The Philippine Online Chronicles

Haiti is troubled in more ways than one.

Until the fateful afternoon of January 12, 2010, Haiti was supposedly progressing on small steps toward stability and living the democracy that it has struggled for centuries to claim.

According to the January 21 report of the United States Institute of Peace, Haiti had a “rare period of relative tranquility and progress” eight months after a conference held among more than 200 delegates from different countries, international organizations, non-government organizations, and private sectors, aiming to push forth measures for the Caribbean country’s long-hampered political and economic progress.

Kidnapping and violent crime rates relatively dropped, “investors responded to trade incentives for textile and apparel exports, and the annual economic growth rate turned positive.” It was also reported that United Nations (UN) Special Envoy Bill Clinton led two successful business delegations to the country and its annual economic growth rate turned positive. Moreover, hurricanes passed without records of damage.

Things were going relatively well—that is, until a 7.0-magnitude earthquake shattered buildings, roads, lives, and the path to sustainable stability and development. The capital city of Port-au-Prince was reduced to rubble and around 200,000 people died, including UN peacekeepers who were trapped in their headquarters. UN peacekeeping mission head Hédi Annabi and three women’s right movement leaders, Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin, and Anne Marie Coriolan were among those who perished. For Haitian women who had been treated as second-class citizens, the death of these advocates came as a big blow.

Corpses no longer received ceremonious burial; instead they were burned in a mass pit. The UN estimated that three million people were affected, leaving 300,000 Haitians homeless and susceptible to abuse and infections, specifically tuberculosis and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), in cramped camps. Hundreds of thousands of people were driven to put up cardboard and tarpaulin shelters and live in tent cities for fear of aftershocks or stronger tremors. The smell of death was all over “the Western hemisphere’s poorest country.”

Current reports

International humanitarian aid came pouring into the capital: feeding programs, bottled waters, hygiene supplies and medical assistance, all provided by various organizations.

The coupon-based system of handing out food rations yielded positive results as to the order of distribution. The New York Times reported about 1,650 bags of 25-kg rice handed out by January 31 without incidents of chaos.

Peter Nutall of the World Concern aid group expressed high hopes that “the situation will calm when word gets out that if you get a ticket, you get food.”

According to Catholic Relief Services spokesman and logistics coordinator Jacques Montouroy, the ticketing system was a way of instilling discipline among the quake survivors, “for food to trickle down to everybody.”

The method prioritizes giving the rice only to women who had been given coupons by relief workers. This is to assure that the foods are actually extended to their families and not re-sold.

“We've targeted the women because we think it’s the best way to get to families...In other distributions when we've opened it up to men, we found that only half of the men would do what they were supposed to with the food,” Montouroy added.

But reports of  protests and frustrations continue to surface as red tape, bribery, and abuse of women contaminate the efforts to alleviate the plight of the Haitians.

Hungry and angry protesters lined an avenue in the Petionville suburb of Port-au-Prince and revealed that food supply was being hampered by  local officials who impose a tag on the coupons that entitle them to bags of food supplies. Their only means of claiming what was rightfully theirs was waving branches and chanting “They stole our food!” or a more famished cry of “Help us, we’re starving.”

“For us to get the coupon, we must give 50 Haitian dollars (PhP 330) so we can get the rice,” a  17-year-old protester told the Associated Press (AP).

Aside from corruption, women who were entrusted with food relief also face intimidation and threats of  sexual abuse. With tents as their sole shelter from weather and other physical threats, they barely catch sleep or ever sleep at all. They have to stay vigilant to ward off sexual attacks and theft from roaming gangs of men.

“Some of the men who escaped from prison are coming around to the camps and causing problems for the women. We're all scared but what can we do? Many of our husbands, boyfriends and fathers are dead,” AP quoted a 22-year-old mother protecting her family with a machete tucked underneath her mattress.

Another mother related her helplessness, “At 4 a.m. we were coming and a group of men came out from an alley...They came out with knives and said, 'Give me your coupons.' We were obliged to give them. Now we have nothing—no coupons and no food.”

Haitian government communications minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue admitted to the government’s incapability to address these problems since the government “was pressed to prioritize food, shelter, and debris-removal.”

Furthermore, armed men were also reported to have attempted hijacking a convoy of food for the victims. The growing frustration stemmed from the seemingly slow pace of relief supplies weeks after the devastation. Some have resorted to looting their neighbors.

The US Institute of Peace concluded that the prevailing hostility in Haiti can be traced from its geological and social fray. “The combination of poverty, poor governance, absence of rule of law, and ubiquitous social exclusion left Haiti extremely vulnerable.”

Many also expressed anger and too much discontent toward Haiti President Rene Preval, to the point of  calling for the return of ousted and exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and even of the father-and-son era of terror by Francis “Papa Doc” Duvalier and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

Hopes for change with the installation of Aristide was short-lived, since the former slum priest was overthrown on charges of corruption and extra-judicial killings.

Aristide was replaced in 2006 by his ally Preval, who is being blamed for the weak coordination of reliefs for the Haitians when he suddenly fled after the National Palace crumbled in the January 12 earthquake.

“He came Saturday and just left...He’s nowhere to be seen at first and then leaves when things get hot,” lamented a young man camping across what was left of the seat of Haiti’s government.

Photo: "Haiti Earthquake" by United Nations Development Program, c/o Flickr. Some rights reserved.