VISITE DE SARKOZY EN HAITI ! - Haiti Liberte

This Week in Haiti
500 women march on MINUSTAH
and U.S. Embassy to demand
“Tents, not guns!”
Brian Jackson/Millenials Project
U.S. brags Haiti response
is a “Model” while more
than a million Haitians
remain homeless
Over 500 women marched 7 miles from Carrefour Aviation to the US Embassy in Tabarre.
by Christian Guerrier and Brian
Jackson
Christian Guerrier and Brian
Jackson, both based in the Miami,
Florida area, visited Haiti from Feb. 1
- 9. They are with the Millennials Project,
an organization dedicated to the
empowerment of women.
We traveled to Haiti with the idea
that women would emerge to lead
in rebuilding and reshaping the country’s
future after the devastating Jan.
12 th earthquake. Arriving by bus from
the Dominican Republic, we stayed in
makeshift tents at Port-au-Prince’s Carrefour
Aviation Base, near the community
of Pont Rouge, where Christian had
lived as a boy.
Prior to our arrival, we had heard
from news reports that women were
having difficulty obtaining the aid that
was being distributed. When we arrived,
it appeared that nobody was receiving
such aid. It was quite clear that the most
pressing need among the hundreds of
thousands of internally displaced was
tents. Having toured much of Port–au–
Prince by car, we had observed no more
than a few hundred tents spread between
a handful of locations. Throughout the
week, we spent the better part of our
time organizing the women at Carrefour
Aviation and going back and forth to
the United Nation’s Mission to Stabilize
Haiti (MINUSTAH) Logistics Base, in the
airport’s northeast corner, where most of
the foreign aid groups were stationed.
We spoke with no less than two dozen
representatives from organizations such
as the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the
International Organization for Migration
(IOM), The Red Cross, the World Health
Organization (WHO) and the UN World
Food Programme (WFP), none of whom
could tell us how many tents were available,
where they were, or why they
were not being distributed.
The general consensus was that
IOM was primarily responsible for the
handling of tents, however, when we
met with its representative, Louis (no
last name provided), he claimed that the
organization’s resources had dried up,
that there was no cache of tents waiting
for distribution. “Unless the American
people decide to turn the tap back on,
there’s nothing we can do,” he said.
The following day, we met a UN-
HCR representative. The organization
supplies tents for the camps of many
internally displaced people around the
world, but it is not mandated to work
in Haiti. He explained to us that UN-
HCR had offered to provide additional
tents, but was told by the IOM that it
had “more than enough.”
We finally attempted to have a
group of eight women from the Pont
Rouge community admitted to the MI-
NUSTAH Base to speak directly with the
representatives of these NGOs, who generally
did not want to cooperate with the
Millenials Project, it being a new U.S.-
based organization that they had never
heard of. These women (called the Haitian
Women’s Leadership Council) could
assess and articulate the needs of their
community better than any foreign team
of aid workers possibly could, and they
were willing and able to coordinate the
distribution of materials. Despite making
the effort of traveling to the MINUSTAH
Base, the women were not even allowed
in the gate of the walled-in compound.
The two of us went into the base to talk
with NGO representatives, but they refused
to admit the women’s delegation.
It was turned away.
After getting no help and no answers
except those that we ourselves
were able to deduce from a series of
verbal inconsistencies, we decided with
the women to organize a public demonstration.
Since the Haitian Women’s
Leadership Council would not be admitted
into the MINUSTAH base to voice
their concerns, we chose to have a
mass march to the base the following
day. Throughout the week, huge rallies
had been taking place each afternoon
at an amphitheater located in the Carrefour
Aviation area. By Thursday, Feb.
4, we had amassed about 500 people
from the community.
The march took place on Friday,
Feb. 5 th , led by a banner reading January
12 Movement to Liberate Haitian
Women. Beginning at Pont Rouge, the
crowd of over 500 women marched 20
abreast, with a number of men providing
a protective security perimeter
around the women. The demonstrators
came first to the airport, stopping all
traffic along the way. They then proceeded
to the Central Directorate of the
Judicial Police (DCPJ), which has also
been President René Préval’s residence
and office since the disaster.
The demonstrators briefly blocked
the DCPJ’s entrance as they marched by.
Haitian police began hitting the men
guarding the demonstration’s perimeter
with clubs. Despite this provocational
brutality, the protestors remained
commendably peaceful throughout the
march. People joined the procession as
it passed. The protestors joined hands,
singing traditional Haitian songs and
chanting the slogan “Tents, not guns!”
in Kreyòl. The march paused again in
front of the MINUSTAH Base, and then
finally continued on to the U.S. Embassy
in Tabarre. The entire march from
Pont Rouge to Tabarre is about 7 miles.
In a radio address, President
Préval claimed to have heard about the
march and commented that it should
not happen again.
On the evening of Feb. 7, it rained
for the first time since the earthquake,
auguring the rainy season which starts
in March. The vast majority of residents
in Haiti’s “sheet cities” still have
no tents to shelter them.
On Feb. 9, the January 12 Movement
to Liberate Haitian Women, again
with the Millenials Project’s support,
staged a sit–in on the Champs de Mars
outside the Plaza Hotel, where CNN had
been staying. About 50 demonstrators
held signs reading “Tents Now, Politics
Later” and “End U.N. Racism.”
The two groups have initiated
plans for another demonstration in
Port-au-Prince to be held on Mar. 8,
International Women’s Day. Women’s
organizations from around Haiti have
been invited to help organize the event,
which organizers hope will bring out
thousands of women from around Haiti
and its capital.
