Moontown

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) – Haiti’s earthquake victims are still reliving the horror of the January 12 disaster, and the trauma is forcing out suppressed memories of rape and years of domestic abuse.

At the front-line of the battle to stitch up the emotional scars of a shattered Port-au-Prince populace, the impressive 28-year old Haitian psychologist Djenane Marhlen Jean Charles sets about mending tortured minds.

A Haitian teacher works with children traumatized by the January 12 earthquke under a tent in Petion-ville, Haiti. AFP PHOTO

Calm and professional, she runs a team of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) trauma specialists at a tent city for more than 40,000 quake survivors that has sprung up at the Petionville Golf Club.

“A lot of people are anxious and frightened of reliving the earthquake. They have physical complaints, headaches, palpitations, stomach cramps,” Jean Charles told AFP.

“People who lost family or friends feel guilty because they didn’t die with their relatives or they didn’t do enough to save them. A lot of them didn’t see the bodies of their dead relatives so it’s difficult for them to get over it.”

Many are overwhelmed by their surreal post-quake existence, they have lost everything, they are uncertain about the future, they have no idea how long they can stay at the camp, they don’t know how to cope.

“They feel completely lost in this situation and it takes time to work with them so they can get over it and see the light again,” explained Jean Charles.

The camp is at high-risk from floods as the rainy season approaches and the United Nations is trying to get people to move back to their homes or relocate to safer sites in and around the capital.

The UN may be providing people with options, but Jean Charles said the majority of survivors feel helpless, lack initiative and are waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

“The people don’t know what will happen to them, they have not been informed if they can stay or not, if they will be displaced or not.”

There is increasing concern about rape in the camps and human rights group Amnesty International published a stark assessment this week, saying thousands of women were being abused.

“Sexual violence is widely present in camps where some of Haiti’s most vulnerable live,” said researcher Chiara Liguori.

“It was already a major concern in the country before the earthquake but the situation in which displaced people are living exposes women and girls to even greater risks.”

Jean Charles knew of only one rape at the Petionville Golf Club, but said many young women had suffered domestic violence within their families for years.

One girl broke down during counseling as she recounted how she had been raped, abused and hit for years before the quake by family members.

“She came back a second time and gave feedback from the first session, saying she was very grateful and relieved that she could finally speak with somebody. She is still coming,” said Jean Charles.

“I am used to seeing victims of sexual violence. It’s important to give them space so that they can speak and so that there is somebody who is not judging them so they feel comfortable.”

MSF teams have started going around the camps with loud-hailers and placards to summon people to tent sessions where they can share their experiences.

At an MSF-run hospital in the Cite Soleil slum, 33-year-old psychologist Katarina Brock said a lot of people were coming and more and more survivors were willing to talk.

“It’s very good that people are willing to share their experience, especially in groups,” said Brock. “Others have been in a similar situation and they can share different ideas on how to cope and what you can do.

“If they are having nightmares of flashbacks, they are just normal reactions to what they’ve been through, and to hear others that have the same problems, it helps them realize it’s not just me that’s crazy.”

The head of the criminal intelligence unit for the UN police, Michel Martin, said it was extremely difficult to clamp down on abuse in the camps.

“This is a very unique, particular situation where you have thousands of people camping in an area where it is difficult to move around. You’ve got ropes, you’ve got poles. At night, especially, it is very, very difficult.”

At the Petionville Golf Club, Jean Charles prepared her team for the next round of patients, smiling as she said that despite all the nightmares there was still hope.

“There is the dream that there will be a new Haiti, that all Haiti’s problems will be resolved, with good schools, without violence, with basic social services.” (Caribnet)

Edwin Carrington, CARICOM Secretary General

He was speaking at a Discussion Forum hosted by the CARICOM Secretariat on Friday 26 March, to bring into focus, key components of the Report of CARICOM Commission on Youth Development (CCYD), as well as significant outcomes of the CARICOM Heads of Government Summit on Youth Development, held in Suriname, January 2010. Representatives of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States also participated via video conference form Saint Lucia.

Carrington said the Report of the CCYP discussed in the context of the Summit on Youth Development, among officials, Ministers of Governments and CARICOM Heads of Government, provided “clear indications of the serious intentions of the Community to place issues relating to youth and development as priorities on national and regional agendas.”

The CARICOM Heads of Government, in July 2006, had mandated the CCYD to conduct a full scale analysis of the challenges and opportunities for youth in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) and to make recommendations on how best to empower them and improve their well-being.

Carrington said at the time that the mandate was issued, Heads of Government were concerned about increasing levels of youth risk and vulnerability and a deteriorating social and economic environment in which young people were being nurtured in the Caribbean.

“They believed that young people, the main beneficiaries of the integration process including the CSME, should possess that sense of citizenship, pride and regional unity which is critical to the achievement of the goals of regional integration and development process,” he said.

The Secretary-General said that the impetus which drove the CARICOM Heads of Government mandate to the CCYD was the concern about high levels of youth marginalisation, exclusion, alienation and extra-regional migration as well as a decline in the numbers graduating from secondary and tertiary education, particularly among males.

