by Sophie Broach:
In January 2010 the entire city of Port-au-Prince was destroyed in 90 seconds. When will Haiti rise from the rubble and return to its “normal” standards of living? Jessica Faieta, the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) senior country director for Haiti, discussed the country’s painful recovery process in a talk on Thursday. Haiti, she remarked, is “a country where we are in constant crisis from many different angles” and the earthquake was the “largest urban disaster we [the UNDP] have ever had to deal with.” This vulnerable nation—already ravaged by environmental degradation, institutional weakness, and rapid population growth—has been beset by a staggering number of severe natural disasters in recent years, a phenomenon that will likely worsen with climate change.
Today 1.3–1.5 million people in Haiti live in tents which have cost the UN roughly $80 million. Informal settlements covering 20% of the urban land in Port-au-Prince host 80% of the city’s population. In 2011 humanitarian assistance to Haitian camps will likely total nearly $1 billion, much of which will go towards managing waste and supplying water. Many survivors have access to services in these camps not available to them in their pre-earthquake neighborhoods. Paradoxically, the very assistance that ensures the survival of the displaced also provokes a sense of complacency that undermines the country’s journey to recovery. The lack of services, job opportunities, and places to live (22% of houses surveyed in the UNDP’s Structural Damage Report are beyond recovery) forces people to stay. “Many tents are turning into shacks,” Faieta gravely observed.
The ubiquitous rubble in Haiti keeps fresh the psychological wounds of the earthquake, and, Faieta asserts, is the greatest physical impediment preventing progress. With limited heavy equipment, much of this must be removed by hand. The UNDP has seen this huge task as an opportunity for job creation; debris can be recycled for construction purposes and moved to wire casings near rivers to prevent flooding, a project that has so far employed 200,000 people. The UNDP projects that four years and over $1 billion will be required to remove the 20 million cubic meters of wreckage. The question of who will foot the bill lingers unanswered. Faieta laments that large pledges from foreign countries have yet to arrive. In the meantime, people have been forced to rebuild from the debris themselves using the poor structural standards that predisposed Haiti to this widespread destruction in the first place.
Sophie Broach ’13 is a sophomore in Pierson College. Contact her at sophie.broach@yale.edu.