Rebuilding Haiti - six months on

Monday next marks the six-month anniversary of the most severe earthquake to hit Haiti in over 200 years. The magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed over 230,000 people, left a million more homeless and affected over three million Haitians. Most of the homes around the capital Port Au Prince were destroyed and the national infrastructure smashed, obstructing the relief effort. By Eamonn Costello.

Among those involved is Irish aid agency Concern, which has worked in Haiti for over 16 years and has around 400 local and international staff.

“While huge progress has been made in the rebuilding effort, we face daily adversity in the provision of clean water and sanitation," said Brid Kennedy, Concern's Regional Director in Haiti. "A lot of the sewerage and water pipes in the capital city Port Au Prince have either been badly damaged or are inaccessible. That said, we are providing these basic services to over 70,000 people and have yet to experience any major disease outbreak.”

“Probably our biggest challenge here is dealing with landlords,” said Kennedy. “Because the Land Commission office was totally destroyed, there is no way of determining if someone has legal tenancy, which makes rebuilding their rented property all the more difficult. Over 6,000 schools were destroyed in Port Au Prince and the surrounding area, and rebuilding these will be our priority. We need to end the cycle of poverty here.”

Many of the survivors are still living in camps with nothing but a plastic tarpaulin to shield them from the elements. It is currently the rainy season and camp dwellers have had their tents flooded and their latrines knocked over. Transitional shelters are being built which are said to be earthquake, termite and hurricane proof. With the hurricane season approaching, this is of critical importance.

Some of the money being used to build these shelters has come from Ireland. The Irish government pledged €13 million in funding over three years to support the recovery. More than €4 million in emergency funding and humanitarian supplies has already been disbursed to organisations including Concern, Goal, Trocaire and World Vision. The Irish public has donated €8.7m to Concern to help with the relief operation there.

Also involved in rebuilding Haiti is Irish entrepreneur, Evert Bopp. Bopp set up Haiti Connect, a non-profit organization dedicated to the restoration of communications infrastructure to Haiti. Since the end of February, Haiti Connect has deployed teams of qualified telecommunications engineers and support staff to build a number of Wi-Fi Networks in the affected regions.

“This is of great benefit to relief workers and NGOs who had to rely on a satellite up-link provided by the University of Miami. Now they can connect to the internet using our Wi-Fi networks for free,” said Bopp.

Haiti Connect recruited volunteers from all over the world using popular social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. By mid-March, the agency recruited over 60 volunteers and raised over $250,000.

Despite the drive and enthusiasm Bopp exercises in this initiative, he can't ignore some of what he sees on the ground.

“You can still smell the rotting corpses four months later” he says. “Another thing you cannot overlook, is how the houses of the rich are still standing while the housing of the poor majority are merely piles of rubble.”

Haiti was the second nation to gain independence in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. It is also the world’s first black led republic. It became so after it overthrew French colonial rule and slavery in a series of wars in the early 19th Century. However, it remains the poorest country in the Caribbean. There is a huge wealth gap between the impoverished Creole-speaking black majority and the French-speaking minority, 1% of whom own nearly half the country's wealth.

Decades of political instability, corruption and social unrest, have plagued the country.Despotic regimes, either military juntas or corrupt political dynasties, have reduced Haiti to nothing more than a kleptocracy, where successive ruling elites plundered Haiti’s resources for their own enrichment.

A bloody rebellion, and pressure from the US and France, forced then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of the country in 2004. Since then, a UN stabilization force has been deployed to support an elected leadership. However, the persistent political instability, has left the country plagued by violent confrontations between rival gangs and political groups. The UN had already described the human rights situation in Haiti as catastrophic before last January's disaster.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been in Haiti for the past 19 years. However, the earthquake has become the organisation’s largest ever rapid emergency response.

The earthquake destroyed 60 per cent of the existing health facilities and 10 per cent of medical staff were either killed or left the country. MSF had to relocate services to other facilities, build container hospitals, work under temporary shelters, and even set up an inflatable hospital. With over 3000 Haitian and international staff working in the country, MSF currently manages 19 health facilities and has over 1000 beds available at various locations. The organization has provided emergency medical care to more than 173,000 patients between January 12th and May 31st.

By this time, MSF had received over EUR91 million in donations from people all over the world, specifically for the relief effort in Haiti, with EUR53 million already spent. Six months on and the medical provision for the majority of Haitians has been significantly improved, according to a report published by MSF recently. However, it noted that the sustainability of this situation depends entirely on continuing international commitment. Shelter remains the most urgent need, with reconstruction moving at a very slow pace and the rainy season compounding the misery. Poor Haitian people are entirely used to limited comfort and resources but MSF staff there report that frustration and anger are rising because too little has changed in the living conditions since the quake.

While many aid agencies feel that progress is being made, hopes are fading fast that a new Haiti will emerge form the rubble of the old. Many Haitians are now complaining that the well connected are benefiting from the sparse reconstruction work that is going on, and that crime is on the increase with roberries and sexual assaults being reported in increasing numbers. The parliament has been disbanded with the country ruled by President Rene Preval, his cabinet, and a reconstruction commission led by Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former US President Bill Clinton.

Among aid organizations, complaints about the government dragging its feet over decision-making were common. Reconstruction so far had mostly amounted to an emergency response in the form of plastic. About 564,000 tarpaulins had been distributed, enough to cover an estimated 1.7 million people.
The tarpaulins were an enormous help as the drenching afternoon rains began, but they were not safe or strong homes. The United Nations estimates that the quake destroyed 105,000 homes, and damaged 208,000 others, mostly in Port-au-Prince.

The United States leads all countries with commitments of $713 million – with Canada, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Japan and the European Union among other top donors. Saudi Arabia poured $50 million of its oil wealth into the U.N. Emergency Response Relief Fund. Even countries with their own troubles rushed to Haiti's aid: Afghanistan provided $200,000.

However, leaders including Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive are not happy with the way the aid money is being delivered.

"The NGOs don't tell us... where the money's coming from or how they're spending it," he told Associated Press. "Too many people are raising money without any controls, and don't explain what they're doing with it."

Haiti wanted aid organisations to register with the government long before the quake, a goal identified as a priority by former US President Bill Clinton when he was named U.N. special envoy in 2009. But it was never completed. UN and US officials said there is close monitoring of NGOs who receive funds. The US Agency for International Development requires recipient groups to file reports every two weeks on how their activities are lining up with their planned programs, said Julie Leonard, leader of the agency's Disaster Assistance Response Team. Governments tend to give funds to agencies from their own countries.

Video from MSF: