of parties belonging to Convergence Democratique
  
• April 2003 Aristide asks France to repay the money it extorted from Haiti
  
• Jan. 1, 2004 Haiti celebrates bicentenary of independence from France
  
• Feb. 5, 2004 Full-scale insurgency begins, Chamblain overruns Cap Haitien
  
• Feb. 29, 2004 Aristide is forced onto a U.S. jet and flown to the Central African Republic
  
• March 2004 U.S. troops occupy Haiti for a third time, interim government is formed with Gerard Latortue as P.M., the Lancet estimates thousands killed by police and anti-Lavalas paramilitaries
  
• June 2004 U.S.-led force is replaced by a U.N. stabilization mission (MINUSTAH)
  
• Feb. 7, 2006 Preval wins presidential elections with 51% of the vote
  
• Jan. 12, 2010 Catastrophic earthquake rocks Port-au-Prince

Viva Rio: Dual humanitarian strategy for Haiti

After the earthquake, Viva Rio decided to proceed with a “dual strategy”: humanitarian assistance in the terrain, and mobilization elsewhere.

This will support emergencial aid and will help Haitians to establish the first steps towards reconstruction.

In Haiti, Viva Rio is sheltering 320 families or approximately 1600 people in “Kay Nou” (literally means “our home”, and it is our community center inside Bel Air).

They have shelter, water, and some first aid - food is short, as well as medicine.

Apart from Viva Rio workers, a great help in Kay Nou is also coming from the Community Brigade, a group of people previously trained by Viva Rio and by the Brazilian Battalion to rescue and to provide first aid in cases of emergencies.

Viva Rio

Headquarters Address: Rua do Russel, 76 - Glória, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Phone Number: +55-2125-553-750

Address in Haiti: 67, Grand Rue, Bloque Portail St Joseph, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Phone Number: 509-3701-5774

Acronym: Viva Rio

Contact Name at Headquarters: Rubem Cesar Fernandes

Phone: +55-2125-553-750 
Email: rubemcesar@vivario.org.br

Web Site: http://www.vivario.org

Areas of Activity : Advocacy & Policy, Arts & Culture

Year founded : 2nd September 2009

Map data ©2010 Europa Technologies - Terms of Use

Map

Hybrid

Terrain

Organization Details :

Brazilian NGO that helps to develop Bel Air neighbourhood trhough education, social activities, sanitation and culture.

Haitian Government sidelined. Without coordination, no prioritization.

View Source (Kaiser Family Foundation) >

Foreign Donors Must Coordinate 

More With Haiti's Government, 

Haitian Prime Minister Says 

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive "demanded more information on Wednesday about foreign aid pouring into the earthquake-stricken country and urged that his government not be sidelined in reconstruction efforts," Reuters reports.

"Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive decried a lack of coordination by aid donors with his government but stopped short of saying all bilateral aid should be funneled through the government. 'We don't know who has given money to NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and how much money have they given. ... At the moment, we can't do any coordination or have any coherent policies for giving to the population,' Bellerive told a news conference," Reuters writes. The news service notes that aid to Haiti is "sensitive for international donors who considered corruption a major problem" before the January earthquake.

Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, just visited Haiti to meet with Haitian leaders to discuss the "long-term plan" ahead of a donor conference in New York this month.

She said, "There is a capacity problem that has been exacerbated by this earthquake. ... One of the issues that all governments have to tackle is making sure there is a system in place to ensure that the aid reaches the people it's intended for. We will work with them (the government) to try and make sure that that happens".

In related news, the Associated Press/New York Times looks at two of the major approaches to aid for Haiti. According to the news service, "Haiti has two relief campaigns under way: a massive, lumbering international operation comprising U.N. agencies, foreign military and hundreds of private aid organizations; and the collective efforts of individuals acting on their own in frustration at what they see as shortcomings in the international response."

"The do-it-yourself aid workers say the bigger operation is inefficient and confused, and brag about their ability to get things done quickly, on the cheap. Officials with governments and more established relief groups applaud the smaller operations, but say such efforts will never be enough to meet Haiti's enormous needs," the news service writes. The article examines how this has played out in providing shelter to help homeless earthquake survivors.

View Source (Kaiser Family Foundation) >

The 'Structured NGOs' x The 'Here and Now DIY' tents dilenma. Rains won't wait.

Go to Original (The New York Times) >

2 Aid Efforts in Haiti:
Multinational and DIY

March 3, 2010

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 3:34 p.m. ET
 
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- The Miami property developer, volunteering after Haiti's earthquake, was horrified to see children sleeping in the dirt under makeshift tents of bed sheets propped up on sticks.

A global, billion-dollar aid effort should be able to do better, he thought.

