In June, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, asked member states to allow him to repurpose $40.5m (£30m) of leftover money to the Haiti cholera fund, which he said could have an “immediate impact in saving lives”.The appeal to reallocate unspent money designated for Haiti in 2015-16 has met with strong resistance from major donors. None of the five UN security council’s permanent members, which includes the US and the UK, approved the proposed funding reallocation. The UN Haiti cholera multi-partner trust fund, which gathered more than $2m, now lies almost empty.Brian Concannon, executive director of the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), said: “We have had conversations with the UK about cholera for years. They have been saying, ‘This is a matter of principle and we need to expect the rule of law.’”“Now that the money is on the table, the fact that the UK is not reallocating it is very concerning. No one else is going to step up.”Concannon, who was in the UK this week to meet the all-party parliamentary group on Haiti, said: “We’re asking the UK to take a leadership role in the UN security council. All the [permanent security council members] spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars on the UN. But the UN is flouting its legal responsibilities towards the people of Haiti on cholera.”The UN only admitted its role in the outbreak last year. Former UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon issued a carefully worded apology and said that the UN and member states had a “moral obligation” to relieve the Haitian suffering. The agency promised to raise $400m from member states to provide assistance to the Haitian victims. Since the fund was set up, however, only about $2.6m has been collected. The UK has donated $623,000 to this fund. Its share of the unspent $40.5m would be more than double that amount, at $2.3m.The IJDH works with thousands of cholera victims through the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, a Port-au-Prince based human rights law firm. A lawsuit the groups filed on behalf of 5,000 cholera victims in a New York federal court in 2013 was dismissed by a judge, on the basis of UN immunity. After an appeal, the UN second circuit court of appeals in New York upheld the decision in 2016.Concannon is also working with the US Senate, to mobilise support for reallocating the funds. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have in the past criticised the Obama administration and the UN for failing to ensure Haiti’s victims were helped.Concannon said it was “shameful” the UN couldn’t come up with even a tenth of the amount originally promised. “The underspend idea wasn’t supposed to be the end result, but low-hanging fruit.“People in the UK or the US can forget about people in Haiti, but the people in Haiti cannot forget people in the UK or US.”Mario Joseph, a lawyer with BAI, said: “Imagine what would have happened if the Nepalese had brought the disease to the UK? What would be the reaction here – would there be the same disregard as people have shown the people of Haiti? For that reason alone, the UK should take a leadership role.”A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesperson said: “The UK recognises the devastating impact that cholera has had on the Haitian people, and we welcome the crucial role the UN is playing to eradicate it. The UK is the fourth largest donor to the UN trust fund, in addition to other contributions to tackling cholera in Haiti.“It is for each UN member state to decide how to use returned unspent peacekeeping funds. We call on all countries to volunteer contributions to the UN trust fund from whatever source is appropriate for them.”By: Karen McVeigh for TheGuardian.com | November 2, 2017
UN eyes transition of Haiti role from peacekeeping to development
The United Nations has already started to prepare for a post-peacekeeping presence in Haiti, a senior UN official said Tuesday, stressing there are many reasons to be optimistic that the country’s progress towards stability is now irreversible.
Haiti, U.N. Clash Over Probe Into Alleged Misuse of Petrocaribe Funds
Haiti’s President Says Trump Got at Least One Thing Right
President Donald Trump may have a point when he says the U.S. is wasting money sending aid to foreign countries. And that’s according to the president of one of Trump’s “shithole” nations.Haiti President Jovenel Moise said he was “taken aback” by the “bizarre” derogatory remark Trump allegedly made about Haiti in a White House immigration meeting last month. First reading about it on Twitter, Moise summoned U.S. diplomats for an explanation, one of whom was “embarassed“ and “at a loss for words,“ he said.
Despite the undiplomatic language, the two leaders would find common ground when it comes to foreign aid. Trump has threatened to cut funding and complained that the U.S. hasn’t received enough in return from foreign countries. Moise said billions have been squandered in Haiti.“Right now in Haiti, the money of foreign taxpayers, your money, is being wasted,” the president said in an interview in Port-Au-Prince. “Every year we receive $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion in aid, or more. However, it’s all consumed in a state of disorder that constitutes public international development aid.”Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has received attention in recent months as Trump has pushed to overhaul U.S. immigration policy, favoring educated, skilled workers over immigrants from poor nations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The administration removed Haiti from a list of countries eligible for temporary work visa programs and plans to end a program protecting tens of thousands of Haitians from deportation.
‘Republic of NGOs’
Trump allegedly described Haiti and unspecified African nations as “shithole countries” in a heated discussion about immigration reform with U.S. lawmakers on Jan. 12. He subsequently posted on Twitter that he, “Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country.”
Moise, an entrepreneur who built a banana export business before taking office just weeks after Trump was inaugurated, said migration benefits all countries and that Haitians have made substantial contributions to the U.S. economy and culture. According to the Pew Research Center, about 110,000 undocumented Haitian immigrants live in the U.S., including those with protected status.Moise aimed his strongest criticism not at Trump, but at the way foreign aid has been administered in Haiti, a country with so many charities it’s been referred to by academics and local press as the "Republic of NGOs.”While he acknowledged Haiti still needs foreign funding, Moise said the Haitian government had been put “in hibernation” while multilateral organizations, charities, foreign governments and non-governmental organizations have wasted billions on development projects that are overpriced and inefficient.“If during the past 40 years the billions of dollars that were spent to assist in Haiti’s development did not provide the expected results, it’s because the paradigm, and approach must change,” Moise, who spoke mostly in Creole and French, said via a translator. “Haiti must have the ability to obtain loans for investments needs, to create wealth, to invest more, to provide electricity 24 hours a day.”
Government Plan
The Caribbean country of nearly 11 million has received $5.1 billion in aid from the U.S. alone since the 2010 earthquake, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The quake devastated the country, killing at least 200,000 people, leaving 1.5 million homeless and leveling much of its fragile infrastructure. Billions poured in from donors in the years that followed.Yet, the money has done little to address poverty. Haiti’s per-capita gross domestic product declined to $761 in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund. Neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, has a per capita GDP nearly 10 times higher.Haiti’s history of political instability -- marked by a series of coups in the 1990s and 2000s -- corruption and weak institutions have made charities and foreign donors wary of turning over funds to the government.Moise said he has held talks with the IMF, the World Bank, foreign governments and other organizations about giving the government more control. He wants aid agencies to follow a development plan that prioritizes the construction of a nationwide electricity grid, schools and health clinics, reforesting the countryside, and building roads. His four-year plan calls for $1.8 billion of investment.The government last year launched pilot projects in those areas, including one that equipped local public works departments to build roads for a fraction of the price that they were previously being constructed, he said. Moise keeps three toy construction trucks on his nearly empty wood desk in temporary government buildings located beside the remnants of the national palace that was destroyed during the quake.“We’re saying now we want to think of, conceive and implement the development ourselves,” he said. “It’s not that we’re telling our partners to leave, but we want to do it in a state of accountability.”
