By Teresa Albano

Although $5.3 bil­lion in imme­di­ate aid was pledged to help Haiti after its Jan. 12 near-apocalyptic earth­quake, only two per­cent, or $45 mil­lion, has been donated. Brazil was the first and only coun­try to have donated — $40 mil­lion — to the recon­struc­tion effort. It was joined by Nor­way — with $5 mil­lion — ear­lier this month.

The island is full of non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and other assis­tance groups work­ing dili­gently on the micro-level to help Haitians rebuild their coun­try and lives. How­ever, macro-reconstruction aid on the state-level is incred­i­bly slow.

The Hait­ian gov­ern­ment esti­mates more than 300,000 peo­ple died from the dis­as­ter. Mil­lions are home­less at the start of hur­ri­cane sea­son. This hard-to-imagine sce­nario is on top of pre-quake con­di­tions of deep poverty, envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters, polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity and decades of for­eign inva­sion and interference.

Jacque­line Cher­ilus, a fourth-year med­ical stu­dent at Uni­ver­sité Lumière in Port-au-Prince, is still sleep­ing under a tarp with her fam­ily. Cher­ilus said tents and tarps are insufficient.

“We need con­struc­tion. You see how strong the rains are becom­ing? Tents can’t resist that rain. How long can we live in tents and tarps? You can’t live for two or three years under a tarp. We need houses. We’re going to have hur­ri­canes soon and flood­ing,” she told Truthout authors Bev­erly Bell and Laura Wagner.

Last week, a U.S. Sen­ate report painted a bleak pic­ture of mil­lions dis­placed from their homes, while rub­ble and col­lapsed build­ings still dom­i­nate the landscape.

Con­struc­tion is held up by land dis­putes, trop­i­cal storms and other delays, the reports says, while plans for mov­ing peo­ple out of tent-and-tarp set­tle­ments remain “in early draft form.”

The report puts the blame on donor “dis­agree­ments” and Hait­ian gov­ern­ment officials.

The United States seems to be part of the donor dis­agree­ments. The U.S. pledged some $1.2 bil­lion in imme­di­ate aid at a UN con­fer­ence in March, where $5.3 bil­lion from a num­ber of sources was pledged. Con­gress is now debat­ing whether to release that aid.

For­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton and Hait­ian Prime Min­is­ter Jean-Max Bel­lerive are head­ing up the effort to raise the $5.3 bil­lion. The World Bank is over­see­ing the effort.

But “rich” coun­tries may be back­ing off their pledges for help because of the deep and long eco­nomic cri­sis. After the recent Group of 20 sum­mit in Toronto, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that rich coun­tries may attempt to bal­ance their bud­get short­falls on the “back’s of the poor­est people.”

While nations may slash their deficits, Ban warned they still had to honor their com­mit­ments on Haiti.

On June 17, Clin­ton joined forces with Mex­i­can bil­lion­aire Car­los Slim and Cana­dian min­ing mag­nate Frank Gius­tra to announce a mere $20 mil­lion invest­ment fund that will finance Hait­ian small busi­nesses. The fund will seek a “return on its invest­ments,” which will be rein­vested in the fund, accord­ing to reports.

At the same time, PM Bel­lerive trekked around South Florida drum­ming up investors and tout­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties in Haiti’s tex­tile indus­try. He trum­peted Haiti’s Nov. 28 pres­i­den­tial and par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, even though all voter infra­struc­ture has been destroyed. He also took issue with the crit­i­cisms of the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment in the U.S. Sen­ate report.

Hait­ian union lead­ers have crit­i­cized the donor efforts, charg­ing finan­cial and for­eign inter­ests are call­ing the shots in recon­struc­tion. Labor activists in Haiti, Canada and the United States also warn that donor money has to invest in good jobs — not back to sweat­shop con­di­tions so preva­lent in the pre-quake days.

Truthout reports that much of the aid pledged may never arrive. “A lot of it has gone straight back to donor nations, as with the $.40 on every U.S. gov­ern­ment aid dol­lar that paid for the U.S. mil­i­tary pres­ence in Haiti for, at least, the first two months after the quake.”

The U.S. sent 20,000 troops to Haiti imme­di­ately after the quake. The troops have been cut­back to 6,000 presently.

Mean­while, Venezuela announced June 2 at a con­fer­ence on Haiti in the Domini­can Repub­lic that it would can­cel Haiti’s $395 mil­lion debt with Petrocaribe.

Petro­caribe is Venezuela’s pro­gram which offers dis­counted oil, to be paid back over long-term low-interest loans, to Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­can nations.

Venezuela’s For­eign Min­is­ter Nico­las Maduro said $198 mil­lion from the debt is avail­able for direct invest­ment in Haiti’s health and edu­ca­tion projects.

Cuba has con­tin­ued its med­ical assis­tance directly to Haiti. Both coun­tries are crit­i­cal of the World Bank-supervised donor effort.

Cuban For­eign Min­is­ter Bruno Rodriguez announced in March the social­ist nation promised pri­mary care for 2.8 mil­lion of Haiti’s 9.3 mil­lion people.

Since the earth­quake, Cuba reports, 23 pri­mary care health cen­ters, 15 refer­ral hos­pi­tals, and 21 reha­bil­i­ta­tion facil­i­ties are “up and run­ning.” Over 260,000 patients have been cared for, 7,000 oper­a­tions per­formed, and 1,400 babies delivered.

Cuba promised a “Hait­ian National Spe­cial­ties Hos­pi­tal” to train Hait­ian doc­tors as their replacements.

http://peoplesworld.org/haiti-five-months-after-quake-aid-slow-to-show/