He decided he could do better himself.

Michael Capponi flew home, collected donated tents, flew them back to Haiti and persuaded a mayor to let him build a proper camp for hundreds of families on the soccer field of a gated community of luxury villas.

It took him three days and less than $5,000.

''I didn't put this together to get a pat on the back, but to show the world it can be done rather quickly, and with limited funds,'' said Capponi, 37.

Haiti has two relief campaigns under way: a massive, lumbering international operation comprising U.N. agencies, foreign military and hundreds of private aid organizations; and the collective efforts of individuals acting on their own in frustration at what they see as shortcomings in the international response.

The do-it-yourself aid workers say the bigger operation is inefficient and confused, and brag about their ability to get things done quickly, on the cheap. Officials with governments and more established relief groups applaud the smaller operations, but say such efforts will never be enough to meet Haiti's enormous needs.

The story of shelter is a case in point.

The United Nations says nearly 1.3 million people -- 762,708 of them in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, the devastated capital -- don't have anywhere to live, and officials have said for weeks that shelter is their most urgent priority as the rainy season approaches.

But seven weeks after the Jan. 12 catastrophe, the international rescue operation has managed to distribute 23,000 tents and 131,000 tarps, reaching just a third of those in need.

Capponi, who came to Haiti after the quake as a volunteer with the University of Miami-affiliated Project Medishare, could not understand what was so difficult about getting tents to people in need.

First he called ShelterBoxUSA, the American affiliate of a British-based private aid group that the Haitian government has designated as the lead agency for tents, and which has distributed 8,200 tents in Haiti.

Capponi was startled to hear that a tent kit for a 10-member family costs $1,000.

Capponi found a Miami company offering a waterproof tent for five, the average size of a family in Haiti, for $90 including ground sheets, poles and mosquito nets. Then he found another that asked $37.05 per tent -- including shipping to Haiti -- if he'd buy 50,000 of them.

Veronica Miller, president of ShelterBoxUSA, said their kit includes a multipurpose blanket, water purification kit, stove and cooking pots -- as well as the cost of securing permission to use land and coordinating who gets help first.

She said ShelterBox tents are designed to last for years.

''Other tents that are out there may help for a few months, but then what?'' she asked. ''The weather and elements that they endure will leave them without shelter and they are back to the same situation.''

GuideStar USA, which monitors nonprofit organizations, said the magnitude of Haiti's crisis and the logistical difficulties involved in getting the aid to the people who need it most means it's a job for established organizations.

''I respect and appreciate people's passion and enthusiasm and energy,'' GuideStar President Bob Ottenhoff said. ''But this is one of those moments where, in order to do this on a massive scale, I think we have to rely on the experts.''

Many independent operators disagree.

Shaun King, lead pastor of The Courageous Church in Atlanta, set up a Web site for people to donate money and tents priced from $55 to $800. Working with 200 volunteers, Haitian orphanages and a makeshift camp in Port-au-Prince, King has collected 1,505 tents to shelter 7,525 people and $24,185.

''We pledge that 100 percent of the funds we raise will go directly (and only) to tents,'' the Web site promises, a swipe at the overhead costs at big humanitarian organizations.

While Red Cross shelter experts were ''working against the clock'' to finish a blueprint for a temporary wood-frame house, a Latin American charity already had volunteers busy with nails and hammers showing homeless Haitians how to build them themselves.

The Chile-based group, Un Techo Para Mi Pais -- ''a roof for my country'' -- worked with 150 foreign volunteers to erect 20 wood cabins with corrugated metal roofs in three days, said project leader Luis Bonilla of El Salvador.

''I'm going back to the Dominican Republic to buy more wood, and we will have 100 more houses up in two weeks,'' Bonilla said. He said the longer-term goal is to build 10,000 houses in Haiti.

Capponi, meanwhile, took two days to set up a camp of 70 tents with two water tanks and two portable toilets that is sheltering hundreds of families.

He went back to Miami to buy and beg more tents, and returned this week with enough tents to give decent shelter to 1,500 of the people camping on a soccer field in Port-au-Prince's posh Belleville neighborhood. (Another $10,000 worth of tents disappeared at the Port-au-Prince airport, he said.)

Capponi, who didn't want to single out any aid group to avoid making enemies, questioned why relief workers need all the new white SUVs that have suddenly appeared in Port-au-Prince.

''People need to learn to be efficient with funds here,'' he said. ''I have seen too many big NGOs (non-governmental organizations) waste too much money and I am fed up.''

Capponi recalled the joy with which people receive their tents.

''People started chanting and praying. One woman was so overjoyed, she kissed the flap of her tent,'' he said.

