Haiti’s relief paths far from smooth
U.N. envoy says need calls for ‘international A-team’
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Hundreds of thousands of people still need food and shelter, all schools remain closed, and efforts have intensified to protect children from human trafficking in post-earthquake Haiti.
Meantime, a U.N. official addressing the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., on Thursday said more than 75 percent of Haiti’s capital will have to be rebuilt.
“We need the international A-team on this,” Paul Farmer, the U.N.’s deputy special envoy to Haiti, told the Senate committee.
In the short-term, Farmer said, Haitians need more relief than their quake-hobbled country can process.
“We must hasten our efforts to get tents, tarpaulins and latrines or composting toilets to Haiti,” Farmer said.
The massive relief effort has been hampered from the start, though, by logistical problems and poor coordination between the Haitian government and the 109 nations and more than 500 international humanitarian agencies working in the country.
Haitian leaders frustrated with the slow pace of aid began buying and distributing food themselves this week.
The U.N.’s World Food Program estimates that 2 million people need nourishment, but the agency has been able to feed only about 460,000 people to date.
U.S. military leaders said on Thursday that Haiti’s ability to absorb massive relief shipments will increase in the coming weeks.
“We’re still not up to meeting the needs of the Haitian people as far as the amount of supplies that are there,” Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of the U.S. Southern Command, said in a news conference.
Fraser said the capital’s south pier – the fastest route for moving large amounts food, shelter and medical supplies – will not be repaired for another two months.
But a U.S. military force of more than 20,000 troops and 23 ships with helicopters, beach-landing craft and bridge connectors have been moving about 200 containers a day through the port.
By next week, Fraser said, the port should be able to move 500 containers a day.
Meantime, the Haitian government reports that 112,392 have died and 196,501 people have been injured by the 7.0-magnitude quake that struck on Jan. 12. The U.S. State Department said 76 Americans are confirmed dead.
Haitian government officials said more than 260,000 people have migrated from the capital and other quake-damaged areas to cities in the north and west. The number of people made homeless by the quake is estimated between 800,000 and 1 million.