Haitian Women Seek Support for Children Fathered by UN Troops
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Lawyers representing 10 Haitian women who say they had children with U.N. peacekeepers have filed the first legal actions in Haiti against the U.N. and individual peacekeepers for child support and paternity claims.The lawsuits filed by the Haiti-based human rights group Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) are part of a legal battle by Haitian women to force peacekeepers who they say fathered their children to contribute to their upbringing."Having and then abandoning children is not within the official capacity of a U.N. peacekeeper and therefore we argue that this does give a Haitian court jurisdiction to resolve paternity and child support claims," Nicole Phillips, a lawyer at the U.S.-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), who is working on the case, said Tuesday.Ten mothers of 11 children who they say were abandoned by U.N. troops are seeking financial support from them. One of the mothers was 17 when she gave birth, which amounts to statutory rape under Haitian law, the IJDH said.Under the U.N.'s "zero-tolerance policy," sexual relationships between peacekeepers and residents of countries hosting a U.N. mission are strongly discouraged.Farhan Haq, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation responsibility for child support rests with those "individuals who have been established to have fathered children."The United Nations "cannot legally establish paternity or child support entitlements ... compensation is a matter of personal accountability to be determined under national legal processes," Haq said by email.The 13-year U.N. mission left Haiti in October after being sent in to stabilize a country plagued by political turmoil.The mission introduced a cholera epidemic that killed 10,000 people and has been dogged by accusations of sexual assault.The Haitian mothers are struggling to bring up their children they say were fathered by soldiers from the U.N.'s peacekeeping force stationed in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH, who came from Uruguay, Argentina, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, said their lawyer, Mario Joseph at BAI, who filed the lawsuits."These mothers and their children face severe economic difficulties and discrimination," he said, adding that six of the mothers were left homeless after Hurricane Matthew devastated the Caribbean island last year.By: VOANews.com | December 12, 2017
Haitian American Students Association Holds Sit-In After Trump Administration’s TPS Decision
“So even if I’m here and I feel good my friends are aware of this I’m still bitter, very bitter.”
“When I say Haiti, you say ‘Rise Up,’” Mathania Toussaint, the PR chair for Haitian American Student Association (HASA), instructed the group of students and allies gathered on the steps of Kimmel Thursday night. Toussaint lead them in the chant, which swelled with each call and response.
This was the scene from the sit-in, organized in response to the Trump administration’s recent decision to strip immigrants of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS). HASA said it was necessary to bring attention to the move, which will affect immigrants from Honduras, Nicaragua, Sudan and Haiti, because they believe the issue has been overlooked in discourse regarding immigrant struggles.
“After we first found out about the decision, HASA was kind of scrambling because we found out about it over Thanksgiving break and had a planned meeting,” Toussaint said. “So we flipped everything because this is more important. We need to talk about TPS. Trump has systematically removed immigrants of color from the U.S., it’s been group by group.”
Initially, Toussaint expressed qualms about the prospect of organizing the demonstration because she hadn’t planned a protest before. But the reaction from students, especially Haitian students like sophomore Fatima Julien, made it abundantly clear her decision to highlight this issue was necessary.
“After finding out about the TPS removal, I was like ‘Shit, what are we going to do…What can I do?’” Julien said. “Then finding out about the sit-in I harassed all my social media followers saying ‘Come: if you’re a social justice type I’m taking attendance.’”
“Being here, especially during the chant,” Julien continued, “I got a little emotional but it was good. It feels nice to be able to say that I was here and that my friends know about it.”
Julien, who immigrated to the U.S. two years ago, has family members who will be directly affected by the decision: a sister will have to return and cousins that were trapped under the rubble of the massive 2010 earthquake, will also be forced out of the U.S. In light of their trauma, Julien expressed trepidation about them returning to Haiti.
Despite those fears, she also made it clear she and her family would continue fighting to ensure everyone remained in the states.
The sit-in was planned to operate with the goals of bringing attention to the TPS matter and educating attendees on ways to help those affected going forward. Albert Saint Jean, the New York organizing fellow at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and Ellie Happel an NYU Law graduate, both provided information on the latter.
Saint Jean recommended students reach out to organizations such as Haitian Women for Haitian refugees, Haitian Americans United for Progress and, the one he’s a part of, BAJI. “Because we’re actually in the communities doing work, helping people to get legal access,” he explained.
He added that often the help impacted communities need isn’t complex and can be as simple as assisting a family with filing paperwork.
Similarly, Happel suggested that helping the Haitian community could be very doable right here at NYU — with NYU Law and undergrads collaborating to monitor what’s happening in Congress, in Haitian neighborhoods and responding accordingly.
After the sit-in’s moment of silence for Haitians affected by the cholera epidemic the nation is still recovering from, attendees began to gather their belongings to leave. HASA president, Fabrice Juin, left those gathered with a final message.
“I personally only see things like these — sit-ins — as beneficial and productive if every single one of you leaves the space with more knowledge and ready to help physically and tangibly,” Juin said. “Thank you for showing up but I also want to let you know pay attention and ask yourself ‘What can I do in my own way to help the cause?’”
By: Arimeta Diop for NYUlocal.com | December 11, 2017
UN to Haiti: 'Proof is in the pudding' on Corruption
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — The United Nations, which last month launched a fresh mission to promote long-term development in Haiti, has had it with nice words: when it comes to corruption and human rights, "the proof is in the pudding.""They have said they want to fight corruption, so they have to take responsibility," insisted Susan Page, who is heading the UN Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH)."I'm going to take them at their word, but I'm also going to help them if that is really what they want," the American career diplomat said.Elected president after an electoral crisis that paralyzed the country for two years, Jovenel Moise insists he is going to use his time in office to clean up Haitian politics."Corruption, in all its forms, eats away and atrophies the economy, it profoundly weakens the political foundations and destabilizes society's social tissue: corruption is a crime against development," the president, who took office earlier this year, told the UN general assembly in New York in September.The concern is that his words are taking their time in being translated into action. In late August, a minister was sacked over corruption allegations, but no legal action has yet been taken.The new UN mission starts just as one of the symbols of financial waste in Haiti resurfaces: on Thursday, the Senate will debate a parliamentary report accusing a dozen former ministers, who held office between 2010 and 2016, of "fraud on a grand scale.""We'll see how they react, not just in regard to the report but in general," said Page, pointing to Haitian institutions in charge of fighting corruption and money laundering."Will they strengthen the capabilities of agents in these organizations? Really put investigations in place which they will then pursue to the very end? Will they bring people to justice? We will see."Gnawed away by corruption, the country's justice system is notoriously slow-moving. Its prison population, 400 percent above capacity, is one of the highest in the world.Maintaining the rule of law also demands a real commitment to improving conditions in detention centers, but there, too, MINUJUSTH will not take the lead."It's an age-old problem that the Haitians will have to sort out themselves," said Page. "We are here to support, not to do it for them. They need to have the political will to do it."Restoring the UN's image in Haiti during this new mission will prove almost as big a task as overhauling its justice system.The 13 years of the preceding UN mission, known as MINUSTAH, were blighted by sex crimes perpetrated against Haitian woman and children by UN police and peacekeeping troops, as well as a cholera epidemic sparked by Nepalese peacekeepers that has already claimed 10,000 lives.MINUJUSTH is the UN's sixth peacekeeping mission in Haiti over the past 25 years, a country where there is very little risk of civil war, regional conflict or terrorist attacks. The label "peacekeeping" exasperates many Haitian politicians, who may support the drive against corruption but also want a debate to redefine the UN mandate.Aware of that debate, Page prefers not to take sides: "The UN Security Council considers it necessary to keep a certain level of stability here and to tackle the great challenges which threaten long-term development... that is not a mandate for development – that is to enable a transition between a peacekeeping mission and a lasting development."