One the front of one tent, a grateful family has written ''Dieu est grand'' -- ''God is great.''

Go to Original (The New York Times) >

Rains threaten more Haiti misery

Go to Original (Al Jazeera English) >

Friday, February 26, 2010
07:20 Mecca time, 04:20 GMT

The first heavy rains have hit Haiti since last month's devastating earthquake struck, swamping makeshift camps that house hundreds of thousands of homeless and raising fears of landslides and disease.

The rains late on Thursday came as forecasters warned of a large storm heading in Haiti's direction that could strike over the weekend.

More than a million people were made homeless by the deadly January 12 quake, many of them now living in flimsy makeshift shelters that offer little protection from heavy rains.

Relief workers say the approaching wet season and the hurricane season later this year will likely add to misery for quake survivors struggling to rebuild their lives.

Even before the quake Haiti often suffered badly during the rain and hurricane seasons as a result of its poor infrastructure.

In 2008 a series of storms killed more than 800 people.

Now in the capital Port-au-Prince, some 770,000 quake survivors are living in makeshift camps and with the onset of rains, the threat of disease and infection poses another great challenge.

'Huge challenge'

"We have a huge challenge in terms of just providing emergency shelter - something that we feel that if we put all of our weight behind, as we are doing right now, we will be able (to do)," Kristen Knutson, a spokeswoman for the UN office that is coordinating the international relief effort, told Reuters news agency.

Thursday's deluge hit as relief officials changed strategy on dealing with quake
survivors, delaying plans to build big refugee camps outside the capital.

Instead, they want the homeless to pack up their tents and return to destroyed neighbourhoods.

Gerald-Emile Brun, an architect with the Haitian government's reconstruction committee, told Reuters that "everything has to be done before the start of the rainy season, and we will not be able to do it".

Brun also suggested that Haitians may largely be left to fend for themselves.

Haiti meanwhile is continuing to count the economic cost of the quake.

Call to cancel debt

On Thursday the country's president, Rene Preval, said government assessments had indicated that the disaster would cost the already poor country up to 50 per cent of its gross domestic product.

"This earthquake... led to the deaths of 200,000 to 300,000 people and destroyed from 35 to 50 per cent of the GDP," he said.

Preval was speaking reporters after meeting Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his Brazilian counterpart at a UN-Brazilian military base in Port-au-Prince.

During his brief visit, Lula called on the international community to cancel Haiti's debt, and officials from the two governments signed agreements to aid Haitian farmers and schools, which were hard hit in the quake.

According to the United Nations, 5,000 schools were damaged or destroyed in Haiti, which was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere before the catastrophe struck.

Lula also referred to a recent South American summit's pledge of $300m in aid for Haiti, including an agreement to create a $100m fund to help the government with immediate needs.
 

Haiti Earthquake: Bill Clinton Launches the UN's Largest-Ever Natural Disaster Appeal

Go to Original (UN Dispatch) >

Mark Leon Goldberg - February 18, 2010 - 4:49 pm

At the UN moments ago, UN Special Envoy for Haiti Bill Clinton launched the a $1,441,547,920 humanitarian appeal for Haiti.  This is the UN's organization's largest ever appeal for humanitarian assistance following a natural disaster.

At a meeting at the UN, Clinton delivered an impassioned appeal for international support for Haiti relief.  He said the appeal was important for long term rebuilding, but the most immediate concern was to meet Haitians' basic needs.  "You can't build a country back when a third of the people are living day-to-day...when people are worried about things like their children dying of dysentery in a camp," said Clinton.  "We need to move them from living day-to-day to living month to month."  He repeated that refrain a number of times, at one point banging the table for emphasis.

His job now is to help convince donors that their donations will be used effectively.  To that end, he announced the launch of a website, Haitispecialenvoy.org, that will allow donors to track their funds.  He also expressed his confidence in the Haitian government, which is an important thing considering that much of the funding will be used to support Haiti's crippled governing infrastructure.  Clinton even cited a conversation he had with Haiti President Rene Preval in which Preval refused to lament the loss of his presidential palace, saying "everything from this day forward should be about the country we wish to become, not the country we used to be."

The report (pdf) that has accompanied the appeal contains some new facts and figures that give some perspective to the immense scale of the disaster.  According to the  document, 217,366 people are were killed in the earthquake and over 300,000 wounded.  The amount of displacement is also staggering.  Nearly 2 million people are living in "spontaneous settlements," both in Port au Prince and in the rural environs.  The $1.44 billion appeal is intended to provide relief to the affected population and set the stage for Haiti's long term recovery.

The full explanation and justification for that figure can be found in the 130 page report.  Two things to keep in mind, though. First, about one-third of the appeal, or  $480 million, is for food aid.

