By Nisa Islam Muhammad

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/article_6874.shtml

TransAfrica says con­di­tions in Haiti remain dire and hav­ing food to eat remains a prob­lem. The Black lob­by­ing group also says aid is “trick­ling” into the coun­try, despite an “over­whelm­ing need” for help. Photo: Richard B. Muhammad

WASHINGTON  — There is the Haiti that Pres­i­dent Obama recently described: “The sit­u­a­tion on the ground remains dire and peo­ple should be under no illu­sions that the cri­sis is over,” he said fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Hait­ian Pres­i­dent René Preval.

With spring rains com­ing, the pres­i­dent noted, “The chal­lenge is now to pre­vent a sec­ond disaster.”

Then there’s this Haiti: “The sit­u­a­tion on the ground in terms of the med­ical sit­u­a­tion has improved,” accord­ing to José Ruiz, a civil­ian spokesman for the United States South­ern Com­mand. “Demand for med­ical care is not exceed­ing the capac­ity of facil­i­ties on the ground.”

The real Haiti is more like the sit­u­a­tion described by Pres­i­dent Obama, accord­ing to TransAfrica’s Pres­i­dent Nicole Lee, who recently returned from the Black repub­lic. Speak­ing at a March 23 press brief­ing, she said, “When Pres­i­dent Obama says that the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti is dire, he is right. Peo­ple are hun­gry and sleep­ing in the open. Only a small per­cent­age of Haitians in need of med­ical care and food are receiv­ing it on a reg­u­lar basis or at lev­els high enough to make a real dif­fer­ence. We need to sus­tain our human­i­tar­ian efforts until emer­gency needs have been met.”

TransAfrica orga­nized a forum fea­tur­ing experts from the RFK Cen­ter for Jus­tice and Human Rights and the Insti­tute for Jus­tice and Democ­racy in Haiti to report on their expe­ri­ences in Haiti.

Monika Kalra Varma, direc­tor of the RFK Cen­ter, recalled her tes­ti­mony ear­lier in the day to the Inter-American Com­mis­sion on Human Rights. She explained that in 2008 over half a bil­lion dol­lars was pledged to Haiti after the hur­ri­canes. Only 15 per­cent of that ever reached the coun­try, she said.

“For sev­eral years, the orga­ni­za­tions present here today have tried unsuc­cess­fully to track pledges of for­eign assis­tance made to Haiti, to mon­i­tor the amounts actu­ally deliv­ered, and to assess project imple­men­ta­tion. It was extremely difficult—verging on impossible—to do this because an infra­struc­ture to track funds does not exist,” said Ms. Varma.

“Haitians have a right to have a say in how funds are spent in their coun­try, and they should have recourse if projects are poorly imple­mented, not imple­mented, or are doing harm to their com­mu­ni­ties. Rhetoric from inter­na­tional offi­cials sup­ports rights-based prin­ci­ples such as trans­parency; how­ever, unless mem­ber states take spe­cific steps to cre­ate con­crete mech­a­nisms, it will be nearly impos­si­ble for the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment and espe­cially impacted Hait­ian com­mu­ni­ties to fol­low the money trail.”

Mario Joseph is the man­ag­ing attor­ney of the Bureau des Avo­cats Inter­na­tionaux (BAI) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The BAI assists and rep­re­sents those who suf­fer civil, polit­i­cal, eco­nomic, social and cul­tural rights violations.

“Vio­la­tions of eco­nomic and social rights after the earth­quake are mas­sive and felt through­out the coun­try. The vio­la­tions are also all inter­con­nected: the vio­la­tion of one right leads inex­orably to the vio­la­tion of other rights.”

He explained that Haitians are forced to live in pub­lic parks and on the streets and have slept out­side for more than two long months—and when the rains arrive they will be absolutely desperate.

“Accord­ing the United Nations, for two months, 1.3 mil­lion of my fel­low cit­i­zens— more than twice the pop­u­la­tion of the Dis­trict of Columbia—have lived in spon­ta­neous camps for inter­nally dis­placed peo­ple. No one knows how many ‘lucky peo­ple’ sleep, as I do, in a car or in the yard of their homes,” he said. “Seventy-three per­cent of peo­ple inter­viewed by LAMP for Haiti said that a lack of food was one of their pri­mary pri­or­i­ties, 53 per­cent had not received any food aid … 70 per­cent in the camps.

Mr. Joseph said up to the present, food aid dis­tri­b­u­tion has been poorly coor­di­nated. The aid has gen­er­ally been dis­trib­uted in dis­or­der. “At times, women have been forced to trade sex to obtain a voucher to feed their fam­i­lies,” he said.

TransAfrica urged the Obama admin­is­tra­tion and Con­gress to:

• Main­tain emer­gency relief efforts at their high­est lev­els: Cur­rently, the United Nations and large inter­na­tional aid agen­cies have pri­or­i­tized dis­tri­b­u­tion to only 19 major camps in Port-au-Prince, leav­ing the major­ity of those affected by the earth­quake with­out access to food, water, and shelter.

• Decen­tral­ize the triage: In addi­tion to the cap­i­tal city, the earth­quake has dev­as­tated sev­eral major cities in the coun­try. An esti­mated 600,000 peo­ple have left the Port-au-Prince area for the rural areas. The migra­tion has sparked an imme­di­ate need for food, shel­ter, and san­i­ta­tion in earth­quake affected areas out­side of Port-au-Prince and in those rural areas now host­ing dis­placed people.

• Adhere to inter­na­tional stan­dards: There is anec­do­tal evi­dence that human­i­tar­ian agen­cies have not uni­formly applied inter­na­tional human­i­tar­ian stan­dards of ethics and prac­tice in cre­at­ing camps and in dis­pos­ing of rub­ble and waste.

Nicole Lee wrote from Port au Prince, “There is still over­whelm­ing need in Port-au-Prince and the sur­round­ing area. No one should be deceived. Peo­ple des­per­ately need med­ical care, shel­ter and food. We need to remain vig­i­lant and pro­vide effec­tive assis­tance. The need for clean food and real shel­ter is even exac­er­bat­ing the need for health­care. Aid is still trick­ling and has not nearly met the need.”