By: Jamaicaobserver.com | November 29, 2017
Haiti Prepares to Introduce Its Revived Military
CAP-HAÏTIEN, HAITI — More than two decades after Haiti’s leader disbanded its army, with its history of violent coups, the Caribbean nation is about to unveil a reconstituted military.The Haitian National Army will be formally reintroduced with a parade in this northern port city on Saturday, the anniversary of a decisive 1803 battle [Battle of Vertières] nearby that secured Haiti’s independence from France.“The army I am reinstating for you is a professional one. It is a necessity for our country. It will not be an army of repression,” President Jovenel Moïse, who took office in February, said at a news conference last week. “It will be instead an army that will help out when a hurricane strikes our country. It will help repair roads. This is the army I have promised you.”
Civilian forceMoise aims to distinguish it from the military that overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991. When Aristide reclaimed the presidency in 1995, he dismantled the army and put security in the hands of the civilian Haitian National Police. That force now has roughly 15,000 officers.In contrast, the army has at least 150 recruits, young men and women mostly engaged in building up the impoverished country’s infrastructure, Defense Minister Hervé Denis said at news conference Monday. Since their selection in late summer, they have set up a medical clinic in central Haiti and begun fixing roads.Eventually, there could be 3,000 to 5,000 troops, Denis said.“But we know that we cannot have an army of that size the next day” because of budget constraints, he added.
Haiti’s government has allocated $8.5 million for defense spending in the 2018 fiscal year. Denis acknowledged funding challenges but, according to the Miami Herald, said the armed forces’ patrols could stem annual losses of $200 million to $500 million in contraband coming from neighboring Dominican Republic.The army’s restoration draws mixed reactions at home and abroad.The army offers precious jobs in a poor country whose unemployment rate tops 40 percent.But Wednesday marked the third consecutive day of street demonstrations in Cap-Haïtien, the country’s second-largest city, with hundreds of public high school students protesting spending on a new military when their teachers have gone unpaid for months.Their rallying cry: “We don’t want an army, we want an education!”“The country has other priorities that are more important than the army,” Edouard Innocent, the city’s former mayor, told VOA in a phone interview. He said Moise should “prioritize economic development, education, health. … I think this army is [a means] for the president to secure his power.”Right to an armyCiné Aneus Daneus, a lawyer in Cap-Haïtien, pointed out that Haiti has the constitutional and sovereign right to an army. He called for “a professional army” to protect the country’s borders and provide aid in case of natural disasters. He added, “This force must not be involved in politics.”Nenel Cassy, a Haitian senator, told VOA he worried that the army would strain the national budget and could be used to suppress political dissent. He said its reinstatement created “a chaotic situation.”
The army’s reinstatement comes a month after the end of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), aimed at steadying the leadership after the 2004 military coup. That effort has given way to the U.N. Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH), meant to strengthen the justice system, policing and human rights protections.The United Nations and foreign governments, including the United States, discouraged Haiti from reviving its army. Instead, they supplied financial aid and training for the Haitian National Police.Kenneth Merten, the State Department’s special coordinator for Haiti, said the U.S. government disapproved of a reconstituted Haitian army because of that army’s history of coups d’etat. He told VOA’s Creole Service early this year that the U.S. has “spent a lot of money so Haiti could have a police force that is competent and transparent.”The United States, Haiti’s biggest benefactor, has disbursed at least $3.9 billion in post-2010 quake aid.‘Good reason to be nervous’Given the high degree of international involvement in Haiti, restoring the army brings “a sense of nationalistic pride with certain elements of the population,” Geoff Burt, executive director of the Canada-based Center for Security Governance, told VOA.But “there’s good reason to be nervous,” added Burt, who has explored the issue’s complexities in a report last year for the International Journal of Security & Development.One argument is that rebuilding the army could distract from the “more important priority of building a more effective, accountable police force.”“The big problem isn’t with the army per se, it’s the connection to the political process,” Burt said. “… Will the army become a player in Haitian politics? That’s what everyone would like to avoid.”By: Jacquelin Belizaire, Jean Philippe and Jean-Pierre Leroy for voanews.com | November 15, 2017.
UN 'Will Walk With Haiti' On Path Towards Sustainable Development, Senior Official Pledges
United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and UN Special Envoy for Haiti Josette Sheeran wrapped up a three-day visit to the island on Sunday, pledging more help to defeat cholera and assist the Government in achieving the broader aims of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.“The UN will walk this path with Haiti,” Ms. Mohammed said on Twitter, referring the work under way inside Haiti towards becoming an emergent country by 2030, the finish line agreed by all nations to achieve of the Agenda and its landmark 17 Goals, knows as the SDGs.The high-level delegation was dispatched by Secretary-General António Guterres to reaffirm the commitment of the United Nations to the Haitian people in a “new spirit of partnership.”In an opinion piece late last week in the Miami Herald, the UN chief said the partnership would stretch across the UN's work on the island – including to continue addressing Haiti's cholera challenge and the “unacceptable incidents” of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN personnel – and aims to help Haiti move “from an emergency approach to durable solutions, from assistance to investment support, from handouts to hand-to-hand cooperation for sustainable development, to democracy and dignity for all Haitians.”On Saturday, Ms. Mohammed echoed the “new spirit of partnership” set out by Mr. Guterres, saying: “We come to try to find another way to do things better; because in the past, we have fallen short. We were not able to do what we had planned,” she said in a joint press conference with Haitian President Jovenel Moise in the capital, Port-au-Prince.The visit of the two UN officials comes just after the appointment of Susan Page, of the United States, as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the UN Mission in Support of Justice in Haiti (UNMIJUSTH), which succeeded the UN Stabilization Mission, known as MINUSTAH, on 16 October.The role of the new UN mission is to assist the Haitian Government to strengthen the rule of law institutions, to continue to develop the capacity of the national police and to promote human rights.
UN reaffirms commitment to eradicating cholera
As a key part of the visit, the two UN officials met families affected by cholera and coping with lack of access to water and sanitation.Ms. Mohammed and Ms. Sheeran also co-Chaired a High-Level Cholera Committee meeting (HLCC) alongside Haitian Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant. The Haitian Government and the UN representatives jointly expressed their determination work in partnership to achieve zero transmission of cholera. They further expressed their commitment to achieving the SDGs, including improving access to water, sanitation and healthcare.While cholera transmission has dropped dramatically, from over 18,000 new cases per week at the onset of the epidemic in 2010, to 250 per week this year, success will require more funding to maintain the highly effective work of emergency response teams, and commitment to the fight against cholera in the medium and long-term, the officials jointly agreed.Urging UN Member States and partners to provide comprehensive support, the Deputy Secretary-General emphasized during the meeting that “addressing the root causes of cholera in Haiti is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Additionally, in the immediate term, we urgently require funding to ensure continued operation of the rapid response teams; failure to do so risks losing the gains achieved to date.”The Deputy Secretary-General and the Special Envoy also witnessed the efforts of the “many heroes” working to eradicate the disease. Their visit was also an opportunity to learn about successful cholera control programmes, including in communities that ended open defecation, mobilized to build toilets, and raised awareness of the importance of sanitation.By: UN News Centre | November 5, 2017
'Shameful': UK and US Under Fire Over Blocked Funds For Haiti Cholera Victims
China, France and Russia also among major UN donors resisting appeal to spend $40m of UN money on victims of cholera epidemic, claim lawyers
A New Chapter for the Disastrous United Nations Mission in Haiti?