Before the earthquake Haiti was dependent on food aid. Now, even more so. (Again, this gets to Clinton's point about the need for moving people beyond living day-to-day).  Second, this appeal will fold in the emergency $577 million "flash appeal" that was launched in the week following the earthquake.  That appeal exceeded its overall funding mark earlier this week, meaning that the international community and donors now need to come up with an additional $760 million or so to meet Haiti's needs in areas ranging from food aid, to shelter, schooling, sanitation, etc for the next year.

This is an unprecedented undertaking. Fortunately, it is also unprecedented for someone as high profile as Bill Clinton to be leading the charge.  As I've said before, one thing that Haiti has going for it is that Bill Clinton is in their corner. And if there is something in which President Clinton truly excels, it is fundraising.  I must say, having just watched Bill Clinton brief the UN on the appeal, it is clear that despite his recent health scare, he is eager to put these talents to use on behalf of the Haitian people.

Cuba's aid ignored by the media?

Go to Original (Al Jazeera English) > 
By Tom Fawthrop in Havana 

After the quake struck, Haiti's first medical aid came from Cuba

Among the many donor nations helping Haiti, Cuba and its medical teams have played a major role in treating earthquake victims.

Public health experts say the Cubans were the first to set up medical facilities among the debris and to revamp hospitals immediately after the earthquake struck.

However, their pivotal work in the health sector has received scant media coverage.

"It is striking that there has been virtually no mention in the media of the fact that Cuba had several hundred health personnel on the ground before any other country," said David Sanders, a professor of public health from Western Cape University in South Africa.

The Cuban team coordinator in Haiti, Dr Carlos Alberto Garcia, says the Cuban doctors, nurses and other health personnel have been working non-stop, day and night, with operating rooms open 18 hours a day.

During a visit to La Paz hospital in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, Dr Mirta Roses, the director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) which is in charge of medical coordination between the Cuban doctors, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a host of health sector NGOs, described the aid provided by Cuban doctors as "excellent and marvellous".

La Paz is one of five hospitals in Haiti that is largely staffed by health professionals from Havana. 

History of cooperation

Haiti and Cuba signed a medical cooperation agreement in 1998.

Before the earthquake struck, 344 Cuban health professionals were already present in Haiti, providing primary care and obstetrical services as well as operating to restore the sight of Haitians blinded by eye diseases.

More doctors were flown in shortly after the earthquake, as part of the rapid response Henry Reeve Medical Brigade of disaster specialists. The brigade has extensive experience in dealing with the aftermath of earthquakes, having responded to such disasters in China, Indonesia and Pakistan.

"In the case of Cuban doctors, they are rapid responders to disasters, because disaster management is an integral part of their training," explains Maria a Hamlin Zúniga, a public health specialist from Nicaragua.

"They are fully aware of the need to reduce risks by having people prepared to act in any disaster situation."

Cuban doctors have been organising medical facilities in three revamped and five field hospitals, five diagnostic centres, with a total of 22 different care posts aided by financial support from Venezuela.

They are also operating nine rehabilitation centres staffed by nearly 70 Cuban physical therapists and rehab specialists, in addition to the Haitian medical personnel.

The Cuban team has been assisted by 100 specialists from Venezuela, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Canada and 17 nuns.

Havana has also sent 400,000 tetanus vaccines for the wounded.

Eduardo Nuñez Valdes, a Cuban epidemiologist who is currently in Port-au-Prince, has stressed that the current unsanitary conditions could lead to an epidemic of parasitic and infectious diseases if not acted upon quickly. 

Media silence

However, in reporting on the international aid effort, Western media have generally not ranked Cuba high on the list of donor nations.

One major international news agency's list of donor nations credited Cuba with sending over 30 doctors to Haiti, whereas the real figure stands at more than 350, including 280 young Haitian doctors who graduated from Cuba. The final figure accounts for a combined total of 930 health professionals in all Cuban medical teams making it the largest medical contingent on the ground.

Another batch if 200 Cuban-trained doctors from 24 countries in Africa and Latin American, and a dozen American doctors who graduated from Havana are currently en route to Haiti and will provide reinforcement to existing Cuban medical teams.

By comparison the internationally-renowned Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors without Borders) has approximately 269 health professionals working in Haiti. MSF is much better funded and has far more extensive medical supplies than the Cuban team. 

Left out

But while representatives from MSF and the ICRC are frequently in front of television cameras discussing health priorities and medical needs, the Cuban medical teams are missing in the media coverage.

Richard Gott, the Guardian newspaper's former foreign editor and a Latin America specialist, explains: "Western media are programmed to be indifferent to aid that comes from unexpected places. In the Haitian case, the media have ignored not just the Cuban contribution, but also the efforts made by other Latin American countries." 