“The significance of the loss of an extraordinary proportion of trained professionals and other highly skilled labour - as high as 80 percent in some cases - is untenable and has to be addressed,” he added.

Against that backdrop, he said that the CARICOM Heads of Government were looking to the Commission to provide the baseline data and recommendations to enable Member States to design and implement targeted programmes in response to youth issues, concerns and proposals and to equip the youth population with knowledge, skills, attitudes and competencies appropriate to the demands of globalization and of community, national and regional development.

After three years of concentrated research, the CCYD’s presented its report: Eye on the Future: Invest in YOUTH NOW for the Community Tomorrow, to the Conference of CARICOM Heads of Government at the Summit on Youth Development in Paramaribo, Suriname.

Describing that development to highlight the challenges and opportunities for youth in the CSME as a catalyst for action, the Secretary-General stated that it may prove to be one of the “most significant events in the history of the Community.”

He sounded a call to youth, particularly those involved in National Youth Movements and in the CARICOM Youth Ambassador Corps, to continue to make their voices heard in support of mainstreaming the recommendations of the CCYD’s report into policies and programmes intended to benefit youth.

Friday’s Discussion Forum featured presentations of the key components of the CCYD’s report by Yldiz Beighle, Co-Chair, CCYD and herwin Bridgewater, Project Officer, CCYD and a discussion facilitated by Edward Greene, Assistant Secretary-General Human and Social Development, among staff of the CARICOM Secretariat, Ambassadors Accredited to CARICOM, Members of the Diplomatic Corps in Guyana and officials of the Government of Guyana.

Special invitee to the Forum, Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba, Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Secretariat in her remarks noted that the issues highlighted in the CCYD’s report were not peculiar to the Caribbean Region, but were also evident in other parts of the Commonwealth. Ambassador Masire-Mwamba said that with the full scale analysis on challenges and opportunities for Youth in the CARICOM Region, the Community would be seen as a model in advancing recommendations for the development and empowerment of youth beyond the Caribbean Community. (Caribnet)

PORT-AU-PRINCE,
Haiti (Reuters) — Haitians say their most pressing needs in the wake
of the destruction caused by the Jan. 12 earthquake are jobs, schools
and homes, according to a survey released by international relief agency
Oxfam.

Oxfam, one of hundreds of aid groups helping Haiti in
the wake of the catastrophic quake, issued the survey results ahead of a
conference of donors in New York on Wednesday that will pledge funds
for the reconstruction of the country.

The survey showed that of
more than 1,700 Haitians polled between March 9-12, 26 percent rated
jobs as their top need, followed by schools (22 percent) and homes (10
percent).

Next ranked were support for local production (8
percent), the environment (6 percent) and security (5.5 percent).

The
study was carried out by an independent Haitian polling consultant
funded by Oxfam, and it covered people in various neighborhoods of the
wrecked capital Port-au-Prince, and in the town of Leogane, which was
also devastated by the disaster.

“The survey shows that the
people want jobs, they want education, they want shelter, but they also
want local food production, so they want all things that help them to
move ahead,” Marcel Stoessel, Chief of Mission for Oxfam International
in Haiti, told Reuters.

“They don’t want charity, they are not
just waiting for the New York conference … they are ready now to move
ahead themselves,” added Stoessel, speaking at a quake survivors camp in
the capital’s badly damaged Carrefour-Feuille district.

The
United Nations-organized donors conference is due to commit financing
for Haiti’s reconstruction after the quake in response to a Haitian
government assessment that estimates the country’s recovery needs at
$11.5 billion.

Haitian Finance Minister Ronald Baudin told
Reuters earlier on Monday his country expected a “massive” donors’
response.

He said the government was hoping to obtain
commitments from donors totaling just over $4 billion for a three-year
period, $1.3 billion to be delivered in the first 18 months.

The
quake, described by some experts as the deadliest natural disaster of
modern times, destroyed scores of government buildings, hundreds of
businesses, schools and hospitals and thousands of homes, leaving more
than a million people camped out in streets and open spaces.

More
than 300,000 people may have died.

In a column published in the
Washington Post on Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the
New York conference “a mission to offer (and deliver) hope”.

A
draft of the final statement for Wednesday’s conference, obtained by
Reuters, refers to the need to finance continued humanitarian
assistance, particularly to urgently provide adequate shelter for the
hundreds of thousands of quake homeless with the approach of rains and
the hurricane season.

Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam
GB, said in a visit to Port-au-Prince that donors should not lose sight
of the short-term emergency needs.

“Clearly you can see from
where I’m standing that the places people are living in are really
pretty poor, so there’s got to be a lot of work on that,” she said,
gesturing to the tent shelters housing quake survivors in
Carrefour-Feuille.

“But we need to start moving in
reconstruction right from now,” Stocking added.

The draft
conference statement says agriculture also requires special emphasis, to
support both food security for Haiti and the goal of fostering
development outside the crowded and wrecked capital, to ease the
congestion pressures there.