The year the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) came to the country was a deadly one for my family. In February of 2004, Haiti’s first democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced out of office for a second time, having been reinstated, and then reëlected, after a 1991 military coup. This time, Aristide was replaced by Gérard Latortue, a former United Nations official, who called those who took up arms against Aristide “freedom fighters.” (Their leader, Guy Philippe, is serving a nine-year sentence in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty to receiving multimillion-dollar bribes from cocaine traffickers.)
That April, claiming that the situation in Haiti constituted “a threat to international peace and security in the region,” the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1542, establishing the Brazil-led MINUSTAH. The mission, which officially began in June, 2004, lasted thirteen years and five months, and cost more than seven billion dollars, before officially ending this past Sunday.
Part of MINUSTAH’s mandate was to assist the transitional government in insuring “a secure and stable environment.” This is where my loved ones and others came into the mission’s crosshairs.
I spent the first twelve years of my life in an impoverished neighborhood in Port-au-Prince called Bel Air, where many Aristide supporters live. My eighty-one-year-old uncle, a minister, had called this neighborhood home since the nineteen-fifties, and was there on September 30, 2004, when protests began on the thirteenth anniversary of the first coup d’état. In response, the Haitian national police and MINUSTAH soldiers conducted joint raids in Bel Air that led to dozens of mostly unreported injuries and deaths. The following month, U.N. soldiers and Haitian riot police climbed up to the roof of my uncle’s church and killed some of his neighbors below. My uncle was forced to flee to Miami, where he died in the custody of U.S. immigration officials after being denied asylum.
Bel Air was not the only area subjected to these raids. During one of their bloodiest operations in Cité Soleil, another poor and densely populated neighborhood in the capital, MINUSTAH used more than twenty-two thousand bullets and seventy-eight grenades, among other artillery, to kill seven alleged gang members. No other deaths were acknowledged despite further raids until early 2007, when the mission head at the time, Edmond Mulet, brushed off such killings as collateral damage. This combat terminology was not incidental. MINUSTAH was a continuous military operation in a country in which there was no war.
There would be more collateral damage. In October, 2010, nine months after an 7.0-magnitude earthquake nearly flattened Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas and killed more than three hundred thousand people, and while more than a million people were still displaced or living in makeshift tent camps, Nepalese peacekeepers stationed in the north of Haiti allowed raw sewage from their base to leak into one of Haiti’s largest and most intensively used rivers, causing a cholera epidemic. The U.N. at first refused to investigate the source of the outbreak and instead blamed Haiti’s lack of sewerage and water-treatment facilities. More than ten thousand people have died from cholera since 2010, and more than eight hundred thousand have been infected.
It took the U.N. six years to acknowledge its role in the cholera epidemic, and even though the former Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, declared last December that the U.N. needed to “do the right thing”, the U.N. continues to reject victims’ legal claims by citing immunity. The U.N. has also failed to deliver on Ban’s promise of a four-hundred-million-dollar fund to halt the spread of cholera and compensate the “most affected” victims. The fund has only raised $2.7 million, and the current U.N. Secretary General, António Guterres, seems unwilling to provide direct payments to the cholera victims and their families, many of whom have lost their sole breadwinner.
Neither the U.N.’s impunity nor the lack of accountability would surprise the women and boys and girls, many as young as twelve, who have told of being raped—one boy says that he was gang-raped—by MINUSTAH peacekeepers, who, according to the Associated Press, have used sex rings, offers of food, and other methods to trap their victims. Unacknowledged “MINUSTAH babies” and their destitute mothers are treated as though they do not exist. Though MINUSTAH rapes remain underreported, those who have come forward have had to confront the same type of repudiation faced by the initial cholera victims. Their rapists were rarely punished. They were simply sent home.
MINUSTAH has now been replaced by MINUJUSTH, a smaller mission which began on Monday. MINUJUSTH , the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti, has a mandate to “help the Government of Haiti strengthen rule-of-law institutions, further develop and support the Haitian National Police and engage in human rights monitoring, reporting and analysis.” MINUJUSTH, which will will consist of twelve hundred and seventy-five officers and support personnel, seems like a rebranding effort, an attempt by the U.N. to give itself a clean slate and erase MINUSTAH’s past. But if the U.N. were serious about justice and human rights in Haiti, it would wind down its presence in the country by having MINUJUSTH also investigate the damage done to both individuals and entire communities by MINUSTAH. Or, better yet, assign an independent body to do so, then offer the warranted compensation for the extrajudicial and civilian killings, the sexual assaults, and the introduction of cholera.
Haiti’s current President, Jovenel Moïse, whose two heavily contested election cycles are often touted as a MINUSTAH success, told the Miami Herald in an interview this month that “the conversion of MINUSTAH to MINUJUSTH is the recognition of the progress made by our country in recent years. Today, Haiti is no threat to regional and global peace and security.” To fill in the gap being left by MINUSTAH, Moïse plans to revive the defunct Haitian Army, whose history of human-rights abuses, the coup d’état against Aristide, in 1991, and its subsequent reign of terror led to an earlier United Nations mission, UNMIH, in 1993.
Moïse’s proposed budget for 2017, which calls for new tariffs and increased taxes on goods and services, has been a subject of mounting protests in Haiti. MINUJUSTH, like its predecessors, will likely find itself facing angry Haitians, or training those who do. Why should Haitians trust another group of U.N. “peacekeepers” who claim to promote the same human rights, justice, and rule of law that have been so blatantly violated by their colleagues? The U.N. may want to leave MINUSTAH’s dark chapter behind, but Haitians will have to suffer the consequences of the group’s actions for generations to come. And no new mission, under whatever acronym, will change that.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of many books, including, most recently, “The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story.”
By: Edwidge Danticat, The New Yorker | October 19, 2017
UN Peacekeepers Leave Haiti: What Is Their Legacy?
As the controversial 13 year peacekeeping mission in Haiti wraps up, Al Jazeera examines what the mission leaves behind.
![A UN peacekeeper argues with a supporters of 2010 presidential candidate Michel Martelly in Port-au-Prince [File: Gulliermo Arias/AP Photo]](http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2017/10/5/93b587f0214543e6a5c044dc19ff741b_18.jpg "UN peacekeepers leave Haiti: What is their legacy?")
PEACEKEEPERS IN HAITI
- What will be their legacy?
- Why were they there?
- What has taken so long?
- Why are they leaving now?
- What have Haitians said about the mission?
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti lowered its blue flag on Thursday, 13 years after it began.While the mission has been credited with helping bring stability to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, it has also been mired in controversy.The mission is blamed for bringing cholera to the country, and at least 134 of its peacekeepers have been involved in sexual abuse scandals.As the last of the thousands of peacekeepers who were in the country leave, Al Jazeera answers some of the key questions about why the blue helmets were there and what they are leaving behind.
What will be their legacy?
The presence of UN troops in Haiti has been a point of controversy on the island since the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) mission first began in 2004.UN officials have praised the mission for helping to re-establish law-and-order in the country marred by political unrest and bolster Haiti's democratic institutions. MINUSTAH has also helped recruit and train a new civilian police force, something that was virtually nonexistent before their arrival.However, critics argue the mission's forces have done more harm than good, pointing to the peacekeepers' involvement in the country's 2010 cholera outbreak and sex abuse scandals as evidence.Cholera outbreakThe source of the waterborne disease, which killed more than 9,000 people, was traced to a UN base.Al Jazeera's Fault Lines investigated the outbreak in 2010. The film - Haiti in a Time of Cholera - helped further expose the source of the disease on the island, and put additional pressure on the UN to investigate the allegations, and eventually admit its role in the outbreak.In August 2016, the UN for the first time acknowledged that it played a role in the spread of the disease.The UN at the time promised to respond to the epidemic with a "significant new set of UN actions".