Brazil is providing $70mn in funding for 10 urgent care units, 50 mobile units for emergency care, a laboratory and a hospital, among other health services.

Venezuela has cancelled all Haiti debt and has promised to supply oil free of charge until the country has recovered from the disaster.

Western NGOs employ media officers to ensure that the world knows what they are doing.

According to Gott, the Western media has grown accustomed to dealing with such NGOs, enabling a relationship of mutual assistance to develop.

Cuban medical teams, however, are outside this predominantly Western humanitarian-media loop and are therefore only likely to receive attention from Latin American media and Spanish language broadcasters and print media.

There have, however, been notable exceptions to this reporting syndrome. On January 19, a CNN reporter broke the silence on the Cuban role in Haiti with a report on Cuban doctors at La Paz hospital. 

Cuba/US cooperation

When the US requested that their military planes be allowed to fly through Cuban airspace for the purpose of evacuating Haitians to hospitals in Florida, Cuba immediately agreed despite almost 50 years of animosity between the two countries.

Josefina Vidal, the director of the Cuban foreign ministry's North America department, issued a statement declaring that: "Cuba is ready to cooperate with all the nations on the ground, including the US, to help the Haitian people and save more lives."

This deal cut the flight time of medical evacuation flights from the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba's southern tip to Miami by 90 minutes.

According to Darby Holladay, the US state department's spokesperson, the US has also communicated its readiness to make medical relief supplies available to Cuban doctors in Haiti.

"Potential US-Cuban cooperation could go a long way toward meeting Haiti's needs," says Dr Julie Feinsilver, the author of Healing the Masses - a book about Cuban health diplomacy, who argues that maximum cooperation is urgently needed.

Rich in human resources
 
Although Cuba is a poor developing country, their wealth of human resources - doctors, engineers and disaster management experts - has enabled this small Caribbean nation to play a global role in health care and humanitarian aid alongside the far richer nations of the west.

Cuban medical teams played a key role in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and provided the largest contingent of doctors after the 2005 Pakistan earthquake.

They also stayed the longest among international medical teams treating the victims of the 2006 Indonesian earthquake.

In the Pakistan relief operation the US and Europe dispatched medical teams. Each had a base camp with most doctors deployed for a month.

The Cubans, however, deployed seven major base camps, operated 32 field hospitals and stayed for six months.

Bruno Rodriguez, who is now Cuba's foreign minister, headed the mission - living in the mountains of Pakistan for more than six months.

Just after the Indonesian earthquake a year later, I met with Indonesia's then regional health co-coordinator, Dr Ronny Rockito.

Cuba had sent 135 health workers and two field hospitals. Rockito said that while the medical teams from other countries departed after just one month, he asked the Cuban medical team to extend their stay.

"I appreciate the Cuban medical team. Their style is very friendly."

Their medical standard is very high," he told me.

"The Cuban [field] hospitals are fully complete and it's free, with no financial support from our government."

Rockito says he never expected to see Cuban doctors coming to his country's rescue."We felt very surprised about doctors coming from a poor country, a country so far away that we know little about.

"We can learn from the Cuban health system. They are very fast to handle injuries and fractures. They x-ray, then they operate straight away." 

A 'new dawn'?

The Montreal summit, the first gathering of 20 donor nations, agreed to hold a major conference on Haiti's future at the United Nations in March.

Some analysts see Haiti's rehabilitation as a potential opportunity for the US and Cuba to bypass their ideological differences and combine their resources - the US has the logistics while Cuba has the human resources - to help Haiti.

Feinsilver is convinced that "Cuba should be given a seat at the table with all other nations and multilateral organisations and agencies in any and all meetings to discuss, plan and coordinate aid efforts for Haiti's reconstruction".

"This would be in recognition of Cuba's long-standing policy and practise of medical diplomacy, as well as its general development aid to Haiti," she says.

But, will Haiti offer the US administration, which has Cuba on its list of nations that allegedly "support terrorism", a "new dawn" in its relations with Cuba?

In late January, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, thanked Cuba for its efforts in Haiti and welcomed further assistance and co-operation.

In Haiti's grand reconstruction plan, Feinsilver argues, "there can be no imposition of systems from any country, agency or institution.

The Haitian people themselves, through what remains of their government and NGOs, must provide the policy direction, and Cuba has been and should continue to be a key player in the health sector in Haiti".

France pledges $450m to Haiti

Go To Original (Al Jazeera English) >



Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has pledged an aid and debt relief package amounting to about $450m to earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

The amount includes a cancellation of Haiti's debt to France of $77m, Sarkozy said during a brief visit to the Caribbean nation on Wednesday.

