Two months after arguably the worst natural disaster of modern times, Haiti faces further calamity as more than 200,000 quake survivors camp in putrid tent cities at risk of major flooding.
The full number made homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake is far higher, some 1.3 million, but as the rainy season approaches the UN considers 218,000 people in 21 Port-au-Prince camps to be at risk.
“The problem with the rainy season is it is a very indefinite deadline,” said Kristen Knutson, a spokeswoman for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The government is struggling to buy land to set up emergency camps outside the capital, but these areas will take up to six weeks to turn into viable sites and Knutson said moving people outside the capital was a “last resort.”
“Relocation is what people focus on because it’s very visual, you can see the site, and because of all the dynamics of identifying the land, buying the land,” the UN spokeswoman said.
“It’s dramatic. But there are other choices that are available for people and if they are better for people and they are available we want them to take them. We want people to be where they want to be,” she said.
Those with houses still standing are being encouraged to return home, but many are still traumatized by what happened and engineers and architects have to painstakingly assess which buildings are structurally sound.
Others are being advised to move back home and camp if a safe plot can be found, while 600,000 people have already opted to move in with host families.
Only when those possibilities have been exhausted and no closer site can be found will it be recommended that those at risk on the Port-au-Prince flood plains be relocated outside the capital.
Santo 17, a first planned site with an initial capacity of 1,400 opened on Saturday at Croix-des-Bouquets, a town 13km northeast of the capital.
Heavy rains poured fresh misery on Port-au-Prince early on Monday, and mother-of-six Berta Romelus said she spent a miserable night sleeping on her feet as the rain gushed under her tent.
Even though rain turned the camp of more than 4,000 homeless, in a former soccer stadium in the suburb of Petionville, into a giant latrine, Romelus scoffed at the idea of moving.
“They cannot decide for us, we want to see first where they want to move us. We don’t want to go to Croix-des-Bouquets, it is too far. We want to live close to here. We are going to stay here whatever happens,” she said.
Behind Romelus were the only tents capable of resisting the rains, but these are reserved for children and babies — one was born overnight during some of the heaviest rains since the quake, which killed more than 220,000 people.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
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MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
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