By Wooldy Edson Louidor, Jesuit Refugee Ser­vice Haiti Advo­cacy Officer

(Port-au-Prince, Haiti) – Six months after the earth­quake dev­as­tated Haiti on Jan­u­ary 12, the sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try remains wor­ry­ing. Despite the prepar­a­tive and pre­ven­tive efforts of UN agen­cies, inter­na­tional organ­i­sa­tions, the Hait­ian author­i­ties and other local actors to cope with the human­i­tar­ian cri­sis and other nat­ural dis­as­ters, the hur­ri­cane sea­son now rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger to vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, the 1.7 mil­lion dis­placed and other home­less persons.

Chil­dren play near a garbage mound in one of the camps for peo­ple dis­placed by the earth­quake. (Shaina Aber – Jesuit Refugee Service/USA)

More­over, despite the intro­duc­tion by the UN World Food Pro­gramme of “Food for Work” and “Cash for Work” ini­tia­tives, food inse­cu­rity is increas­ingly affect­ing the Hait­ian pop­u­la­tion, par­tic­u­larly at least two mil­lion earth­quake sur­vivors. This sit­u­a­tion espe­cially affects dis­placed per­sons, forced to live rough or in hell­ish pro­vi­sional camps under con­stant threat of being evicted by landown­ers, and still wait­ing to be relo­cated by the Hait­ian authorities.

Inside these camps, hunger pushes young girls to turn to pros­ti­tu­tion in exchange for a hot meal, and the num­ber of reported cases of sex­ual vio­lence and theft con­tin­ues to rise. The fun­da­men­tal rights of dis­placed pop­u­la­tions, prin­ci­pally the most vul­ner­a­ble groups, unable to gain access to edu­ca­tion and health­care ser­vices, are no longer respected.

In addi­tion, the slow pace of the recon­struc­tion process, in part due to the fail­ure of donors to live up to com­mit­ments made at the inter­na­tional con­fer­ence on Haiti in New York last March, is alarm­ing. As UN Sec­re­tary Gen­eral, Ban Ki moon told the 31st Assem­bly Gen­eral of the Caribbean Com­mu­nity (CARICOM) on July 4, “Promises will not feed the Hait­ian peo­ple and unre­al­ized com­mit­ments will not pro­vide hous­ing to those in need.”

In the interim, national lead­ers and other Hait­ian polit­i­cal actors have shown more inter­est in the strug­gle for power than in tack­ling the country’s human­i­tar­ian sit­u­a­tion and recon­struc­tion process. The cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, led by Pres­i­dent René Pré­val, and the oppo­si­tion par­ties are lead­ing the coun­try towards a polit­i­cal cri­sis over the orga­ni­za­tion of the next pres­i­den­tial, leg­isla­tive and local elec­tions on Novem­ber 28.

Nev­er­the­less, civil soci­ety and other orga­ni­za­tions con­tinue to demand their inclu­sion and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the recon­struc­tion process, encour­ag­ing Hait­ian politi­cians to seek a con­sen­sual approach to the res­o­lu­tion of the cur­rent polit­i­cal impasse and propos­ing urgent, appro­pri­ate and con­crete responses to the seri­ous prob­lems fac­ing the country.

http://www.jrsusa.org/news/news_100710.php