Sarkozy arrived in Haiti to support international relief efforts after last month's deadly earthquake which killed around 230,000 people and left more than a million homeless.

His visit is the first ever by a French president to the former French slave colony, which fought for and won its independence in 1804, becoming the first independent black republic.

Staying in Haiti for less than four hours, Sarkozy greeted French embassy staff and aid workers and took a helicopter tour to see the extent of damage left by last month's quake.

Later speaking alongside Rene Preval, the Haitian president, Sarkozy said he wanted to turn the page in France's long history of troubled relations with its former colony.

But for many Haitians, Sarkozy's visit highlighted the bitter legacy of the price paid by Haiti to secure its freedom from French rule.

Following a succesful revolt in 1804, Haiti was forced to pay compensation to France – a debt that took more than half a century to pay off.

'Clear responsibility'

In today's money the payments amount to more than $20bn.

For many Haitians those payments are what set the seal on Haiti's endemic poverty and at a demonstration on Wednesday hundreds of Haitian protesters called on France to pay back the money.

"France has played an important role in the way the country is suffering economically, and it has a clear responsibility to pay reparations," Camille Chalmers, a Haitian economist, told Al Jazeera.

During his visit Sarkozy acknowledged that France and Haiti had had a troubled relationship, saying he was conscious that France "did not leave a good legacy" in its former colony.

"We are staring at history in its face, we have not discarded it and we assume responsibility," he said.

However, asked by Al Jazeera about the issue of reparations for Haiti's post-independence payments to France he appeared dismissive.

"Non, non, non (No, no, no)", he said.

'New era'

Al Jazeera's Steve Chao, reporting from the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, said that French officials hoped that the visit "will summon a new era between France and its former colony".

"Sarkozy and his people are very much cognisant of the fact that Haitians hold a lot of suspicion and resentment over its former brutal years of slavery as a colony and over feelings that France has continued to meddle in politics on this island in more recent years," he said.

Sarkozy surveyed the devastated Haitian capital and other affected areas by helicopter, and was also to visit a French-run field hospital.

He was also due to meet Haiti's leaders to offer France's financial support for a plan for post-quake recovery and reconstruction that is being put together by foreign donors with the Haitian government.

Economists from the Inter-American Development Bank have estimated the cost of rebuilding Haiti after the quake, which killed more than 200,000 people and left more than one million homeless, could reach nearly $14 billion, making it proportionately the most destructive natural disaster in modern times.

Besides providing immediate emergency aid to the hurt and homeless from the quake, international donors are looking to support Haiti's long-term recovery to try to pull the country out of a cycle of poverty and political instability.

While aid workers rush to distribute tarpaulins before the rainy season starts, the United Nations says only about 272,000 people have been provided with shelter materials so far.

Missionaries freed

In a separate development late on Wednesday, a Haitian judge ordered the release of eight American missionaries who had been charged with child kidnapping.

The eight were expected to be flown out of the capital, Port-au-Prince, aboard a US military transport plane.

Two others remain in detention after the judge said he wanted to question them about previous visits to the country.

The ten missionaries were arrested last month after trying to take 33 children out of the country without proper documentation.

The group members have denied any wrongdoing.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Injured Haitian earthquake survivors' fate is unclear after treatment in the U.S.

Go to Original (Washington Post) >

By Darryl Fears

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 16, 2010


MIAMI -- From down the hall, a high-pitched voice speaking Haitian Creole came booming into Clermond Junior's little hospital room. 

"Junior, sak pase?" -- what's happening?

Myrtho Gracia, a Haitian American nurse, sashayed through the door holding a blue plastic-foam box over her head like a waitress and carried on as though she and Junior were in the middle of Port-au-Prince. "we have curried chicken for you."

Junior, 19, smiled for the first time in hours. "I will enjoy this," he said in Creole, turning away from the half-eaten lunch prepared at Jackson Memorial Hospital. He seemed to forget for a second that half of his body was broken, that his useless left arm lay on his lap like a dinner napkin, that he could slide his thin left leg only a few centimeters, that his slowly healing head wounds, opened by the wall that buried him for two days in Haiti, itched like crazy. He eyed the greasy chicken curry. "I never had it, but I know I will like it."

America is another experience that Junior has never known but is certain he will like.

"Haiti is gone. Haiti is no more," he said, describing the rush of emotion he felt while viewing pictures of the devastation on a news Web site. In Haiti, he had few employment opportunities even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, and now his mother sleeps outdoors there because their house collapsed.

He is ready to embrace America, a fabled land that people in his Port-Au-Prince neighborhood could only talk about. In Miami, his life and his limbs were saved by his Haitian American doctor, Angelo Gousse. Haitian American workers, of which there are many at Jackson Memorial, often stop by to chat, treating him like family.

