Recovery in Haiti – one year after the earthquake

The Haitian National Palace shows heavy damage...

Image via Wikipedia

Jan. 7th,Still Shaky; A Year After the Earthquake in Haiti, the Key to Stability Is to Build the State. RAND report, Jan. 7, 2011. This short report focuses on the public administration of recovery, which is a very crucial issue in Haiti.

This is one of several articles that appeared today covering the non-recovery story in Haiti. One article cited Oxfam, the British Non-Governmental Organization, and criticized President Bill Clinton for some of the problems. The Oxfam website has an article critical of the Haitian authorities. Clearly there is lots of blame for all major parties involved.  Below is an article from The Economist (Jan. 6, 2011) titled  The year of surviving in squalor.

Even allowing for some unique difficulties, the efforts of the government and outsiders to rebuild have been disappointing. But when visiting journalists parachute in to Port-au-Prince for the anniversary of the earthquake, they will see few signs of progress and many of stasis. Rubble still blocks many streets. Even if the work of removing it goes according to the official schedule, less than half will be cleared by October. Only about 30,000 temporary shelters have been built. The National Palace, the emblem of Haitian sovereignty, has yet to be demolished, let alone rebuilt. The tent camps that dot the city look ever-shabbier, and their inhabitants thinner and more bedraggled.

This landscape of neglect and degradation mocks the widespread hope in the weeks after the quake that Haiti could “build back better,” as Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy to the country, put it. The government’s promising reconstruction plan, unveiled at a donor conference in March, envisioned moving many people outside the swollen capital and injecting economic life into rural areas, as well as rebuilding Port-au-Prince.

The net outcome  has been a miserable year for Haitian victims.

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