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| A demonstrator spray paints the message in Creole "We demand justice for all cholera victims" on a building outside the UN headquarters in Haiti [File: Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo] |
In a report, the then UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said that "the preponderance of the evidence does lead to the conclusion that personnel associated with [a UN peacekeeping] facility were the most likely source".Ban said the way the UN handled the outbreak "leaves a blemish on the reputation of UN peacekeeping and the organisation worldwide".He added: "For the sake of the Haitian people, but also for the sake of the United Nations itself, we have a moral responsibility to act and a collective responsibility to deliver."Ban created a $400m voluntary trust fund for Haiti's fight against cholera. The fund was also supposed to partially compensate victims of the disease.But earlier this year, The New York Times revealed that the fund only received a few million dollars and was nearly empty.In a statement in June, the UN deputy secretary-general said that "without additional resources, the intensified cholera response and control efforts cannot be sustained through 2017 and 2018".
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Rape and other forms of sex abuseUN troops have also been implicated in sexual abuse scandals in Haiti since the MINUSTAH first began.Most recently, a UN report obtained and revealed by The Associated Press in April documented the sexual exploitation of nine children on the island from 2004-2007 at the hands of at least 134 peacekeepers.Al Jazeera later spoke to Maria Kalichi*, who had been raped by a peacekeeper when she was 17 years old. She became pregnant as result of the rape."I want justice by finding the person who did this," she told Al Jazeera."I want to hear what he has to say to me … I am walking around the streets feeling destitute because of the UN."A leaked report in 2015, found that UN peacekeepers in Haiti engaged in "transactional sex". At least 229 women said they traded sex for money and goods likes food and medicine.In 2012, at least two peacekeepers from Pakistan were jailed and fired from the army after raping a 14-year-old boy.Other cases of rape and other instances of sexual abuse have been reported and documented by the UN during the mission's 13-year term.In September, a UN fund to help the survivors of sexual abuse by peacekeepers worldwide grew to $1.5m after more than 10 countries made contributions.
Why were they there in the first place?
MINUSTAH, running since 2004, was the latest installment in a series of UN peacekeeping missions in the country, which shares a landmass with the Dominican Republic.
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Peacekeepers first arrived in Haiti, home to 10.8 million people, in September 1993 as part of The United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH).The mission had a mandate to modernise the Haitian army and establish a new national police force two years after Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, had been removed from office during a coup d'etat.After Aristide was restored to office in October 1994 following the UN-sanctioned, and US-led, "Operation Uphold Democracy" launched the month before, the mission's mandate was expanded to include helping to stabilise the government.However, UNMIH, which concluded in June 1996, appeared to have failed to deliver long-term stability. A decade later, history repeated itself as Aristide was overthrown for a second time.
Following Aristide's removal, Justice Boniface Alexandre assumed office as acting president.Alexandre appealed to the UN for help in ending the violence that had gripped Haiti in the wake of the political revolt, causing crime and murder rates to spiral.MINUSTAH, launched on June 1, 2004, in response to the crisis, led to the deployment of 6,700 UN-sanctioned troops - and 1,622 UN police - in Haiti.
Why has it taken so long for them to leave?
MINUSTAH was originally set up to support Haiti’s transitional government for a period of six months, with the aim of establishing a stable and secure environment following Aristide's removal.The mission was extended with adjusted mandates in the months and years that followed in order to allow peacekeepers to "adapt to the changing circumstances … and evolving requirements as dictated by the political, security and socioeconomic situation prevailing in the country", according to the UN.By the beginning of 2010, it appeared the mission had achieved its goals as violence had largely been removed from Haiti's politics and the country was experiencing economic growth.However, a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the island on January 12, 2010, killing more than 220,000 people.The natural disaster destroyed vast swathes of Haiti's capital city, Port-au-Prince, and decimated the fragile Haitian economy.In response, the UN added additional peacekeepers and police officers to its mission as it sought to support the country in its efforts to rebuild following the earthquake.Force numbers have been gradually reduced in the last seven years, by a series of resolutions.
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| A UN peacekeeper from Paraguay patrols the streets of Port-au-Prince, 2011. [File: Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo] |
Why are they leaving now?
The UN Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted a resolution in April of this year, ordering the removal of peacekeepers from Haiti by mid-October.The April 13 resolution sanctioned the gradual withdrawal of the 2,370 peacekeepers stationed in Haiti, according to The Los Angeles Times.The resolution was the result of a US-led review into the cost and effectiveness of the UN's current peacekeeping operations.Nikki Haley, the US representative to the UN, told the UNSC prior to the vote that the political context was right for the withdrawal of a military presence in Haiti.
The "peaceful transition of power" demonstrated by Haiti's November 2016 presidential election showed the country had made an "important step towards stability and democracy", she said.As such, developments warranted an amended approach focused on fostering "the independence and self-sufficiency of the Haitian people".The peacekeeping mission will officially end on October 15 when a new UN mission made up of nearly 1,300 international civilian police officers, and about 350 civilians will begin in an effort to help the country reform its political system.In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, Sandra Honore, head of MINUSTAH, said the UN is winding down the mission because it has achieved its aims."It is a vote of confidence in the Haitian people," she said."It is an indication of the recognition by the Security Council that the stabilisation work which was entrusted to the mission did in fact produce positive results."
What have Haitians said about the mission?
Though February's presidential election seems to demonstrate Haiti is more politically stable now than when MINUSTAH began, a number of Haitians recently told Al Jazeera the mission has done little to improve their lives.Mothers who say they have had children, fathered by peacekeepers, also say they feel abandoned.
"After years of running around and false promises from the UN, nothing has happened," Saintil Benite, a mother, told Al Jazeera."They make us do a lot of stuff but there's no results," she said.Another mother, Roselaine Duperval, added that the mission has failed those people it sought to serve."I am very angry that the UN is leaving as it's left us with nothing," she said."They should take responsibility. They know about the kids. They did DNA tests and they told us they're positive but never give us the results."
