The United Nations figures are indicative of the continuing suffering of Haitians one year after the massive earthquake struck what is said to be the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. More than one million people, 380,000 of them children, still live in crowded camps in Haiti despite extraordinary relief efforts by Haitians and the international community. Indeed, the UN says "the recovery process is just beginning."
Haiti's chronic underdevelopment problems go back two centuries before the earthquake of last year. Caricom, the UN and the Organisation of American States have consistently pointed out that there is little by way of institutional structures in Haiti, and the skeleton of institutions such as a police service, a judiciary, health facilities and other vitally needed supports for daily life are totally inadequate. But notwithstanding the assertion of the UN that much has been done over the last year by way of restoration work, the fact is that the international community, capable of transforming many a situation almost overnight, has not chosen to do what is so desperately needed.
For instance, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told a news conference recently that a mere three per cent of the funding approved for the recovery by the Interim Haiti Recovery Team has been allocated to the Haitian Government. In hard dollars and cents assistance, only 72 per cent of the US$1.5 billion quake aid promised has been funded and an unknown sum distributed, surely too be far below the expectations of all in Haiti.
For the last 12 months the millions of tons of rubble in Port-au-Prince have not been taken up off the ground. At the same time, however, the Prime Minister noted that promised industrial parks are in the works and 50 schools in the earthquake area have been reopened. Meanwhile, the planning for reconstruction and development goes on in the nice language of diplomacy while little by way of meaningful change is taking place in the lives of Haitians. As an example, the UN estimates that four million children do not have ready access to water, sanitation, healthcare, education, protection from disease and are exploited in the most ruthless of ways conceivable.
Overall, only 19 per cent of the population had access to sanitary facilities back in 2006, which was a decline from the 29 per cent with access in 1990. The percentage of people now with access must have plunged into the single digits. As we are aware, the cholera outbreak towards the end of last year has so far killed 3,481 people and infected close to 160,000, and those figures and the conditions for the spread of the disease must have increased since then.
The Haitian presidential elections of last year were supposed to provide the platform for a solid base upon which development work would be launched. The results, predictably, have caused massive political antagonism and now seem quite incapable of delivering the mandate required by a government in office.
To begin with, the run-off for the presidency, scheduled for next month, is mired in controversy about which candidates are eligible to contest the elections. As could be expected, the confusion has resulted in violence in the slums, struggling Haitians slaughtering each other in the wake of election confusion.
It is unacceptable for the international community to leave this human tragedy to further decompose in front of the watching world while powerful countries with unlimited resources make platitudinous statements. The people of this historically wronged country must be assisted, simply on the basis of humanitarian need.