Haiti to commemorate deadly quake in anger and bitterness
Haiti on Sunday will remember the thousands who died in the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, as grief mixes with anger and bitterness over failed reconstruction efforts and continuing political instability.
Port-au-Prince: Haiti on Sunday will remember the thousands who died in the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, as grief mixes with anger and bitterness over failed reconstruction efforts and continuing political instability.
More than a million and a half Haitians were left homeless, leaving island authorities and the international humanitarian community with a colossal challenge in a country lacking either a land registry or building rules. "It's a lost decade, totally lost," Haitian economist Kesner Pharel told AFP. "The capital has not been rebuilt, but our poor governance is not the exclusive responsibility of the local authorities; at the international level we have not seen a mechanism for managing aid that would allow the country to benefit."
The billions of dollars promised by international donors in the weeks after the catastrophe seem to have vanished with little to show for them,
"Ten years later, we see an even greater concentration of people in the metropolitan area,"
"The country was never rebuilt, and we're back to Square One." The quake destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, as well as administrative buildings and schools, not to mention 60 percent of Haiti's
"After the quake, we saw a big influx of trauma cases because there was an enormous number of injuries. What we see today is that we had to reopen a trauma
In the summer of 2018, corruption scandals implicating current President Jovenel Moise and every post-quake government provoked a sharp backlash, mobilizing young protesters -- more than half the country is younger than 30 -- who live with little prospect for employment in a country marked by growing insecurity amid frequent clashes between armed gangs. Anti-government demonstrations spread to cities across the country,
The state's weaknesses, on display for the world to see after the earthquake, have only grown worse: National Assembly elections due in November were simply not held, meaning the mandate of the lower chamber expires Monday. With no functioning legislature, President Moise, who is