Former US presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were seeking to reassure Haitians with a visit yesterday that the world has not forgotten them after the disastrous earthquake 10 weeks ago.
The unlikely duo are to meet Haitian President Rene Preval and see first-hand the wretched situation in some of the camps where hundreds of thousands of survivors are at risk from the coming rains and hurricane season.
The pair head the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, a relief organization set up after the Jan. 14 quake that leveled the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, killing at least 220,000 people and leaving 1.3 million homeless.
They were tapped by US President Barack Obama to lead high-profile fundraising campaigns and oversee long-term reconstruction and relief efforts in the country, the poorest nation in the Americas.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he expected “more commitments” from them during the day-long visit, which comes ahead of a crucial donors summit in New York next Wednesday.
“I am sure that the joint effect of the two ex-presidents will be something that is going to benefit the Haitian population,” Bellerive said.
Almost 10 weeks after the magnitude 7.0 quake, the government and international aid groups are racing against time to relocate more than 200,000 people in high-risk camps.
Some fear it is too late to avoid a second disaster because many lie on steep slopes that could be washed away when the rains come. People also don’t want to move to new sites away from the capital that aren’t ready yet.
The Haitian government is expected to appeal in New York for US$11.5 billion in international aid to kick-start the epic reconstruction effort following the unprecedented disaster.
Local experts and academics produced a stark assessment on Sunday of the impact of the quake on higher education in Haiti and issued an impassioned plea for funding.
“Eighty-seven percent of Haiti’s higher education institutions were impaired or completely demolished,” the report said. “Investment in higher education, in this immediate aftermath of the disaster, will be critical to the long-term development and rebuilding of Haiti’s future.”
As Bush and Clinton will hear, the list of worthy causes is endless and a large part of the challenge in the build-up to New York will be prioritizing who gets what split of the money and how that cash will be accounted for.
Assistant UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction Margareta Wahlstroem said that one of the keys to success would be decentralizing the recovery effort.
“It’s clear that local government has not really been consulted properly, that this has been a very centrally driven process,” she said during a tour of Jacmel, an important cultural and tourist town decimated by the earthquake. “Unless you are determined to get the resources to this level, recovery is going to be very slow.”
An adherent to the old adage that earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do, Wahlstroem said the Haitian government must take the lead in regulating safer construction standards in the future.
“I think it is really difficult for countries in an era when disasters are in the face of the whole world, and there’s nothing like a big disaster to engage people’s emotions, political opportunities, pressure,” she said. “You cannot do a reconstruction plan for places like this in three months, even less one month. At the end of the day it will have to be revised and rethought over the years to come.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS