Third RNDDH report on the general situation of the country after the earthquake of 12 January 2010

Hundreds of thousands of people are still under tents, tarpaulins and rags four months on, and the report treats that as the measure of every announcement made since January. It opens on the environment: tree cover was estimated at two per cent in 2009, displaced people in the sites the network visited at Jacmel, Léogâne and elsewhere in the Ouest cook with wood or charcoal every day, and no serious clearing of drains, sewers or ravines was done before a rainy season that had already killed in the Nippes and the Sud between 27 February and 7 March. The earthquake was not foreseeable; the rains were.

It then examines the camps and the conditions under which people were moved, taking Corail Cesselesse and the old airfield in turn, the situation of disabled people, the assessment of buildings, the coordination of humanitarian aid, the high-intensity labour programme, the United Nations summit on Haiti, the law of 19 April 2010 amending the state of emergency law of 9 September 2008, the police, the prison service, the condition of people deprived of liberty including the Port-au-Prince civil prison and the Petit-Goâve police station, insecurity and gender-based violence, the courts, the resumption of schooling and the promises made by visiting dignitaries. The recommendations are for an effective environmental policy with a ban on tree-cutting and charcoal sales and a brigade to enforce it, a rethink of relocation with hard shelters in place of tents, demolition of leaning buildings, explicit attention to disabled people in every intervention and by the international agencies, a new orientation for the cash-for-work programme, setting aside the amended emergency law and revisiting the creation of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, judicial follow-up on the prison escapes, and support for lay schools trying to reopen.