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Haiti In the News
Recent aftershocks measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale led Haiti’s elite back to sleeping in their vehicles and the poor, some of whom have begun building simple structures with wood, steel, and sheets, to remain on the streets. According to a recent report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only 30 percent of the 1.2 newly homeless Haitians have received tents or tarpaulins. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen’s 26 February visit to assess the situation may push the security issue back to the forefront. However, health and sanitation concerns dominate US media coverage. Most US newspapers this past week focused on fears of an epidemic outbreak in Port-au-Prince. The Wall Street Journal reported that emergency workers had begun to leave and transfer overwhelming responsibilities to local aid organizations. WSJ also reported that the USNS Comfort stopped admitting new patients. As the rainy season nears —beginning late March— relief agencies on the ground are growing increasingly frustrated with the Haitian government’s slow progress on negotiating land acquisitions and securing titles from private land owners in order to obtain “non-flood plain land” for the building of temporary camps to shelter displaced Haitians, according to the New York Times.Meanwhile, domestic politics, foreign influence, and their potential effects on reconstruction efforts continued to generate lots of buzz throughout Haitian communities in the US last week. Left-leaning papers like Haïti Progѐs and Haiti Liberte criticized President René Préval’s leadership and discussed efforts by his opponents to organize in hopes of tilting the balance of power. Not surprisingly, Haïti Progѐs claimed that Washington, Paris, and Ottawa were planning to dominate Haiti through various NGOs which, it believes, have created “a state within a state.” The Miami Herald and The Haitian Times also picked up on signs that certain lawmakers have begun attempts to alter the political landscape during this fragile time. Lastly, the neutral Haïti en Marche depicted a struggle for leadership of Haiti’s reconstruction efforts by the US, France, and Canada.
Marc C. Laurent.
This author wishes to remain anonymous, and therefore writes under the above assumed name. The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion or position of Concepts & Strategies, Inc.
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