Four years ago Sunday, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, destroying its capital of Port-au-Prince and killing more than 200,000 people. Today, much of Port-au-Prince looks like it did before the quake. Most of the tent camps in the city itself are gone, and streets are loaded with overcrowded buses and women selling vegetables.
Most of those whose lives were upended by the quake are back in some kind of home. Most of the rubble has been cleared from the streets. The severely damaged presidential palace has finally been razed. And the government is rebuilding its ministries downtown.
But for nearly 150,000 people, life hasn't moved on. They still live in the temporary plastic and plywood structures erected after the disaster.
© Getty
Boys at a camp for earthquake victims look out from their shelter in Petion-ville, Haiti, outside of Port-au-Prince in November.
What Keeps Them There"It's the worst place to be in Haiti," says Gregoire Goodstein, mission chief for the International Organization for Migration. "We're talking about the higher-hanging fruit; people who are unable to get out of the tent camp system because they really don't have any other solutions for themselves."
Goodstein says it's possible the final resettling efforts could wrap up next year, but that depends on major factors, like hurricane season. Haiti is also planning parliamentary elections, and there's fear electoral violence could overtake the city, slowing down all government functions.
The government says there's one major obstacle to resettling the final 150,000 people: money.
"It will take $800 per person to get them out of the camps," says Harry Adam, who heads the Haitian government agency that's spearheading the reconstruction. "It's quite a big amount of money."
Some of that $800 goes to residents as rent subsidies - cash to help them get into a safe home.
No Water, No ElectricityMeanwhile, 271 official tent camps dot the region. The Haitian government recognizes these sites, and each tenant has been registered by NGOs. They're perched on dangerously steep mountainsides and pack busy street corners. There's a cluster of tents in view of a Porsche dealership.
Rosemary Durvessaint lives with her two children in a three-room hodgepodge of corrugated tin, cardboard and tarps that reads, "USAID. From the American People."
Since May she's lived in Titanyen, a cluster of tents and ramshackle houses growing up north of Port-au-Prince. Titanyen is one of the unsanctioned camps on land the government declared free to the public, and thousands have taken advantage - creating new homes along the dusty, dry mountainsides.
As the wind rips through and the structure struggles to hang on, it's hard to see this as safer than before the quake, but Durvessaint says the government has done nothing for the people out here.
"We don't have water, we don't have light," she says. "We don't have electricity."
A New City With Old ProblemsPeter de Clercq is the new humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations. He says international donors have moved on to other crises, and Haiti needs to transition away from relying on outsiders.
It needs to demonstrate "clearly and visibly to the international community that it's capable of taking care of these basic services," he says.
Water and sanitation aren't even guaranteed in Port-au-Prince, let alone Titanyen, yet residents say they're likely to stay permanently.
That's OK for Adam, Haiti's reconstruction chief. He says Titanyen and the new villages will one day be the northern reaches of Port-au-Prince. He's pledging $6 million in aid for water and sanitation projects in the area.
WOW what a shocker!!!
The largest single recipient of US earthquake money was the US government. The same holds true for donations by other countries.
Right after the earthquake, the US allocated $379 million in aid and sent in 5000 troops. The Associated Press discovered that of the $379 million in initial US money promised for Haiti, most was not really money going directly, or in some cases even indirectly, to Haiti. They documented in January 2010 that thirty three cents of each of these US dollars for Haiti was actually given directly back to the US to reimburse ourselves for sending in our military. Forty two cents of each dollar went to private and public non-governmental organizations like Save the Children, the UN World Food Program and the Pan American Health Organization. Hardly any went directly to Haitians or their government.
The overall $1.6 billion allocated for relief by the US was spent much the same way according to an August 2010 report by the US Congressional Research Office: $655 million was reimbursed to the Department of Defense; $220 million to Department of Health and Human Services to provide grants to individual US states to cover services for Haitian evacuees; $350 million to USAID disaster assistance; $150 million to the US Department of Agriculture for emergency food assistance; $15 million to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration fees, and so on.
International assistance followed the same pattern. The UN Special Envoy for Haiti reported that of the $2.4 billion in humanitarian funding, 34 percent was provided back to the donorโs own civil and military entities for disaster response, 28 percent was given to UN agencies and non-governmental agencies (NGOs) for specific UN projects, 26 percent was given to private contractors and other NGOs, 6 percent was provided as in-kind services to recipients, 5 percent to the international and national Red Cross societies, 1 percent was provided to the government of Haiti, four tenths of one percent of the funds went to Haitian NGOs.
To read the whole report:
[Link]