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| The Secretary General visits many earthquake victims during his time in Haiti. Here he is talking to a disabled man who explains his difficult situation. Photo: Lisa Henry |
The earthquake in January struck right in the middle of Haiti’s capital Port au Prince. Over 200.000 people lost their lives under the rubble. 1,5 million were rendered homeless.
The 500.000 people who fled Port au Prince have now taken refuge with family and friends in the rural areas outside the capital. The rest live in more or less organized tent camps in the capital.
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| Rubble is everywhere in Haiti – and it’s a slow process to remove it. DCA’s Humanitarian Response Director, Lisa Henry, sees for herself the extent of the problem. Photo: Henrik Stubkjær |
1.300 camps have been established and in May the NGOs announced that now shelter has been provided for everyone. Since then an effort has been made to organize the camps better.
Sheets have been replaced with real tents or tarpaulins and an effort has been made to provide water supply to the camps.
Via the ACT Alliance we have provided over 50.000 people with water since then. We have now reached a delivery rate of 2 liters per person per day – which is still far below international standards, which say 15 liters per person per day. However, we are working on increasing the supply of clean drinking water for everyone.
Still far from standards
Furthermore, we have been very active in the work with sanitation. It has been estimated that 18.000 toilets need to be established for those people who have had to leave their destroyed houses. So far all in all 8.000 toilets have been mounted. Of the remaining 10.000 the ACT Alliance has committed to mounting 3.000 latrines over the next couple of months. This is something of a challenge.
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At the same time we are working with our partner to connect a biogas system to some of the toilets – a new and promising initiative.
According to international Sphere standards there has to be one toilet per 20 people. At the moment there is one toilet per 1.000 people, but we hope to reach our goal of one toilet per 200 over the next few months.
The rain is hard on temporary camps
We are also working on improving the temporary shelters. Some of the tents will not withstand the coming hurricane season. Therefore, we are constructing more robust houses with a hard roof. We expect to take part in the building of several thousand houses within the coming months.
The government is not efficient
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Another significant problem is the mental and emotional scars that many people experience. We have given psychosocial training and counseling to several thousands. Many are still afraid to sleep inside brick houses out of fear for a new earthquake. Therefore, they move the tents back to their land when the rubble has been removed.
It is also a big problem that the government is still not working efficiently. All of the government departments were hit hard by the earthquake. Furthermore, many things are still stuck in customs and it is not easy to get the authorization to remove the rubble.