26 May IDP camps in Haiti

With hurricane season right around the corner, concerns over the living arrangements of Haitians should be reaching something akin to a fever-pitch, and yet, there hasn’t been much said (or done) about the 1,000 IDP camps still peppering the country. That is, until a few days ago with the news that Haitian police were sent in to clear out three camps on public property in Delmas. Haitian police violently ripped through the camps, tearing up tents and beating people as they tried to protect their belongings.

The number of Haitians living in IDP camps has been dropping in the past several months – down from 1.3 million this time last year to <800,000 (or even 600,000 according to some estimates) – not because of increased housing options or even successes in the Camp Coordination and Camp Management Cluster (CCCM) in Haiti, but because of forced displacement off of private lands. The use of police to displace people from public land earlier this week, however, is a new turn in events, and one that several Congresspersons, including Maxine Waters (CA) responded to with outrage.

In the meantime, the GAO has condemned the lack of inclusion or even consideration of the wishes of the Haitian people within the workings of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC), who, led by Bill Clinton and Jean-Max Bellerive, hold economic and administrative control over Haiti’s reconstruction until October 2011. “Condemned” might be a strong word…but the rather lengthy report does question the slow and disorganized progress being made.

Meanwhile, in Haiti, Daniel-Gérard Rouzier, who is rumored to be set for nomination for Prime Minister, is pushing for the 27-member IHRC to relinquish control to a new government agency due to its severe “dysfunction.” Deeply conservative, both economically and religiously, highly-educated (at Dartmouth and Georgetown), and with a history of ties to the Duvalier regime (his father, Gérard Raoul Rouzier was the Minister of Sports under Jean-Claude Duvalier), Rouzier comes as a highly-polished package, well-suited to American interests in Haiti. He currently sits on the boards of the Haitian investment bank PromoCapital, the Haitian Finance Company for Development (SOFIHDES), and the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti. He is also the chairman of the World Bank-financed 30-megawatt power plant in Cité Soleil. I’m not sure he’s the best-suited to be heading whatever governmental organization he’s thinking of creating – much less of taking Jean-Max Bellerive’s place on the IHRC at the end of his term.

As a last word, the GAO report’s that USAID’s “solution” to the IDP population concern: spending $48.3 million to “Encourage people to move out of camps to new communities or back to their neighborhoods, and to revitalize priority public spaces.” In the meantime, USAID has constructed 18,000 transitional shelters, capable of housing 90,000 people and helped to assess and repair earthquake-damaged buildings leading to accommodation for another 3,900 households.