Haiti earthquake - one year on: international failure, suffering, but also resilience

Photograph: Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images 

 

Haiti one year on looks depressingly similar to Haiti six months ago. Things have hardly moved:  the country is still in ruins, nearly one million people are still living under tents and tarpaulin and only 5% of rubble left by the devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake has been cleared.

An Oxfam report, published ahead of the earthquake anniversary on Wednesday, says government dithering and lack of coordination between aid agencies and donors have crippled rebuilding efforts in Haiti.

The destruction of the capital and death of an estimated 230,000 people prompted a huge international relief effort last year, with $2.1bn (£1.4bn) pledged. Thousands of aid agencies and missionary groups flocked into the Caribbean nation.  But according to the UN's special envoy for Haiti, only 42% of that was spent.

The country's Oxfam's director said near paralysis in Haiti's government had been compounded by mistakes in the international response. "Too many donors from rich countries have pursued their own aid priorities and have not effectively coordinated amongst themselves or worked with the Haitian government.”

The agency also accused the interim Haiti recovery commission, led by the former US president Bill Clinton and Haiti's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, of being "lacklustre" in managing funds and improving Haiti's technical capacity to spend them.

Haiti's sense of drift was underlined by last week's announcement that political wrangling has delayed the second round of the disputed presidential election until February, leaving Haiti's leadership also in limbo.

To a litany of woes – unemployment, cholera, extreme poverty – an Amnesty International report last week added sexual violence. Armed men prey with impunity on girls and women in displacement camps, worsening the trauma of having lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones, says the report.

But as cholera and political instability dominate headlines around the quake's one-year anniversary, life goes on in Haiti, even in the shadow of tragedy. People do what they can to cope.

AlertNet, the global humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation, has created a space for ordinary Haitians to tell their story.   Their multimedia documentary One-Day in Port-au-Prince transports us to the streets and tent cities of Haiti’s capital.  Each of the 14 people featured, tell their story in their own words and evoke issues central to the country’s recovery, from education and health to resettlement and reconstruction.

From the homeless schoolgirl who studies science by candlelight to the doctor who built a makeshift operating theatre in the ruins of a hospital, One Day in Port-au-Prince tells stories of resilience, ingenuity and courage.

There is a Voodoo priest who takes a stand against mass burials, a young mother forced to sell her own body, a former professional goalkeeper who rhapsodises about soccer's power to heal and a woman who sells textbooks yet can't afford to send her own kids to school. 

AlterNet hope that "One Day in Port-au-Prince" will be the beginning of an exchange between those who are doing their best to cope with the Haiti quake and people around the world who support Haiti's recovery.

Haiti - Bigotry and the fight for survival six months after the quake

Three years ago, photographer Caroline Irby and I went to Haiti to follow a group of poor, uneducated, but feisty and courageous HIV-positive women who were leading the fight against AIDS and its stigma in Cite Soleil and some of the other poor and volatile slums of Port-au-Prince.  (Read our piece in the Telegraph Magazine.)

Calling themselves the Delegate Mothers, the women brought medical care, material assistance, psychological support and education to some 250 families affected by HIV/AIDS – including 500 children.  They stepped in when foreign aid workers were forced to flee the country in 2004 and Haitians from outside the slums wouldn’t venture there. They volunteered for Rainbow House, a local support centre for people with HIV or AIDS, backed by Plan International, a children humanitarian charity.

Most people in Haiti, especially in the countryside, believe AIDS is caused by a curse, so they shun HIV-positive people for fear of attracting the evil eye on to themselves. If infected, they believe that only a voodoo priest can help them.

The general situation in Haiti was already pretty desperate when we were there, but now six months after the January 12 earthquake that killed more than 210,000 people and injured up to 300,000, it is a living hell. Over 1.5 million people are still surviving in tents. The infrastructure, already very poor, is still heavily damaged (including water, electricity, health services and roads), the risk of crime - looting, kidnapping and gun violence - is high and the security situation is extremely volatile.

Insecurity, overcrowding, sexual violence and lack of sanitary facilities are making life in the camps a misery, especially for women and girls. But for the Delegate Mothers and people with HIV, there is an extra challenge.  Bigotry and fear of HIV have forced the Delegate Mothers and their families and other people with HIV/AIDS out of camps and some are now sleeping in front of the rubble that was once were their homes.

                                    Delegate Mother helping with cleaning

“I avoid the camps because there is a lot of discrimination”, says Marie-Lucienne Milotes, a 40-year-old Delegate Mother whom I interviewed in 2007. “People refuse to sleep next to us.”

“Neighbours point their fingers at the children and say, they are from the AIDS family”, says Rosala Persona, a 67-year-old grandmother who looks after eight grandchildren after two of her own children died of AIDS-related causes.

Despite their circumstances, Rosala, Marie-Lucienne and the other Delegate Mothers have been working every day since the earthquake to help other families affected by AIDS in their communities.  

With 2.5 to 5% of its population infected,  Haiti has the highest number of people living with HIV and AIDS outside sub-Saharan Africa.

Coping with the aftermath of the earthquake is a huge challenge for almost everyone in Port-au-Prince.  But for those living with HIV/AIDS, every day is a struggle to survive.

Rosala and Marie Lucienne never doubt for a second that they would continue with their work after the earthquake.

“God has allowed us to survive the earthquake,” says Rosala. “To show our gratitude we will continue to visit the families in our communities.”

I am hoping to return to Haiti in the autumn to meet the Delegate Mothers again for a one-year after the earthquake story.