Oh Yeah That: Haiti, Six Months Later

Six months later, what’s going on in Haiti?
• “With an estimated 1.5 million Haitians still homeless, presidential and legislative elections are set to be held on 28 November. “
• “Jean Renald Clerisme, the presidential adviser, says that in any case the Haitian government hasn’t received the money it was promised by the donors, which it would need to buy land and reconstruct. ‘At a big donors’ meeting in New York, we were promised $10bn (£6.64bn),’ he says. ‘But we haven’t received even 2% of this money — how do you explain that?’”
• “International donors who promised earthquake relief money to Haiti will be getting calls from former President Bill Clinton asking them to ante up. As the six month anniversary of the quake approaches, Clinton says donors have given only 10 percent of the aid they promised.”
• “There are currently 55,000 Haitians whose petitions to immigrate to the U.S. have been accepted but they are languishing on waiting lists dating back as far as 10 years.”
• “The government had appointed Gerard-Emile ‘Aby’ Brun, president of Nabatec Development, a consortium owned by some of Haiti’s most powerful families, to be in charge of relocating the squatter camps in Port-au-Prince. For that first relocation camp for 5,000 people, with clinics, food on premises and some electricity, he chose a piece of Corail-Cesselesse land owned by Nabatec. The company now stands to gain part of $7 million the government will spend compensating landowners. That’s just a small part of the potential payoff.”