Six months after a violent earthquake left a trail of destruction and misery in their country, Haitians are growing impatient at the slow trickle of aid and the crawling pace of reconstruction.
“There are no prospects, no means to rebuild. The international community promised us money, but will it ever come?” asked a baffled Franck Paul, a former mayor of Port-au-Prince.
In the capital’s streets and under tents that still house hundreds of thousands of Haitians left homeless by the disaster, frustration is building.
“When we were asked to come to this camp, we were promised houses. Where are they?” Jean-Auguste Petit-Frere asked as he pointed to a model of a home set up on the site by a Jamaican firm and set to be valued at US$15,000 a piece.
According to the UN office in Haiti, nearly 4,000 homes of 18m² each have been built in a project that anticipates building 10,000 houses.
The UN humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, Nigel Fischer, acknowledged there were “many challenges” in putting Haiti back on its feet and coordinating aid, including making sure the affected population has access to essential care.
He also warned that 130 tent cities have been identified as at risk from the hurricane season in a country that was already the poorest in the Western hemisphere even before the quake.
The French Red Cross, which has promised to build 30,000 transitional homes in collaboration with the US Red Cross, has just begun construction of 500 in a village east of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
However, the figures pale in comparison to the 1.5 million people left homeless by the Jan. 12 quake that measured magnitude 7.0 and killed at least 250,000 people.
Among those still living in squalid temporary plastic tents under sweltering temperatures are 500,000 children at risk of crime, exploitation and abuse.
They often lack decent sanitation and proper protection against an imminent risk of hurricanes.
“Children in Haiti are among those having the hardest time recovering from the earthquake,” Save the Children’s director of emergencies Gareth Owen said in a statement. “Many are still trying to cope with the grief of losing loved ones, their homes, their toys — everything that gave them their sense of identity.”
“It’s hard for an adult to cope, let alone a child,” Owen said.
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