Port-Au-Prince (AFP) March 18, 2010
Despite billions of dollars in pledges and an unprecedented humanitarian drive, it is likely too late to avert a second disaster in quake-hit Haiti, a top US aid coordinator warned Thursday.
Tents and tarpaulins are simply not enough to protect tens of thousands of Haitians from the coming rains and hurricanes, and a new wave of quake survivors could perish in a second "catastrophe," InterAction chief Sam Worthington predicted.
"Having observed camps on very steep slopes and that you cannot simply relocate hundreds of thousands of people easily, we anticipate that the rainy season will lead, to a certain degree, to another catastrophe that despite the hard work of the international community will be hard to avoid," he told AFP.
"Deaths, landslides and so forth," he explained, adding: "What we can do is work with the UN to create shelters that people can find refuge in, but there simply isn't the time."
In Haiti for a week for meetings with top government officials, including President Rene Preval, Worthington is coordinating the massive US NGO effort but is realistic about what can be achieved.
"We're in a race against time and even though a large number of people will be moved, I do anticipate that, sadly, many will be affected by the fact that they are living in areas that are dangerous.
"One could get a tent, one could get plastic sheeting but to get people in temporary shelter in such a way that it will withstand a hurricane or rains and ultimately rebuild, we are talking about an effort that will take years."
Teams from the International Organization for Migration are laboriously trawling hundreds of camps to register the particulars of each family, while other UN agencies draw up emergency plans for flood and hurricane prevention.
Some 218,000 Haitians are deemed to be in "red camps," those considered at gravest flood risk, and the race is on to find them alternative shelter before the rain and possibly calamitous landslides.
There have already been a few nights of torrential downpours in the past week and sustained rains could spell disaster in Port-au-Prince where countless people subsist in wretched conditions perched on treacherous slopes.
"Our community is talking about a second disaster happening when the rains hit," said Worthington. "I am not sure to what extent that can be avoided."
"Unfortunately, many of the camps are in areas that have no drainage whatsoever and many of the shelters are on slopes that are 20 degrees or steeper," he told AFP after a briefing at the UN logistics base.
The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti as dusk fell on January 12 was one of the worst natural disasters of modern times, if not the worst. It left at least 220,000 people dead and affected three million Haitians.
earlier related report
All 33 children in Haiti 'orphan' drama have parents
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) March 17, 2010 - The 33 Haitian children at the center of a US abduction row were finally reunited Wednesday with their families, but the fact that not one of them turned out to be an orphan raised fresh concern.
SOS Children's Villages, the international aid group caring for the children since the drama erupted seven weeks ago, said it was only right for them to be handed back to their families.
"It has turned out that all of the 33 children have parents. SOS Children's Villages is convinced that in most cases, the best place for a child to be cared for and protected is within the family," the group said in a statement.
Laura Silsby and nine fellow Baptists from Idaho were arrested on January 29 as they tried to take the children into the neighboring Dominican Republic by bus without the necessary documentation.
The group denied wrongdoing, saying it was only trying to help orphans in the wake of Haiti's devastating January 12 earthquake that killed more than 220,000 people and left more than a million homeless.
Some parents told the judge they willingly handed over the children because they could no longer care for them following the quake that destroyed much of the Haitian capital.
Nine of the accused have since been released and returned to the United States, but Silsby, the leader of the New Life Children's Refuge group, remains in a Port-au-Prince jail facing child trafficking charges.
SOS Children's Villages spokeswoman Line Wolf Nielsen said that although it was in many cases a tearful reunion, or departure, many parents had actually been visiting for weeks.
"It wasn't as if you had parents and children running toward each other," she told AFP. "The children were dressed in their finest clothes and playing with the SOS 'mother' they had been living with."
"It was a happy event but a few tears were shared. Quite a few kids have made many friends here and they were sad to say goodbye."
The smallest of the children was only a few months old and will have spent almost half her life in the care of a "mother" assigned to her by the SOS Villages charity, which was founded in 1949 in Austria.
"We will continue to follow these children on home visits and make sure things are fine and well," said Wolf Nielsen.
The reunions followed weeks of painstaking registration work by Haitian government officials who had to make sure all the parents were bona fide.
Several of the 22 families that claimed the children -- many were siblings -- left it until the last minute, Wolf Nielsen said, explaining it was difficult for some to get there while others may have feared prosecution.
"I have made some good friends here and enjoyed playing football, but I miss my mother and now it will be nice to go home," said nine-year old Michael, quoted in the SOS Children Villages' statement.
The national director of SOS Children's Villages, Celigny Darius, suggested the high-profile case, which diverted valuable media spotlight off the massive relief effort in Haiti, had raised serious questions.
"This case has highlighted the risks of separation in emergency situations, when destitute families see no other way than to give up their children," Darius said.
"It is essential that relief efforts focus on preventing separation by ensuring that families have access to basic necessities."
The revelation that all the children have parents is bound to raise more questions about adoption procedures and how to best care for orphans in the wake of such disasters.
SOS Children's Villages, which has looked after the 33 since January 30, is now free to focus solely on almost 500 other children in its care, many of whom were simply handed to aid workers at the gates of the compound.
"We are registering the children. We have a national database operated by UNICEF. A significant percentage have families, have relatives," Wolf Nielsen said.
US seeks to cancel Haiti's 447 million dollar debt to IDB
Cancun, Mexico (AFP) March 18, 2010 - The United States wants the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to cancel all of Haiti's debt, standing at some 447 million dollars, US Treasury sources said on Thursday. The United States also supports a "robust" increase in the bank's capital, the main issue on the agenda of its annual meeting in Cancun, Mexico, which starts on Friday, one of the sources said, without giving a figure. "What we have to work out is the manner in which Haiti's debt to this institution (IDB) in cancelled," another source said in a telephone conference with journalists, giving the figure as 447 million dollars. The US Senate last week unanimously approved a resolution calling for easing Haiti's debt burden to help with reconstruction efforts in the wake of the devastating January 12 earthquake. The IDB estimates that Haiti's reconstruction could cost up to 14 billion dollars
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