One year after the Haitian earthquake which killed 230,000 people and injured 300,000 on 11 January 2010, more than one million people still live in appalling conditions in tent cities in the capital Port-au-Prince and in the south of Haiti.
Women are at serious risk of sexual attacks, says Amnesty International. Those responsible are predominately armed men who roam the camps after dark, it adds in its report Aftershocks: Women speak out against sexual violence in Haiti’s camps, published on Thursday.
The key findings of the latest United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Haiti: Cholera Situation Report number 30 of 28 December 2010 are:
l ‘As of 18 December 2010, the Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (MSPP) has reported 2,761 deaths and 70,865 hospitalised cases due to the cholera outbreak.
l There is an increase of cholera cases and fatality rates in the South-East department.
l The major gaps and constraints identified by the Health Cluster include community mobilisation for cholera prevention and prompt treatment; access to clean water and latrines; access to health care; and coordination.’
Introducing its report, Amnesty said: ‘Women and girls living in Haiti’s makeshift camps face an increasing risk of rape and sexual violence.’
Gerardo Ducos, Amnesty International Haiti researcher, said: ‘Women already struggling to come to terms with losing their loved ones, homes and livelihoods in the earthquake, now face the additional trauma of living under the constant threat of sexual attack.
‘For the prevalence of sexual violence to end, the incoming government must ensure that the protection of women and girls in the camps is a priority.
‘This has so far been largely ignored in the response to the wider humanitarian crisis.’
Amensty stressed: ‘The limited assistance the authorities previously provided has been undermined by the destruction of police stations and court houses. This has made it more difficult to report sexual violence.’
Over 50 survivors of sexual violence shared their experiences with Amnesty International for the study.
One 14-year-old girl, Machou, lives in a makeshift camp for displaced people in Carrefour Feuilles, south-west Port-au-Prince. She was raped in March when she went to the toilet.
She told Amnesty: ‘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.’
One woman, Suzie, recounted how she was living in a makeshift shelter with her two sons and a friend when they were attacked around 1.00am on May 8th.
Suzie and her friend were both blindfolded and raped in front of their children by a gang of men who forced their way into their shelter.
Suzie told Amnesty: ‘After they left I didn’t do anything. I didn’t have any reaction . . . Women victims of rape should go to hospital but I didn’t because I didn’t have any money . . . I don’t know where there is a clinic offering treatment for victims of violence.’
Suzie lost her parents, brothers and husband in the January earthquake. Her home was also destroyed.
Amnesty’s report highlights how the lack of security and policing in and around the camps is a major factor for the increase in attacks over the past year.
The response by police officers to survivors of rape is described as ‘inadequate’. Many survivors of rape have said that when they sought police help they were told officers could do nothing.
Gerardo Ducos added: ‘There has been a complete breakdown in Haiti’s already fragile law and order system since the earthquake with women living in insecure overcrowded camps.
‘There is no security for the women and girls in the camps. They feel abandoned and vulnerable to being attacked.
‘Armed gangs attack at will; safe in the knowledge that there is still little prospect that they will be brought to justice.’
In a report released on Thursday, international agency Oxfam called on the Haitian authorities, with support from the international community, to move forward on plans to start rebuilding the shattered country.
The report, ‘From Relief to Recovery’, blames a lack of progress on a crippling combination of Haitian government indecision, rich donor countries’ too frequent pursuit of their own aid priorities, and a lacklustre Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which was established to coordinate reconstruction efforts and build state capacity.
Roland Van Hauwermeiren, country director for Oxfam in Haiti, said: ‘This has been a year of indecision and it has put Haiti’s recovery on hold.
‘Nearly one million people are still living in tents or under tarpaulins and hundreds of thousands of others who are living in the city’s ruins still do not know when they will be able to return home.’
Despite the success of emergency lifesaving aid after last year’s earthquake, long-term recovery from the disaster has barely begun, Oxfam stressed.
Public donations as well as funding from donor governments and multilateral institutions for the emergency aid effort were exceptionally generous.
However, of the $2.1 billion pledged by governments for reconstruction in 2010, only 42 per cent had been given by the end of the year according to the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti.
‘Too many donors from rich countries have pursued their own aid priorities and have not effectively coordinated amongst themselves or worked with the Haitian government.
‘This seriously weakens the government’s ability to plan and deliver on its sovereign responsibility, to lead reconstruction,’ Van Hauwermeiren said.
Most donors provided funds for transitional housing but very little money for clearing rubble or repairing houses.
One year on, only five per cent of the rubble has been cleared and only 15 per cent of the required basic and temporary houses have been built.
House building on a large scale cannot be started before the enormous amount of rubble is cleared.
The government and donors must prioritise this most basic step toward helping people return home.
The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, led by former US President Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, was set up in April 2010 to facilitate the flow of funds toward reconstruction projects and to help Haitian ministries with implementation.
So far, the Commission has failed to live up to its mandate.
Many Haitian officials still do not have the technical ability to lead projects, and almost no major reconstruction projects have started. The Commission is a key element for reconstruction and it must cut through the quagmire of indecision and delay.
Despite the current political crisis, Haiti’s political and economic elites still have a once in a lifetime chance to address many of the issues that have held back the country’s development. But the process must start now, urged Oxfam.
‘If Haitians are to support themselves then the reconstruction effort must also give priority to helping people earn a living.
‘Above all else, Haitians want to get back to work and provide for their families.
‘They aren’t asking for charity, but for a chance to be part of the process to rebuild their own country. After going through so much last year, Haitians deserve that chance,’ Van Hauwermeiren said.
One year on, Oxfam is providing aid to over one million people as part of two emergency responses: one for earthquake relief and one to respond to the cholera epidemic that has swept the country since October, killing over 2,600 people.
Rebuilding Haiti will take sustained effort and long-term commitment, a spokesman for the Canadian International Development Agency said on Wednesday.
‘It’s not simply a matter of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure,’ said Scott Cantin, ‘Haiti’s key institutions and systems need significant rebuilding, with Haitians at the helm, supported by the international community.’
Robert Fox, executive director with Oxfam Canada, said Haitians should at least expect visible progress one year later.
Volatile and disputed elections have left the Haitian government without a clear mandate for recovery — but the responsibility doesn’t lie solely there.
‘Successful reconstruction depends on the successful communication between the people of Haiti, their government and international governments and organisations’, Fox said.
‘The dysfunction has been aided unabated by the way the international community has organised itself, where pledges have been made and they haven’t followed through . . . where they come to the table with their own agendas and own priorities.’
One of the largest hurdles standing between the homeless and their potential homes, Fox said, is the amount of rubble remaining on the streets.
‘If all that rubble were loaded into dump trucks forming a straight line, that line would span half the globe’, he added.
Many houses remain habitable but are buried; they could be unlocked once the pieces of the dilapidated buildings were hauled away or recycled into new cement, he said.
To date, only about two to four per cent of the rubble has been cleared, according to the report.
‘But in many instances, that means it was off someone’s property onto the road in front of the property,’ Fox said. ‘The international community doesn’t want to spend their money on rubble removal.
‘Rubble removal isn’t sexy, but it needs to be done.’
Richard Clair, the country representative for the Canadian Red Cross in Haiti, said: ‘We’re doing the best we can with the resources we have. Even the richest country in the world, after the devastation of (Hurricane) Katrina, (parts of the New Orleans) are still rebuilding many years later.’
Of course, the two situations are hardly comparable, Clair said, since Haiti was impoverished and desperately in need of international attention long before the earthquake struck.
‘Haiti wasn’t a very well-operating society before. There was so much to do, even then. And this disaster just compounded it.’
