Tag: aid

In the News: Unstable Foundations: Human Rights of Haiti’s 1.5 Million IDPs

by Mark Schuller, Huffington Post

Haiti’s 1.5 million homeless have once again become invisible. Because they are not seen or heard in mainstream media, most people assume things are improving, the problem solved.

Unfortunately they are wrong.

While it goes unseen, and therefore the U.S. Congress is not being pressured during this midterm election season to end the deadlock that is holding up 1.15 billion dollars in promised aid to Haiti, the situation remains quite urgent.

I ended my last posting — while finishing a study on the camps for 1.5 million people made homeless by Haiti’s earthquake — by asking: like the thousands who are contemplating moving back into their damaged homes, are Haiti’s 1.5 million IDPs just falling through the cracks, or is the foundation itself unsound?

Unfortunately the answer is that the foundation itself appears to be unsound.
Continue reading In the News: Unstable Foundations: Human Rights of Haiti’s 1.5 Million IDPs

In the News: Chomsky Post-Earthquake: Aid Should go to Haitian Popular Organizations, not to Contractors or NGOs

Chomsky Post-Earthquake: Aid Should Go to Haitian Popular Orgs, Not Contractors or NGOs
2010 March 5
http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/chomsky-post-earthquake-aid-…

by Keane Bhatt

Noam Chomsky (photo by Duncan Rawlinson)For decades, Noam Chomsky has been an analyst and activist working in support of the Haitian people. In addition to his revolutionary linguistics career at MIT, he has written, lectured and protested against injustice for 40 years. He is co-author, along with Paul Farmer and Amy Goodman of Getting Haiti Right This Time: The U.S. and the Coup. His analysis “The Tragedy of Haiti” from his 1993 book Year 501: The Conquest Continues is available for free online. This interview was conducted in late February 2010 by phone and email. The interviewer thanks Peter Hallward for his kind assistance. This was first published in ¡Reclama! magazine.

Keane Bhatt: Recently you signed a letter to the Guardian protesting the militarization of emergency relief. It criticized a prioritization of security and military control to the detriment of rescue and relief.

Noam Chomsky: I think there was an overemphasis in the early stage on militarization rather than directly providing relief. I don’t think it has any long-term significance… the United States has comparative advantage in military force. It tends to react to anything at first with military force, that’s what it’s good at. And I think they overdid it. There was more military force than was necessary; some of the doctors that were in Haiti, including those from Partners in Health who have been there for a long time, felt that there was an element of racism in believing that Haitians were going to riot and they had to be controlled and so on, but there was very little indication of that; it was very calm and quiet. The emphasis on militarization did probably delay somewhat the provision of relief. I went along with the general thrust of the petition that there was too much militarization.
Continue reading In the News: Chomsky Post-Earthquake: Aid Should go to Haitian Popular Organizations, not to Contractors or NGOs

In the News: Canadian aid groups told to keep quiet on policy issues

by Campbell Clark, The Globe and Mail

Aid groups say the federal government is casting a chill over advocacy work that takes positions on policy or political issues – and one claims a senior Conservative aide warned them against such activities.

An official with a mainstream non-governmental aid group said that Keith Fountain, policy director for International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda, gave a verbal warning that the organization’s policy positions were under scrutiny: “Be careful about your advocacy.”

The official did not want to be identified out of concern that it might jeopardize funding for the group’s aid projects from the Canadian International Development Agency, or CIDA.

That’s a concern voiced by some other NGO leaders, who said they have received hints the government dislikes their policy advocacy or criticisms of the government policies, but did not want to be identified.

Most aid organizations, from church-based organizations such as Anglican and Mennonite aid agencies to big agencies such as World Vision, Oxfam and CARE, take public positions on some policy issues, and some organize letter-writing campaigns or publish pamphlets.

The aid groups use CIDA money to finance 75 per cent of specific programs, but don’t use it for advocacy.

Some have had veiled warnings about positions that clash with Ottawa’s on issues such as climate change, free trade with Colombia, or the Middle East, said Gerry Barr, president of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, an umbrella group.

“NGOs are being positively invited to remain silent on key questions of public policy,” he said.

Cheryl Curtis, executive director of the Anglican Church’s Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, said government officials have never warned her organization about public-policy positions, but other aid organizations have reported such messages.

“We’ve certainly heard that amongst colleagues,” she said, adding: “There clearly is a conversation that’s brewing at the government level.”

– Read the rest at The Globe and Mail

Haiti Numbers – 27 Days After Quake

by Bill Quigley at Smirking Chimp

890 million. Amount of international debt that Haiti owes creditors. Finance ministers from developing countries announced they will forgive $290 million. Source: Wall Street Journal

644 million. Donations for Haiti to private organizations have exceed $644 million. Over $200 million has gone to the Red Cross, who had 15 people working on health projects in Haiti before the earthquake. About $40 million has gone to Partners in Health, which had 5,000 people working on health in Haiti before the quake. Source: New York Times.

1 million. People still homeless or needing shelter in Haiti. Source: MSNBC.

1 million. People who have been given food by the UN World Food Program in Port au Prince – another million in Port au Prince still need help. Source: UN World Food Program.

Continue reading Haiti Numbers – 27 Days After Quake

Aid Distribution

Less than a penny of each dollar the U.S. is spending on earthquake relief in Haiti is going in the form of cash to the Haitian government, according to an Associated Press review of relief efforts.

Two weeks after President Obama announced an initial $100 million for Haiti earthquake relief, U.S. government spending on the disaster has nearly quadrupled to $379 million, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced Wednesday. That’s about $1.25 each from everyone in the United States.

Each American dollar roughly breaks down like this: 42 cents for disaster assistance, 33 cents for U.S. military aid, nine cents for food, nine cents to transport the food, five cents for paying Haitian survivors for recovery efforts, just less than one cent to the Haitian government, and about half a cent to the Dominican Republic.

The U.S. government money is part of close to $2 billion in relief aid flowing into Haiti — almost all of it managed by organizations other than the Haitian government, which has been struggling to re-establish its authority since the quake. On Wednesday, a defensive President Rene Preval acknowledged his country’s reputation, but said aid money isn’t lining the pockets of government officials.

“There’s a perception of corruption, but I would like to tell the Haitian people that the Haitian government has not seen one penny of all the money that has been raised — millions are being made on the right, millions on the left, it’s all going to the NGOs (nongovernmental organizations)” Preval said, speaking in Creole at a news conference.

– Associated Press, emphasis added