Brian Jackson/Millenials Project
The demonstrators had received
no aid and needed tents before the
rainy season.
by Bill Quigley.
Despite the fact that over a million
people remained homeless in Haiti
one month after the earthquake, the
U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Ken Merten,
is quoted at a State Department briefing
on February 12 as saying: “In terms of
humanitarian aid delivery…frankly,
it’s working really well, and I believe
that this will be something that people
will be able to look back on in the future
as a model for how we’ve been
able to sort ourselves out as donors
on the ground and responding to an
earthquake.”
What? Haiti is a model of how
the international government and donor
community should respond to an
earthquake? The Ambassador must be
overworked and need some R&R. Look
at the facts.
The UN Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
reported Feb. 11 there are still 1.2
million people living in “spontaneous
settlements” in and around Port-au-
Prince as a result of the Jan. 12 earthquake.
These spontaneous settlements
are sprawling camps of homeless Haitian
children and families living on the
ground under sheets.
Over 300,000 are in camps in
Carrefour, nearly 200,000 in Port au
Prince, and over 100,000 each in Delmas,
Pétionville and Léogane according
to the UN.
About 25,000 people are camped
out on one golf course in Pétionville.
Hundreds of thousands of others are
living in soccer fields, church yards,
on hillsides, in gullies, and even on the
strips of land in the middle of the street.
The UN has identified over 300 such
spontaneous settlements. The Red
Cross reports there are over 700.
The UN reported that barely one
in five of the people in camps have
received tents or tarps as of Feb. 11.
Eighty percent of the hundreds of thousands
of children and families still live
on the ground under sheets.
Many of these camps are huge.
Nineteen of these homeless camps in
the Port au Prince area together house
180,000 people. More than half of these
camps are so spontaneous that there is
no organization in the camp to even
comprehensively report their needs.
Another half a million people have
left Port-au-Prince, most to the countryside.
As a result, there are significant
food problems in the countryside. About
168,000 internally displaced people are
living along the border with the Dominican
Republic, many with families. Others
are in “spontaneous settlements” of
up to a 1000 people.
People living in these densely
populated camps will be asked to move
to more organized settlements outside
the city. Relocation, says the UN, will
be on a voluntary basis.
The U.S. Ambassador knows full
well there are 900 or so aid agencies
are on the ground in Haiti. Coordination
and communication between those
agencies and between them and the
Haitian government continues to be a
very serious challenge.
Though many people are trying
hard to meet the survival needs of
Haiti, no one besides the Ambassador
dares say that it is a model of how to
respond. Partners in Health director Dr.
Louise Ivers reported on the very same
day that “there is more and more misery”
in Port-au-Prince. Fears of typhoid
and dysentery haunt the camps as the
rainy season looms.
But still the Haitian spirit prevails.
Everyone who has been to Haiti
since the earthquake reports inspiring
stories of Haitians helping Haitians despite
the tragically inadequate response
of the Haitian government and the international
community. That spirit is
something people should admire. Let
me finish with a story that illustrates.
One orphanage outside of Port-au-
Prince, home to 57 children, was promised
a big tent so the children would no
longer have to sleep under the stars. The
tent arrived but without poles to hold it
up. The same group was promised food
from UNICEF. Twelve days later, no food
had arrived. They improvised and constructed
scaffolding to create an awning
over the mattresses lying on the dirt.
They are finding food from anywhere
they can. “We’re holding on,” said the
Haitian director Etienne Bruny, “We’re
used to difficult times.”
Haitians are holding on despite
the inadequate humanitarian response.
They are the model.
Bill Quigley is the legal director
of the Center for Constitutional Rights
and a frequent visitor to Haiti for human
rights work over the past decade.
You can reach him at Quigley77@
gmail.com.
CUNY’s Evening in Solidarity with the
People of Haiti
On Friday, Feb. 19 at 5:30
p.m., the Professional Staff Congress
(PSC), which represents the
faculty and staff at CUNY, is hosting
an Evening in Solidarity with
the People of Haiti. Please join us
for this important opportunity to
expand the public conversation
about the earthquake, to show
our solidarity as a union with the
people of Haiti, and to raise money
for rebuilding Haitian universities
and continuing relief work on the
island.
The evening will include Haitian
food and music, as well as a
panel discussion about the political
and economic histories that converged
to make the January 12
earthquake so catastrophic. As we
learned from Hurricane Katrina,
there are no “natural” disasters.
The panel will be followed by an
open discussion, in which we hope
to explore how the earthquake has
and has not been covered in the
media, how it has affected the Haitian
community, and how we as a
union might respond. New York’s
Haitian community includes many
PSC members and CUNY students,
some of whom suffered devastating
losses last month. The event is also
a gesture of solidarity with them.
All are welcome. Please let us
know if you plan to come, because
we need to have an idea of numbers
in ordering food. Come for all
or part of the evening:
5:30-6:30: Dinner.
6:30-8:00: Panel and Discussion.
8:00-9:30: Film.
The event will take place at
the PSC Union Hall, 61 Broadway,
16th floor, in Manhattan. The
building in which we are located
requires photo I.D. for entrance.
Suggested contribution: $40 ($10
for students and those on lower
incomes). All funds raised will go
toward rebuilding Haitian universities
and supporting the relief work
of Doctors without Borders. RSVP:
mberger@pscmail.org or (212)
354-1252.
Vol. 3 No. 31 • Du 17 au 23 Février 2010 Haïti Liberté 9