But Junior isn't part of the American family, and there are questions over whether he should stay here. Gracia would like an answer, saying she would take him in if she could. Opponents of illegal immigration would also like an answer. Some say Haitians should not have been brought to the United States for treatment, while others say they deserve medical attention but should be flown back as soon as they recover.

The question -- stay or go? -- could become a major headache for the Obama administration. Unlike Cubans, Haitian immigrants are often unwelcome in the United States, a double standard with roots in Cold War politics. But advocates for the patients point out that Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world, lacked adequate health care even in the best of times and that the injured who were saved might be sent back to die.

An uncertain fate

The total number of patients brought to South and Central Florida is about 500. Junior, with his wispy, boyish mustache and fuzzy sideburns crawling down his cheeks, is one of 105 Haitian nationals being treated at Jackson Memorial's Ryder Trauma Center. Hospital officials said charges for the Haiti patients total just under $7.7 million so far, nearly two-thirds of which has not been covered by insurance or other sources.

Some victims are babies without parents. And some are fairly well-known, like Romel Joseph, an esteemed violinist trained at the Julliard School, who survived a three-story fall from his New Victorian Music School during the quake. His back was impaled by carpenter nails in a wall, which crushed his left leg and broke three fingers on one hand.

Their presence in Florida has already generated controversy. Two weeks ago, medical airlifts from Haiti were halted when Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) complained that, while the state was willing to help, the U.S. military was overburdening it with earthquake victims.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services activated the National Disaster Medical System, which reimburses hospitals for treatment costs. At the same time, the U.S. Agency for International Development started flying patients to Atlanta area hospitals and identified Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston as places willing to take patients.

But unresolved is the question of what the future holds for Haitians granted an array of visas to enter the United States. Will they be allowed to apply for Temporary Protective Status, forced to leave, or will some be allowed to walk out of the hospital and blend in with Haitian immigrants in their communities? U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it has yet to determine how to track earthquake victims in this country once they're well.

Protecting her 'baby

Junior said he missed his mother, Suzanna Lindor, and his three sisters, who escaped the earthquake without harm. But, he said through an interpreter, "I would be dead if they had not brought me here." Gousse, his doctor, nodded in agreement.

On Jan. 12, Junior turned on the shower on the second floor of his house and climbed in after checking to see if the water was warm. He was talking to a friend through the curtain when the earth shook. They ran downstairs but didn't make it to the door before a wall and metal grate tumbled down, trapping them for nearly two days.

The falling debris crushed muscle, cracked bones and opened flesh. Dead tissue sent a toxin into Junior's body, causing his kidneys to fail. Gousse came across Junior at the University of Miami medical station set up near the Port-au-Prince airport six days after the earthquake.

"He was swollen," Gousse said. "His face was swollen. He's a thin guy. He was swollen twice his size. He couldn't make urine . . . and the liquid was building up in his body."

Junior needed kidney dialysis. "He didn't need surgery," Gousse said. "You just needed to take over the function of the kidney with a dialysis machine until it's better."

But Haiti couldn't provide that. "The way he looked to me, based on my clinical experience, he would not have made it more than 24 hours. He had difficulty breathing," Gousse said. On Jan. 18, Junior was flown to Miami and placed in Jackson Memorial's intensive care unit.

"He was the baby on my floor," Gracia said. Other Haitian American workers kept popping in to check on him. "We would babysit him," Gracia noted.

Last week, Junior had recovered enough to be released to the hospital's general care unit, and Gracia followed him.

"I have two sons, two grown kids, they're gone," said Gracia, who emigrated from Haiti when she was 18 and has worked at Jackson Memorial for 24 years.

"I am a proud Haitian." She looked down at Junior, a soft-spoken teenager whose future is as cloudy as the dust that shrouds Port-au-Prince.

"I don't mind to get him in my house," she said. "Especially him. He's the youngest guy to come into the ICU. Others have a wife. He's the kid of the floor."

Haiti's business community seeks to help rebuild economy

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Haiti's business community seeks to help rebuild economy 
By Jim Wyss,
McClatchy Newspapers
Stars and Stripes online edition,
Sunday, February 7, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A few blocks from where men lined up for backbreaking jobs digging corpses from the rubble for about $3 a day, a hotel was selling a ham sandwich for five times that amount.

And as throngs of anxious Haitians jostled for bags of rice being tossed from the back of a U.N. truck, women at a market struggled to find buyers for their overflowing sacks of fruits, grains and vegetables.

Haiti's earthquake pulverized concrete and twisted metal, but it also distorted the nation's economy, as it wiped out thousands of jobs and sparked a rush on humanitarian aid.

