A Long Overdue Haiti Update

Nine months after January's earthquake, Haiti is still languishing as the tenth circle of hell.

"If it gets any worse," said Wilda, a homeless Haitian mother, "we're not going to survive." Mothers and grandmothers surrounding her nodded solemnly.

We are in a broiling "tent" with a group of women trying to raise their families in a public park. Around the back of the Haitian National Palace, the park hosts a regal statute of Alexandre Petion in its middle. It is now home to five thousand people displaced by the January 2010 earthquake.

Nine months after the quake, over a million people are still homeless in Haiti.

Haiti looks like the quake could have been last month. I visited Port au Prince shortly after the quake and much of the destruction then looks the same nine months later.

The Associated Press reports only two percent of the rubble has been removed and only 13,000 temporary shelters have been constructed. Not a single cent of the US aid pledged for rebuilding has arrived in Haiti. In the last few days the US pledged it would put up 10% of the billion dollars in reconstruction aid promised. Only 15 percent of the aid pledged by countries and organizations around the world has reached the country so far.

With other human rights advocates from CCR, MADRE, CUNY Law School, BAI and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, I am huddled under faded gray tarps stamped US Aid. Blue tarps staked into the ground as walls. This is not even the hot season but the weather reports the heat index is 115.

And this is the future of disaster response when the global economy is all but destroyed.  In an era where the super-wealthy control 84% of America, what hope does Haiti and its people have?

We can't even afford to fix our own roads because we have to cut taxes for the top 2% of the country above all other priorities.  You thought the world was going to help Haiti?

We're a third world economy as it is these days.  Unless Adam Smith's invisible hand picks up a hammer and nails, this country's ruined for a long, long time.  And a lot of people are going to continue to die.