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Urg­ing reporters in New York to “keep the focus on Haiti”, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro today said that “although com­mend­able progress has been made, the sit­u­a­tion remains dire” three months after the mas­sive earth­quake that killed nearly 250,000 peo­ple, left 1 mil­lion oth­ers home­less and lev­elled the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince.

Just back from a two-day visit to the Caribbean island nation to view the dev­as­ta­tion left by the cat­a­strophic 12 Jan­u­ary quake and reas­sure the Gov­ern­ment of the United Nations stead­fast sup­port, Ms. Migiro said her time in and around Port-au-Prince, where she had joined a night patrol by United Nations and Hait­ian police in a camp for peo­ple dis­placed by the earth­quake, and in Léogâne, close to the epi­cen­tre, had been “eye opening”.

Telling a Head­quar­ters press con­fer­ence that she had been relieved to see that incre­men­tal progress was being made to help the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple lift them­selves from the con­se­quence of the tragedy, she said: “I met a peo­ple yearn­ing to rebuild their lives, […] a proud nation on its way to renewal and bet­ter­ment.” She added that the United Nations was play­ing a major role in the colos­sal effort to feed and pro­vide water for more than 1 mil­lion peo­ple, and to pro­vide even more with ade­quate shel­ter, espe­cially with the rain and hur­ri­cane sea­son set­ting in.

She also said that chil­dren were find­ing their way back to school and women were help­ing in myr­iad ways, from pro­vid­ing a sense of sta­bil­ity to help­ing with orga­niz­ing the camps. Mean­while, plans were under way to expand the reach of the United Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) “cash-for-work” pro­gramme, and the sim­i­lar World Food Programme-backed “food-for-work” ini­tia­tive. She added that the two agen­cies had also stepped up their coor­di­na­tion to increase the effec­tive­ness and effi­ciency of their respec­tive programmes.

Despite such progress, and signs and feel­ings of hope for the future, Ms. Migiro said, many chal­lenges remained; emer­gency and interim mea­sures where in place, but “per­ma­nent solu­tions are needed”. She was par­tic­u­larly con­cerned that women and girls, espe­cially those liv­ing in the camps for the dis­placed, needed spe­cial help and pro­tec­tion from sex­ual abuse and other vio­lence. More gen­er­ally, all the camps needed bet­ter secu­rity and super­vi­sion. Fur­ther, much more needed to be done to make sure that as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble were liv­ing in ade­quate shel­ters before the pro­longed heavy rains began.

Con­tin­u­ing, she said that while the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing hard to reassert its author­ity and rebuild or revive admin­is­tra­tive struc­tures wrecked by the quake, Hait­ian Pres­i­dent René Pré­val and other high-level offi­cials with whom she had spo­ken stressed the need for sup­port. “So, we must help the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment recover from the exten­sive losses […] of skilled civil ser­vants,” she said. In addi­tion, she urged greater focus on reha­bil­i­tat­ing Haiti’s edu­ca­tion sec­tor, includ­ing address­ing land tenure laws and find­ing ways to allo­cate funds to cover edu­ca­tion require­ments for the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion in a coun­try where the major­ity of the schools are private.

She went on to say that while she had left Port-au-Prince “with the feel­ing that the peo­ple of Haiti will recover”, ongo­ing sup­port from the United Nations and the wider inter­na­tional com­mu­nity was still nec­es­sary. She said the world body’s ded­i­cated and coura­geous staff would con­tinue to work hard on Haiti’s behalf and she urged the reporters present to “main­tain atten­tion on Haiti and keep the needs of its peo­ple in focus”.

Respond­ing to a ques­tion about Haiti’s future, she said that two weeks ago at the United Nations-sponsored donors’ con­fer­ence for Haiti’s recov­ery, par­tic­i­pants had expressed their strong com­mit­ment to the coun­try. Pledges had been made amount­ing to some $9.9 bil­lion over the next three years and plans were under way to start rolling out those resources. Indeed, the world body’s Envoy for Haiti, for­mer United States Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, was work­ing closely with the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment to ensure that the money was used in a trans­par­ent and account­able manner.

On gender-based vio­lence, she reit­er­ated that the gen­eral secu­rity and rule of law sit­u­a­tion was “quite chal­leng­ing”. And while there had been rapes and other vio­lent acts per­pe­trated against women even before the earth­quake, the dis­as­ter had made mat­ters worse. One well-known exam­ple was that Haiti’s main prison facil­ity had col­lapsed in the quake and some of the country’s worst crim­i­nals were still on the loose.

She was also trou­bled by the lack of pri­vacy in many of the densely packed camps, where she had seen tents crowded together and where some­times two makeshift shel­ters were sup­ported with only one pole, leav­ing one side open. She had also par­tic­i­pated in a patrol of one of the camps and had seen chil­dren play­ing unsu­per­vised in the late evening. Stress­ing that the United Nations and Hait­ian police were work­ing together to address some of those issues, she said some min­is­ters had reported that ini­tial struc­tures were being set up to deal with gender-based vio­lence. In addi­tion, the United Nations Devel­op­ment Fund for Women (UNIFEM) was on the ground pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal exper­tise and other support.

Con­tin­u­ing on that issue, Ms. Migiro said that the Gov­ern­ment was also look­ing to bol­ster its adher­ence to inter­na­tional human rights con­ven­tions and treaties. It was also look­ing to pro­mote the empow­er­ment of women in employ­ment and pol­i­tics, and seek­ing to enhance leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect against vio­lence and abuse. Even with all that, she said, the chal­lenges were huge, espe­cially as the secu­rity sec­tor might have to be totally rebuilt.

To another ques­tion, she said she had met with offi­cials from the United Nations Edu­ca­tional, Sci­en­tific and Cul­tural Orga­ni­za­tion (UNESCO), who had informed her that the agency was help­ing to orga­nize com­mu­nity lead­ers, espe­cially unem­ployed youths, to use their exper­tise to help the nation pro­tect its cul­tural her­itage — includ­ing works of art and libraries.

Answer­ing a query about Haiti’s appar­ent lack of strict build­ing codes, Ms. Migiro noted that many build­ings in and around the cap­i­tal had been flat­tened and “they are still just lay­ing the way they were”. The Gov­ern­ment was pledg­ing to cre­ate laws that would make build­ing codes strictly enforce­able. She believed that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the funds pledged by donors last month would tar­get that impor­tant issue. More­over, Mr. Clin­ton had vowed to focus on Haiti’s phys­i­cal infrastructure.