DITHERING BY the government and a lack of co-ordination between aid agencies and donors have crippled rebuilding efforts in Haiti, leaving the country in ruins a year after the earthquake, a report says today.
Nearly one million people remain in tents or under tarpaulins and rubble still clogs the capital, Port-au-Prince, reflecting a “year of indecision” that has put recovery on hold, says Oxfam.
The report, published a week before the earthquake’s anniversary, follows an announcement that political wrangling had delayed the second round of the disputed presidential election until February, leaving Haiti’s leadership also in limbo.
The anniversary will fuel recriminations over how global sympathy and funding pledges appear to have dissolved into lost opportunities and continued suffering.
The destruction of the capital and death of an estimated 230,000 people prompted a huge international relief effort, with $2.1bn pledged. Thousands of aid agencies and missionary groups poured in. According to the UN’s special envoy, only 42 per cent of the money was spent. Roland van Hauwermeiren, the country’s Oxfam director, said near-paralysis in the 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 co-ordinated amongst themselves or worked with the Haitian government,” he said.
Oxfam accused the interim Haiti recovery commission, led by former US president Bill Clinton and prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive, of being “lacklustre” in managing funds and improving Haiti’s technical capacity to spend them.
An emblematic failure is the fact that only 5 per cent of rubble has been cleared. To a litany of woes – unemployment, cholera, poverty – an Amnesty International report today adds sexual violence. Armed men prey with impunity on females in displacement camps, it says. – (Guardian service)