In the News: IMF offers Haiti 7.4 mln USD for reconstruction

Originally posted at Xinhuanet.

SANTO DOMINGO, July 26 (Xinhua) — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) offered Haiti 7.4 million U.S. dollars for the reconstruction of the earthquake-ravaged nation, local press said Thursday.

The fund is part of the 46.9 million dollars from the fifth credit line set by the IMF on July 2010, when the Fund condoned Haiti a debt of about 268 million dollars.

At the end of March, the IMF unblocked another 15-million-dollar loan, as part of the same three-year credit program for a total of 60 million dollars.

Continue reading In the News: IMF offers Haiti 7.4 mln USD for reconstruction

In the News: Haiti Gold Rush

CBC’s “The Current” has a broadcast about precious metals in Haiti:

Haiti’s President, Michel Martelly, is anxious to welcome foreign investment. Haiti is still recovering from the earthquake of 2010 and remains the most impoverished country in the Western hemisphere. World Vision estimates Haiti’s 10 million people live on an average income of less than 700 dollars a year.

But recent discoveries of precious metals in the country’s northeast have some residents feeling optimistic that their lives could improve. In fact, there’s talk of a Haitian gold rush with some estimates suggesting gold, silver and copper deposits worth 20 Billion dollars.

Listen to the program.

The Haitian State and the State of Haitian Education

by Rea Dol, Founder, Director of SOPUDEP
edited and translated by Ryan Sawatzky, The Sawatzky Family Foundation
Originally posted at SOPUDEP

Any country wanting to engage in the process of development for a prosperous future must invest in education. In this crossroads of Haiti’s history, it still is not a priority for the Haitian state to take charge of education and to implement suitable means to ensure the training and the development of all Haitian’s. For true national development to happen, this democratic governments hand cannot be withdrawn.

The Haitian constitution of 1874 was the first to recognize the importance of state funded education, at least in its primary phase, by declaring obligatory primary school education. Following constitutional amendments stipulated that primary school education was not only obligatory, but free. In spite of these written words, structures have hardly improved, and the Haitian state continues to neglect its duties in this field, preferring to leave the responsibility of education on the largely unregulated private institutions and foreign NGO’s.

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In the News: US pledge to help rebuild Haiti better and with transparency faltering

By Trenton Daniel and Martha Mendoza, Associated Press

The deadly earthquake that leveled Haiti’s capital more than two years ago brought a thread of hope: a promise of renewal. With the United States taking the lead, international donors pledged billions of dollars to help the country “build back better,” breaking its cycle of dependency.

But after the rubble was cleared and the dead buried, what the quake laid bare was the depth of Haiti’s dysfunction. Today, the fruits of an ambitious, $1.8 billion U.S. reconstruction promise are hard to find. Immediate, basic needs for bottled water, temporary shelter and medicine were the obvious priorities. But projects fundamental to Haiti’s transformation out of poverty, such as permanent housing and electric plants in the heavily hit capital of Port-au-Prince have not taken off.

Critics say the U.S. effort to reconstruct Haiti was flawed from the start. While “build back better” was a comforting notion, there wasn’t much of a foundation to build upon. Haiti’s chronic political instability and lack of coordinated leadership between Haiti and the U.S. meant crucial decisions about construction projects were slow to be approved. Red tape stalled those that were.

Continue reading In the News: US pledge to help rebuild Haiti better and with transparency faltering

In the News: UN ‘should take blame for Haiti cholera’ – US House members

by Mark Doyle
originally posted at the BBC

More than 100 Democrats from the US House of Representatives have called on the UN to take responsibility for introducing cholera to Haiti.

It is the latest twist in the allegation that UN peacekeepers unwittingly introduced the disease.

The United Nations’ envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, has accepted UN soldiers may have brought cholera.

But with more than 7,000 deaths so far, the UN said tackling the disease is more important than attributing blame.
Outbreak source

Continue reading In the News: UN ‘should take blame for Haiti cholera’ – US House members

In the News: Cholera case against UN stalls in Haiti

by Jason Hayes
Originally posted at Global Post

Mojes, a cholera victim who spent five days in the hospital to survive the diarrheal bacterium, and the UN, a conglomeration of 193 countries that will spend $793 million on MINUSTAH this year, might appear to be a mismatch. But Mojes is not alone.

With over 7,000 dead and annual epidemics after the rainy season, more than 15,000 cholera-affected Haitians joined together to file a legal complaint against the UN on November 3, 2011. The case asserts that UN troops from Nepal brought cholera to Haiti when their sewage contaminated a tributary of the Artibonite River in October 2010. Asked what he hopes for from the case, Mojes said, “Make the damages better.”

Now, seven months after the complaint was filed, their case sits idle because the UN denies responsibility for bringing cholera to the country. So, where will Mojes and his fellow Haitians go now? When it comes to the largest international organization in the world, one built on the shoulders of almost every country in the world, there is no appeals court: there is no higher governing body.

Continue reading In the News: Cholera case against UN stalls in Haiti