Now, as Haitians still dig for their dead and the government struggles to reorganize, the business community is trying to figure out how to jump-start the economy amid a historic opportunity to reshape the nation.

No one knows the exact economic toll of the Jan. 12 earthquake that is thought to have killed 170,000 and left 1 million homeless. But economists speculate that it wiped out at least half of the nation's gross domestic product, or about $3 billion to $4 billion.

In downtown Port-au-Prince, where much of the nation's industry was clustered, about 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed. 'Downtown was the lung and heart of the economy of Haiti and now it's completely a ghost town,' said Reginald Boulos, president of the Haitian Chamber of Commerce.

In the days after the earthquake, many businesses saw their stores looted or merchandise lost to fires, he said. Even worse, the administration has failed to articulate a recovery plan. 'We have no idea yet what the government's plans are for downtown,' said Boulos, who lost an auto dealership and grocery stores to the earthquake. 'Not knowing where we are going may be as bad as what happened that day.' Wearing jeans and blue Converse sneakers without laces, Boulos was preparing to host some of the nation's top business leaders at his home to try to begin sketching out a recovery plan.

Among the ideas are bulldozing downtown Port-au-Prince and providing tax breaks for those willing to set up factories in the long-neglected countryside. 'We have to decentralize,' he said. 'This catastrophe is an opportunity to create the new Haiti Inc. where every single Haitian is a shareholder.'

Already the poorest nation in the hemisphere, 80 percent of the population toils under the poverty line.

Unemployment before the quake was thought to be as high as 70 percent and Haiti is heavily reliant on imports and remittances to stay afloat.

But things had been looking up for the country of 9 million. Kidnappings, which had scared away tourists and investors, were dramatically down.

Garment exports were booming under a new trade pact. Inflation was under control. 'I really thought this was going to be Haiti's year,' said Norma Powell, the liaison officer for Brasseire Nationale d'Haiti, which runs the nation's biggest bottling plant and brews the country's only beer, Prestige.

'We were so gung-ho. Tourists were coming back, life was picking up. Now, it's like we crashed and burned.' The quake disrupted the plant's water, milk and beer production lines. Of its 1,450 employees, only about a third have been put back to work. With a little luck, the company hopes to have its factory running at full speed again within two months, she said.

As global aid agencies continue to flood the seaport and airport with food and water, it would be easy to believe that Haiti had lost the ability to feed itself.

While the nation does import food, about 66 percent of workers are involved in agriculture.

And unlike the hurricanes that wiped out crops, the earthquake left farms virtually untouched.

'There are goods and services that are being produced locally, but Haitians don't have the money to buy them,' explained Eric Overvest, the country director of the United Nations Development Program. UNDP has started a work-for-cash program, which hopes to inject money into the economy by hiring up to 220,000 people to clear rubble. But the United Nations has not reached out to the private sector yet, and that is a mistake, said Boulus from the chamber of commerce.

Haiti has water-bottling companies, bakeries and pasta factories, he said, yet aid agencies are flying in many of those products. 'None of these Haitian companies have been used so far to produce things that the international community could have purchased here locally,' he said.

Some also fear that the influx of rice, oil and other staples could undercut local farmers.

Marcus Prior, spokesman for the World Food Program, is sensitive to those concerns and said the rice distribution effort is designed to cover about half the caloric needs of the targeted population. 'We fully expect people to supplement what we give them with other produce,' he said. 'But we are aware that there may also be an associated drop in food prices with this large scale distribution. But that will help the people that have been worst affected by the earthquake.'

Prices may still drop, but a recent stroll through a local market suggested they haven't yet. Vendors said the prices of oil, beans, rice, bread and noodles were increasing, and the price of goods imported from neighboring Dominican Republic have soared. 'Prices are up at least 30 percent,' said Cherlange Rosius, who buys food wholesale and distributes it to local vendors. And a roll of Dominican salami that cost 15 gourdes, or about 45 cents, before the earthquake cost almost six times that much.

Responding to the influx of journalists and aid workers, the service sector has also jacked up prices: $4 Coca-Colas are not uncommon, and at hotels too damaged to rent rooms, guests can spend up to $100 a night to pitch tents in the parking lot.

The massive inflow of aid dollars has also caused the local currency to spike about 25 percent. It has since retreated, but an overpriced gourde could strangle Haitian exports, which may emerge as one of the bright spots in the post-earthquake economy.

There will be other bright spots, too.

Much of the city needs to be razed and rebuilt, which already has local and foreign companies jockeying for contracts, and scrap and cement-recycling companies are eyeing the mountains of rubble the earthquake generated."