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| Children play in the street while UN peacekeepers from Brazil patrol in Port-au-Prince [File: Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo] |
As peacekeepers leave, Haiti continues to experience political turbulence.Protests last month over the government's new budget plans brought much of the country to a halt.The government has defended its plans, which include increased taxes on fuel and property, saying the money raised will be invested in improving public services and infrastructure.*Name changed to protect identity
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By: Al Jazeera and news agencies | October 6,2017
UN Ending 13-year Military Peacekeeping Mission In Haiti
A U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti that has helped maintain order through 13 years of political turmoil and catastrophe is coming to an end as the last of the blue-helmeted soldiers from around the world leave despite concerns that the police and justice system are still not adequate to ensure security in the country.The U.N. lowered its flag at its headquarters in Port-au-Prince during a ceremony Thursday that was attended by President Jovenel Moise, who thanked the organization for helping to provide stability. After a gradual winding down, there are now about 100 international soldiers in the country and they will leave within days. The mission will officially end on Oct. 15.Immediately afterward, the U.N. will start a new mission made up of about 1,300 international civilian police officers, along with 350 civilians who will help the country reform a deeply troubled justice system. Various agencies and programs of the international body, such as the Food and Agricultural Organization, will also still be working in the country."It will be a much smaller peacekeeping mission," said Sandra Honore, a diplomat from Trinidad and Tobago who has served since July 2013 as the head of the U.N. mission in Haiti known as MINUSTAH, its French acronym. "The United Nations is not leaving."MINUSTAH began operations in Haiti in 2004, when a violent rebellion swept the country and forced then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power and into exile. Its goals included restoring security and rebuilding the shattered political institutions. In April, the Security Council deemed the country sufficiently stable and voted to wind down the international military presence, which then consisted of about 4,700 troops.Many Haitians have viewed the multinational peacekeepers as an affront to national sovereignty. U.N. troops are believed to have inadvertently introduced the deadly cholera bacteria to the country and have also been accused of causing civilian casualties in fierce battles with gangs in Port-au-Prince and of sexually abusing minors.But the mission, with additional help from the U.S. and other nations, is also credited with stabilizing the country, particularly after the January 2010 earthquake, and building up the national police force."The job may not be complete but they have essentially done much of what they were originally designed to do in terms of preventing any kind of armed takeover of the state, in terms of increasing the safety of civilians," said Mark Schneider, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It takes work to maintain that and Haiti needs to maintain that."MINUSTAH, Schneider said, has been key in helping Haiti develop a credible civilian national police from "almost zero" to its current level of about 15,000 officers, which most experts believe is still too small for a country of nearly 11 million. The police force was intended to replace the army, which was disbanded by Aristide in 1995 because of its repeated role in a series of coups and that the Haitian government is now seeking to reconstitute over international objections."Haiti needs an atmosphere of peace so we can take responsibility for ourselves," said Haitian Sen. Jacques Suaveur Jean. "We don't need foreign soldiers."The new U.N. mission will consist of seven police units that can respond to major incidents, in addition to officers deployed throughout the country to advise and assist their Haitian counterparts. Civilians will also be working with the government to improve the country's justice system, which the State Department said in this year's annual human rights report has serious flaws, including severe prison overcrowding, prolonged pretrial detention and an inefficient judiciary.Honore, in an interview ahead of Thursday's ceremony, cited the training and hiring of police officers as one of the U.N. successes.MINUSTAH had already been scaling back before the Security Council voted to end the mission. In the aftermath of the earthquake, which killed 96 U.N. personnel, including former head of mission Hedi Annabi, the number of troops reached more than 10,000. But when Honore arrived there were about 6,200 soldiers from around 20 countries, a figure that dropped again by nearly a third within two years.The cholera outbreak, which started in October 2010 after peacekeepers from Nepal contaminated the country's largest river with waste from their base, killed an estimated 9,500 people and irrevocably damaged the reputation of the organization in Haiti. Many critics felt the U.N. did not adequately respond to the outbreak, something the organization sought to later remedy."It was a fundamental error because it undermined the image not just of MINUSTAH, but of the international community," Schneider said.By: Evens Sanon, Associated Press | October 5, 2017
Video & Summary: President Jovenel Moise Addresses UN's General Debate, 72nd Session
By: UN News Centre | September 21, 2017
Haitian President Backs Paris Climate Accord, Calls On UN To Honor Commitments On Tackling Cholera
21 September 2017 – Addressing the United Nations General Assembly today, Jovenel Moise, President of Haiti, expressed deep commitment to the environmental targets in the global goals on sustainable development and said his island nation is seeking to build its resilience against the natural disasters and extreme weather events that consistently beleaguer its people and other countries in the Caribbean.“My Government is committed to the Paris Agreement on climate change,” Mr. Moise told delegations gathered for the Assembly’s annual general debate, adding that he wished to see those countries most responsible for greenhouse gas production contribute the resources necessary for implementing that accord.In the Caribbean, recent back-to-back extreme weather events had drawn attention to the ways in which climate affects Haiti. “Such weather phenomena are due to the impact of humans on the environment,” he stressed, and noted that in January 2018, when Haiti assumed the presidency of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), it would organize a regional conference aimed at establishing an inter-State commission that would devise a strategy for addressing climate issues, such as the availability of climate insurance.More broadly, he said Haiti has taken steps to consolidate democracy and the rule of law, having made significant efforts to promote development and political stability. Noting that corruption has “infected” and eroded Haiti’s economy, and compromised its political situation, he said it is time that official development assistance (ODA) and domestic resources upheld the interests of the Haitian nation. In the meantime, Haiti’s new leaders are waging an unwavering struggle against corruption.Addressing two phenomena stemming from the UN presence in Haiti – heinous sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel, and the cholera epidemic – he said the Organization is morally obliged to provide the recourses to ensure that cholera left the country.Improving Haiti’s health system, including by eradicating cholera, is a Government priority for his Despite some progress, the number of cholera victims stood at 10,000 people and continued to grow. Further, there were tens of thousands of cholera orphans. The United Nations must live by and give tangible form to its noble ideals, including the announced ‘new approach’ to dealing with cholera, he stressed, by shouldering all its responsibilities to remedy the situation, which had caused grave harm to the Haitian people.Full statement (in French) available hereBy: UN News Centre | September 21, 2017
Positive Meeting Between Moïse And The IDB
On Tuesday, on the sidelines of the 72nd Ordinary Session of the United Nations General Assembly, President Jovenel Moïse received in audience Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to discuss the priorities of the Government of Haiti.President Moïse insisted on the Caravan of Change as a strategy to bring the State closer to the population by providing basic services and giving it the tools it needs to develop its environment. A medium-term strategy aiming to attract investment in the region; to build road, energy and social infrastructures.For his part, the President of the IDB welcomed initiatives to deconcentrate public services, fight corruption and reform public administration.Moreno indicated that he intended to take steps to support the implementation of the priorities of the Moïse Administration and announced that he will visit Haiti on October to inquire about the progress of the Caravan of Change and assess its needs.This meeting is part of President Moïse' determination to find more opportunities for the country and to attract potential investors to Haiti.By: HL/ HaitiLibre | September 21, 2017
President Moïse in New York
Sunday, President Jovenel Moïse left the country to New York to take part in the debate of the 72nd Ordinary Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, which will be held from 18 to 26 September 2017.On the sidelines of the general debate, the Head of State will meet with Antonio Gutteres, the UN Secretary-General, Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Christine Lagarde, Director General of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), among others, to discuss the economic and social development priorities of his administration.He will also take advantage of his stay in the United States to speak with compatriots of the Haitian community in the metropolitan area of New York.To this end, the Consulate General of the Republic of Haiti in New York invites the Haitian community to a meeting with President Jovenel Moïse on Thursday 21 September 2017 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at Medgar Evers College located 1650 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11225.The Head of State will return to Haiti on Friday, 22 September.By: HL/ HaitiLibre | September 18, 2017
In Haiti, a Building Fights Cholera
Next month marks the seventh anniversary of the cholera outbreak that ravaged Haiti. The disease, which can cause death within hours if left untreated, came less than a year after Haiti was rocked by an enormous earthquake that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions injured, displaced and destitute.
Haiti is prone to earthquakes and tropical storms — the island was spared the worst of Hurricane Irma last week — but the cholera outbreak was an anomaly; the disease had never before struck Haiti. It was brought in, it is widely believed, by United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal. One of the world’s most infectious waterborne diseases, cholera spreads quickly and has proved extremely difficult to contain in Haiti. Over 10,000 have died and nearly a million have been stricken to date.
But one organization has managed to nearly eradicate it in a large slum in Port-au-Prince that lacks clean water and sanitation.
One of the game changers that would surprise most people, including global health experts, was actually a building. It wasn’t just any building, but a very intelligently and beautifully designed one: the Cholera Treatment Center, operated by Les Centres Gheskio, an acronym that stands for the Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections.
