Pub­lished on Mar 6, 2009 — 12:00:27 PM

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By: OHCHR

GENEVA, March 6, 2009 — The UN inde­pen­dent expert on the sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Haiti, Michel Forst, said Fri­day he is deeply con­cerned by reports that the US Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity, and its Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment agency, is plan­ning to deport tens of thou­sands of Hait­ian immigrants.

Forst said he has sent a let­ter to the Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­rity urg­ing the US Gov­ern­ment to recon­sider this deci­sion in the light of the phys­i­cal and finan­cial dam­age inflicted on Haiti when it was struck by suc­ces­sive hur­ri­canes last August.

“While acknowl­edg­ing that the hur­ri­canes and storms that drowned low-lying parts of Haiti in mud and mis­ery had been ‘severe,’ you have con­cluded on the basis of rec­om­men­da­tions pro­vided by the US admin­is­tra­tion that ‘Haiti does not cur­rently war­rant a Tem­po­rary Pro­tected Sta­tus (TPS),’” Forst wrote.

Accord­ing to a recent eval­u­a­tion cited by the Secretary-General’s Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Haiti, Hedi Annabi, the hur­ri­canes “com­pre­hen­sively destroyed what lit­tle infra­struc­ture there was.” A total of some 800,000 Haitians either lost their homes entirely or were badly affected. In addi­tion, the global finan­cial cri­sis has exac­er­bated a food emer­gency brought about by the wide­spread destruc­tion of the country’s crops dur­ing the hur­ri­canes. Bridges and roads were also washed away. In all, the storms are believed to have destroyed around 15 per­cent of Haiti’s GDP.

“Con­sid­er­ing the extent of the dam­age to homes, schools, roads, bridges and busi­nesses in Haiti, it is highly unlikely that suf­fi­cient repairs can be car­ried out in time for this year’s hur­ri­cane sea­son, and as a result many thou­sands of Haitians will be left with­out pro­tec­tion,” Forst said.

When other coun­tries in the region have been struck by nat­ural dis­as­ters, such as earth­quakes and hur­ri­canes, with sim­i­lar dev­as­tat­ing impact to the destruc­tion inflicted on Haiti, those coun­tries have been granted TPS, the inde­pen­dent expert noted. “It would there­fore be nor­mal to con­tinue to pro­vide sup­port and assis­tance to all undoc­u­mented Hait­ian migrants liv­ing in the US, until the sit­u­a­tion has improved in their home­land,” he said.

Many experts believe that TPS is the least expen­sive and most imme­di­ate form of human­i­tar­ian assis­tance the US could pro­vide to Haiti, since it would allow the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment to invest all its lim­ited resources in recon­struc­tion, and the rede­vel­op­ment of its strug­gling economy