“All (participants) agreed on the
importance of businesses, both in Haiti and other countries, to catalyze
sustainable economic development in Haiti. The people of Haiti need
jobs,” the draft final statement reads.

It also foresees
participants agreeing “on the extraordinary need for budget support to
the Haitian government to help finance such critical expenses as the
salaries of policemen and civil servants and the operation of schools
and hospitals.”

“For Haiti, real hope begins this Wednesday,”
Ban wrote in the Washington Post column. (Caribnet)

Speaking to members of the sector during the announcement of finalists for the Tourism Service Excellence Programme (TSEP) 2009 recently, Tourism Minister, Edmund Bartlett said that this had been the best winter season Jamaica has ever had.

Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett

“To date, we are on the edge of 600,000 visitors into the country since the 15th of December, a record that has never happened before and we are looking to the end of the season to be somewhere close to 700,000,” he stated. The winter tourist season ends on April 15.

Bartlett credited much of this success to the aggressive marketing strategies employed by his team, praising them for their hard work over the last few months.

He also pointed to the air service agreement with American Airlines, which guaranteed airlift to Jamaica, as a successful venture.

He said the world was changing and that the rest of the Caribbean must follow suit in order to stay on top. “We went after those gateways to restore them, to ensure that we didn’t lose the traffic out of those gateways and indeed to even expand on it. The result is we didn’t lose, we gained and Jamaica is better off for it,” he argued.

“We were able to get one million seats for this winter and by virtue of that level of connectivity from the destinations around the world, we are able to be boasting these kinds of numbers now,” he added.

The Tourism Minister said that compared to several other Caribbean destinations, which have spent close to US$30 million to US$40 million to procure air services to their destinations, Jamaica has only spent a little over US$2 million “and the result is that we grew and the rest of the Caribbean is in deficit today.”

“We have gotten growth out of the United States when that market contracted by 20 per cent last year – Jamaica was the only country that grew and we grew by two per cent,” he informed.

In the meantime, some 28 individuals and organisations were selected for the finals of the TSEP award in recognition of their outstanding customer service and contribution to the tourism sector. The winners for both categories will be announced on May 1. (Caribnet)

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — Donor countries will be asked this week to pledge around 3.8 billion dollars to fund Haiti’s ambitious reconstruction program from a devastating earthquake, UN officials said Monday.

More than 100 countries will be represented Wednesday at the “International Donors Conference Towards a New Future for Haiti.”

It is to be chaired by Haitian President Rene Preval, with UN chief Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton serving as co-hosts.

Organizers see the gathering as crucial to helping the devastated Caribbean country — already the poorest in the Americas before the quake — “build back better” after the January 12 temblor leveled parts of its capital Port-au-Prince, killing at least 220,000 people and leaving 1.3 million homeless.

“For the next 18 months, Haiti will need investment of four billion dollars to build back hospitals, schools, roads and ports but also redesign the country in a way that would put the country on the road to growth and modernization,” Edmond Mulet, the acting UN special envoy to Haiti, told a press conference here.

More funds will be needed after that period, he added, to support the Haitian government’s “vast and ambitious agenda for the country’s reconstruction and renewal.”

And Helen Clark, the administrator for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), told reporters that the conference aims “to raise around 3.8 billion dollars for the next 18 months or so.”

The amount would represent a first installment on the estimated 11.5 billion dollars in aid needed for reconstruction over 10 years following an unprecedented disaster that caused nearly eight billion dollars of damage, equivalent to 120 percent of Haiti’s GDP.

Clark said the 3.8-billion-dollar figure came out of a post-disaster need assessment launched in February by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, with the backing of the United Nations, the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank.

She added that Bellerive would use the conference to unveil a “plan of action for national recovery and development” aimed at turning “what has been an unspeakable tragedy into an opportunity to build back better for Haiti and its people.”

Priority would go to rebuilding destroyed government institutions and infrastructure, including the presidential palace, parliament, the main court house, ministries, 1300 educational institutions and 50 hospital and health centers.

The funds would also be used to restore the agricultural sector, protect vulnerable populations from the coming rainy and hurricane season and to decentralize economic development and social infrastructure.

Almost 11 weeks after the 7.0-magnitude quake, progress is painfully slow and the government and international aid groups are racing against time to relocate more than 200,000 people in high-risk camps ahead of the coming hurricane season.

Jordan Ryan, head of UNDP’s crisis prevention and recovery, told AFP Friday that “we think it (the conference) will be well attended. Over 100 countries, maybe more, will be represented.”

The pledging conference, which had been decided at a donors’ meeting held in Montreal on January 25, will kick off with addresses by Preval, Ban and Hillary Clinton.

Other key participants will include, in addition to Mulet and Clark, UN special envoy for Haiti Bill Clinton, the former US president, and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Khan.

Brazil, Canada, the European Union, France and Spain, all leading donors to Haiti, will also serve as co-chairs.

Several non-governmental organizations and representatives of Haiti’s large diaspora will also take part and offer recommendations.

More than three million Haitians live outside their homeland, mainly in the United States, Canada, the Dominican Republic, other Caribbean countries and France. (Caribnet)