Gheskio, founded in 1982 in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, provides primary care services free of charge to people suffering from tuberculosis, malnutrition, and other life threatening conditions in an area of the Haitian capital that is home to 60,000 Haitians. (Gheskio is a less well-known sister organization of Partners in Health, which focuses on Haiti’s rural population.)
After the 2010 earthquake, Gheskio’s multi-acre campus was badly damaged. So the organization erected emergency tents to serve as a makeshift cholera treatment clinic. Once cholera reached Port-au-Prince, patients showed up on foot or were carried in wheelbarrows, around the clock.
Cholera manifests with extreme diarrhea and vomiting. Virtually all liquid is excreted from the body, causing victims to die of dehydration within hours of full manifestation if untreated. It is relatively easy to treat, but patients must be rehydrated immediately. To prevent it from spreading, infected human waste must be managed carefully.
Gheskio’s founder, Jean W. Pape, an infectious disease specialist and native of Haiti, knew that eradicating cholera would take years. So even as the organization struggled to keep up with the influx of patients during the first year of the epidemic, he embarked on a long-term solution: building a permanent treatment center.
Gheskio turned to MASS Design Group, a Boston-based nonprofit organization that specializes in architecture that promotes dignity and justice in resource-limited settings. It has built hospitals, health-worker housing, schools and civic spaces around the world, including a tuberculosis hospital for Gheskio. MASS Design began by studying the conditions inside the tents.
Tents provide relative shade and privacy but offer limited light and poor ventilation, trapping warm air and compounding the smell of bodily waste. The materials become worn by rain, wind and sun, and must be replaced routinely. Because of the nature of cholera, the makeshift beds, fashioned out of old fiberglass school chairs and costly army cots, also didn’t last long.
Most problematic, Gheskio was relying on manual removal of human waste by an outside vendor. This was both costly and risky: The organization couldn’t ensure its disposal would not recontaminate the water table, risking the infection of others.
“We did some back-of-envelope calculations and found that over a 10-year span of time, which was then considered optimistic for how long it would take to get rid of cholera, the tents and manual waste disposal system they were then using would cost Gheskio in excess of $500,000,” according to a co-founder of MASS Design, Alan Ricks.
Ricks estimated that MASS Design could build, for a comparable sum, a permanent structure that could be repurposed once the epidemic was fully contained. So MASS Design and Gheskio joined forces to raise philanthropic funding from the Deutsche Bank Foundation, Barr Foundation and individual donors, and began work.
One important innovation, developed with Fall Creek Engineers, based in Santa Cruz, Calif., was to bring a water-purification technology to Haiti called anaerobic baffled reactors. The reactors are a form of septic system that uses bacteria to treat sewage and contaminated water, turning it into clean water. Reactors, buried under the cholera center, force water through five chambers, each successively increasing the level of purification.
Each week, Pape receives a detailed report on the water quality. The system sanitizes and recycles 250,000 gallons of water annually, ensuring that the water is free enough of bacteria and other pathogens that it can be returned to the water table. This output is supplemented by separate, large cisterns to capture rainwater for drinking.
Many other details incorporated into the center also promote health, as well as comfort, beauty and pride. Above the reactors, for example, is a pavilion structure designed to maximize airflow. Rather than spending money on tents, furniture or waste disposal services — money that leaves the local economy — the organizations enlisted local artisans, whose metalwork is world renowned, to create perforated metal sheets, painted a chorus of blues, to wrap the building exterior. Waffle-like patterns of these sheets can be opened and closed to provide shade and privacy, or sealed completely during storms, as they were when Hurricane Irma neared Port-au-Prince last week.
The airflow is aided by large-diameter fans, like those in gyms and airports. The cement floor is smooth, free of crevices where bacteria can congregate, and sealed with epoxy. MASS Design interviewed many patients and staff members in an effort to design and create prototypes of beds that would be comfortable as well as easily sanitized and reused.
“What I love about MASS is their attention to detail,” Pape said. “They asked us everything that work and everything that doesn’t work. But most importantly, they are problem solvers.”
“The building looks absolutely extraordinary,” said Roger Glass, a cholera expert who is director of the Fogarty International Center for Advancing Science for Global Health at the National Institutes of Health and has visited the Gheskio campus. “For ventilation and coolness, it’s tremendous.”
Before encountering a hospital that MASS Design developed in Rwanda, Glass said, he had not seriously considered the relationship between health outcomes and building design. “If you had called me seven years ago to talk about buildings and health, I would have blown you off,” he said. Today, Glass is eager to see more collaborations with human-centered design firms, like MASS Design, in the field of global health.
Comparing the treatment center to the tents, Pape is blunt: “It was like going from hell to paradise.”
Amie Shao, who helped lead MASS Design’s work in Haiti, reflected: “When we started, our goal was simply to help Gheskio do their work better in treating their patients in a more dignified setting. We realized, however, that architecture could not only help treat these diseases after the fact, but prevent the spread of disease in the first place by controlling recontamination. In all of our work, we seek to proactively challenge many of the underlying risks and issues that global health faces.”
To be sure, the cholera treatment center is not solely responsible for halting the spread in Gheskio’s target area. Gheskio also developed a robust water chlorination program and maintains its own factory to produce chlorine. The organization also supports and participates in broad efforts by the Ministry of Health to raise public awareness about symptoms and the risk of contamination throughout the country.
And Gheskio joined forces with Partners in Health to get cholera vaccines approved in Haiti. Euvichol, a vaccine that can be administered orally and lasts up to 30 days without refrigeration, costs less than $2 per dose. “We would need a budget of less than $50 million for universal coverage for all of Haiti,” Pape estimates.
Gheskio’s Cholera Treatment Center was ultimately built for $750,000. Pape now predicts that the organization will have recouped that cost in just three years. Haiti needs a modern, countrywide water and sanitation system, but it’s unclear where the money will come from. In the meantime, Gheskio’s center has saved many lives.
By uniquely combining patient care with on-site water treatment, Gheskio’s center also holds lessons for other regions struggling to contain cholera or facing it in the future. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates there are between 1.3 million and four million cases of cholera annually in 42 countries, with 21,000 to 143,000 cholera-related deaths each year. This year, Somalia saw a major resurgence of the disease, with over 50,000 people infected. About 1,000 died.
In the three years since Gheskio’s Cholera Treatment Center opened, the facility has remained in constant use because those outside the organization’s target area continue to be exposed to contaminated water. It has admitted over 10,000 patients to date, including over 7,000 who were hospitalized. Eighty-three percent of those patients came from outside of Gheskio’s catchment area.
While cholera reports in Haiti were on the rise in 2015 and 2016 at upward of 25,000 cases annually, the country saw a decrease in 2017, which Pape attributes to higher-than-normal rainfall in the region. Of the 100 beds, no more than a third were occupied at any time this year, with as few as a handful of patients at times. The risk for outbreaks remains high, however, and the disease’s countrywide eradication is still years away.
“Haiti’s recently elected government, and the president particular, is focused on universal oral cholera vaccine as well as home chlorination,” Pape reports. “If we get the vaccines and if we pursue home chlorination, I truly believe we can rid of cholera within four to five years.”
$4.7 Billion Chinese Development Project Advances in Haiti
The promised infrastructure seems almost too good to be true, but let’s hope that dreams can indeed come true for the Haitian people. China has made good on similar projects in its estimated Trillion dollar “Silk Road” initiative, not to mention 30 futuristic infrastructure projects in its own country. Perhaps the future has finally arrived for Haiti, and as a result the Caribbean corridor will be transformed.
In late July and early August of this year The Haitian Press Agency (AHP) reported that China would invest $30 billion. Bati Ayiti and its Chinese partners signed an agreement for the renovation of Port-au-Prince with the Municipality of Port-au-Prince.
Trump Thinks This Is Pro-Life?
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When President Trump and his (male) aides sit at a conference table deciding to cut off money to women’s health programs abroad, they call it a “pro-life” move.
Yet here in Haiti, I’ll tell you the result: Impoverished women suffer ghastly injuries and excruciating deaths. Washington’s new women’s health policies should be called “pro-death.”
When women and girls don’t have access to family planning and reproductive health care, they’re more likely to suffer pelvic organ prolapses, in which the bladder, uterus or bowel may protrude from the vagina. Or they suffer a fistula, a childbirth injury that leaves them leaking urine or feces, stinking and ostracized, and sometimes unable to walk. Women with prolapses or fistulas sit in their huts, humiliated, wondering if they are cursed, waiting to die.
In a room here in the Haitian capital, women with cervical and breast cancer wait for nurses to examine their ulcerated bodies. Beyond their almost unbearable physical pain is their mortification that they smell of rotting flesh, and in some cases incontinence. They are heroic in their quiet refusal to give up.
It’s not that these horrific conditions are caused by U.S. policy, but Trump is now halting all funds for many organizations working tirelessly to prevent this suffering. First came the “global gag rule,” ending funding to overseas health aid groups linked in some way to abortion, including counseling that mentions it as an option.
The latest is that Trump just cut every penny the U.S. provides the United Nations Population Fund. This organization has nothing to do with abortions but is a central player in the global effort to fight for women’s health.
“If the U.N. Population Fund has less money, more impoverished women in Haiti will die,” said Holdie Fleurilus, a nurse at Innovating Health International, which runs the cancer center I visited.
Across town, Dr. Raymond Fleurimon, the medical director of the Isaïe Jeanty Maternity Hospital, was equally blunt: “If U.N.F.P.A. is out of the game,” he said, using the initials of the fund’s old name, “this maternity ward will collapse, it’ll be completely dysfunctional, and more women will die.”
“What a nightmare,” warned Dr. Rahel Nardos, a women’s health expert, cautioning that less money for the fund meant more prolapses and fistulas.
Republicans pushed to cut off the money because they think the fund colludes with China’s government in forced abortions there. But I lived in China for years, reporting extensively on the subject — and the critics have it all wrong.
Yes, China has relied on forced sterilizations and forced abortions. The U.N. Population Fund initially was oblivious, and in 1983 it stupidly gave a gold medal to the Chinese official overseeing forced abortions. But that’s history, and for decades the fund has put strong pressure on China to end the coerced abortions.
Moreover, the fund persuaded China in 1992 to switch to a more effective IUD, averting half a million abortions a year. Over the years, that’s 12 million abortions the Population Fund has prevented there. Can any anti-abortion group match that?
Those affected by Trump’s cutoff of funds for women’s health are people like Darling Leonce, a pregnant 16-year-old I met when she showed up for a prenatal exam at a one-day clinic set up in a remote part of southeastern Haiti. The clinic was supported by the U.N. Population Fund, and it was the first interaction Darling had ever had with a doctor or nurse in her life.
Darling never went to school, can’t read or write, and had never heard of birth control. Yet here she received her first-ever physical exam and was encouraged to deliver in a hospital rather than in her village. A nurse coached her on breast-feeding, gave her prenatal vitamins and acquainted her with contraception.
“Choose your partner carefully, and don’t have a kid just because you have a boyfriend,” the nurse advised.
Politicians in Washington don’t have a clue about the hideous things that happen when women are marginalized and health care is unavailable. What the Population Fund does is help girls like Darling avoid unwanted pregnancies and the nightmare of a fistula, a prolapse or cancer. That’s why The Lancet medical journal called Trump’s cutoff of funds “misogyny.”
Oh, and on abortion — one more thing.
When contraception is unavailable, people find ways to get abortions even where it’s illegal, as it is here. On my way back to the capital from the one-day clinic, I stopped at a pharmacy in a small town and asked for misoprostol, an abortion drug. For $15, the sales clerk handed over more than enough pills for an abortion.
The birth control provided by the U.N. Population Fund averted more than 3.7 million abortions last year alone, health advocates say. So if you’re against abortion, you should support the U.N. Population Fund, not try to destroy it.
Yet a group of blundering men in the Trump administration posture as moral leaders, and the result is that women in places like Haiti will suffer fistulas, prolapses and agonizing deaths in childbirth or from cervical cancer. Some of these women will be humiliated by the failures of their flesh, but the real shame belongs to sanctimonious zealots in Washington who don’t have a clue what they’re doing.
And this is pro-life?
Nicholas Kristof | APRIL 22, 2017
UN votes to end Haiti peacekeeping mission in October
![The 13-year UN mission began when violence erupted after president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's departure [Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters]](http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2017/4/13/8a35e424c67040e0b2f3db1205c46a64_18.jpg)
The UN Security Council voted unanimously on Thursday to end its 13-year-long peacekeeping mission in Haiti and replace it with a smaller police.The move signals the international community believes the impoverished Caribbean nation is stabilising after successful elections.The peacekeeping mission - one of the longest-running in the world and known as MINUSTAH - has been dogged by controversy, including the introduction of cholera to the island by UN troops that killed thousands of Haitians, as well as sexual abuse claims against them.
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The 15-member Security Council acknowledged the completion of Haiti's presidential election, along with the inauguration of its new president, as a "major milestone towards stabilisation" in the Caribbean country."What we now need is a newly configured mission which is focused on the rule of law and human rights in Haiti," British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said."Peacekeepers do fantastic work but they are very expensive and they should be used only when needed," Rycroft said.The shutdown of the $346m mission, recommended by UN chief Antonio Guterres, comes as the United States looks to cut its funding of UN peacekeeping.The US is the largest contributor paying 28.5 percent of the total budget.Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said the decision to downsise may be because of American pressure to save money."The US has been demanding that the UN become leaner and meaner in its operation, and has at times threatened to withhold some of the massive funding that it gives the organisation," Hanna said.There are 2,342 UN troops in Haiti, who will withdraw over the coming six months.The new mission will be established for an initial six months, from October 16, 2017 to April 15, 2018, and is projected to exit two years after its establishment. It will be a police force of about 1,000 personnel.
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UN peacekeepers were deployed to Haiti in 2004 when an uprising led to the ouster and exile of then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It is the only UN peacekeeping mission in the Americas.Haiti suffered a two-year political crisis until the recent election and inauguration of President Jovenel Moise. It has suffered major natural disasters, including an earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Matthew last year.But the impoverished Caribbean country has not had an armed conflict in years.UN peacekeepers have been accused of sexual abuse and blamed for the cholera outbreak. Haiti was free of cholera until 2010, when peacekeepers dumped infected sewage into a river.The UN does not accept legal responsibility for the outbreak of the disease, which causes uncontrollable diarrhea. Some 9,300 people have died and more than 800,000 sickened.In late March, the council reduced the size of its peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, bringing the ceiling down from 19,815 troops to 16,215.Missions in Liberia and Ivory Coast are also set to end, while the joint UN-African Union peace operation in Sudan's Darfur region is also expected to be drawn down.http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/votes-haiti-peacekeeping-mission-october-170413162903710.html