HAITI AFTER THE QUAKE
Worry, harsh words from U.S. on Haiti recovery
The chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee called on foreign donors to speak with one voice on Haiti and for President René Préval to show greater leadership.
JCHARLES@MIAMIHERALD.COM

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- More than five months after a devastating earthquake, there are worrisome signs that the massive rebuilding efforts have stalled, a strongly worded report by the chairman of the powerful U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee says.
Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., is calling on Haitian President René Préval to show greater leadership in Haiti's post-quake reconstruction and for international donors, including the United States, to improve coordination and speak with one voice.
``Key decisions remain in flux and critical humanitarian issues related to shelter and resettlement are not resolved,'' the report said.
The report, to be released Tuesday, also notes that fragmentation and lack of coordination among donors ``are undercutting recovery and rebuilding.''
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, who co-chairs the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, defended the government's handling of the crisis, saying that Préval's leadership has allowed for Haitians to remain united despite the challenges.
``We've kept a united nation during this period; that is leadership,'' he said.
And Bellerive said the government has a plan to rebuild the country.
``We know where we are going but no one is going to make us go any faster, or in a direction that doesn't benefit the Haitian people,'' he said.
The , 7.0-magnitude quake on Jan. 12 killed a government-estimated 300,000 Haitians, and 1.5 million people remain underneath tents and tarps in a country where a few days of rain could lead to deaths.
MOVING FASTER
It is the second time this month that an influential member of Congress has issued a report critical of Préval's lack of prioritization and decision-making.
Richard Lugar, R-Ind., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, earlier this month urged Préval to move faster to schedule presidential and parliamentary elections, or risk losing the confidence of the U.S. Congress.
Kerry and Lugar hold significant sway over U.S. efforts in Haiti, and can hold up funds to the embattled country if they're not satisfied with the pace of reconstruction. The United States is Haiti's biggest ally, and while support for Haiti remains on Capitol Hill, a $2.8 billon aid package the Obama administration is seeking remains stalled in Congress.
Foreign Affairs Committee staffers compiled the report after site visits and extensive interviews with those involved in Haiti's recovery.
It cites the lack of scaffolding on a crumbled presidential palace as emblematic that the rebuilding has stalled.
While the rebuilding must be Haitian-government led, the United States has to take an active role in the process, Kerry wrote.
The report cites 10 critical issues for Haiti's rebuilding that require urgent attention by the Haitian government and Obama administration. They include conflicting messages from donors to Préval, setting an election schedule and the lack of government guidance about its plans.
``The government has not done an effective job of communicating to Haitians that it is in charge and ready to lead the rebuilding effort,'' the report said. ``President Préval should take a more visible and active role, despite the difficulties confronting his government.''
Préval, who has relied on close supporters to lead the recovery and reconstruction, should make the rebuilding more inclusive and empower top lieutenants to make key decisions about land tenure, for instance, to relocate Haitians living in squalor camps, the report says.
U.N. CONCERN The U.S. Senate's reservations are echoed by others in the international community including the U.N. Security Council. Member states have expressed concerns about building materials being delayed and donors -- who pledged more than $5 billion over the next two years -- not fulfilling their pledges. At the same time, the international community appears poised for a showdown with Préval over presidential and parliamentary elections. Préval and the international community want to avoid an interim government after his term ends early next year. But two diplomats say their governments are growing increasingly frustrated and impatient with ``his disengagement.''
Préval has yet to formally set the elections date, and has refused repeated requests to revamp the beleaguered Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), which is responsible for carrying out elections. The credibility of the body is key to avoiding a boycott or another Haitian political crisis, top diplomats warned as late as last Thursday in a close-door meeting with Préval.
``The extraordinary challenges Haiti must face in the coming years demand responsive leadership, unwavering commitment and a clear vision,'' Lugar said in a statement.
``If elections are not held before President Préval's mandate expires, Haiti may be confronted by a vacuum of power at every level of its government. Haiti does not need to add a political crisis to the death and destruction caused by the Jan. 12 earthquake.''
Préval has countered that changing the CEP -- which would require groups to appoint members -- could invite spoilers from opponents who have been demanding his resignation and the move toward an interim government.
``What's important is that the Haitian people have an opportunity to go to the polls and make their choice,'' Préval told The Miami Herald.
But there is growing concern that a Haitian political crisis could derail U.S. efforts to help.
``Republicans and Democrats may disagree on many issues related to U.S. Haiti policy, but the importance of having fair, transparent and free elections is not one of them,'' said a top Republican aide.
Special correspondent Stewart Stogel at the United Nations contributed to this report.


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God help the people of Haiti because their tragedy will become greater still if the clowns don't get their acts together. The situation is one powerful Hurricane away from exploding. And then what? Massive infrastructure investments and labor intensive policies need to be put into action NOW! Not next year or two years from now.

Good point about hurricanes may be they are dragging their feet just for that reason

Police nab 30 in pre-dawn raid on Haiti quake camp
June 19, 2010Printby The Associated Press
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By JONATHAN M. KATZ
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti
U.N. and Haitian police raided a crowded earthquake survivor camp on Friday to capture 30 criminal suspects in the biggest law-enforcement operation since the Jan. 12 earthquake.
The pre-dawn raid startled the tens of thousands living under leaky plastic tarps around a monumental flagpole at Port-au-Prince's abandoned military airport. Most said they were grateful for the incursion, which they hope will reduce rampant crime in the burgeoning shantytown.
"They arrested people who are causing trouble. They're people who go into people's tents and tarps and take cell phones," said Relye Lima, a 24-year-old. "They are making sure people can sleep at night in peace."
The incursion was a response to rising insecurity at homeless settlements that are still swelling more than five months after the earthquake. The numbers of people streaming in in search of aid, unable to make rent in houses that are otherwise habitable, have swelled the camps to an estimated 1.5 million people.
Police swept through one of Port-au-Prince's largest and most crowded settlements, nicknamed "Jean-Marie Vincent" after a Roman Catholic priest gunned down in 1994. Since shortly after the quake, people have been adding permanent metal and wood elements to their tents, turning what was an empty field used for soccer games into a huge slum.
Brazilian soldiers with the 14,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force formed a perimeter around the camp shortly before dawn. Some 165 U.N. police and Haitian police, many in riot gear, then ran into the camp and began looking for suspects, U.N. police spokesman Jean-Francois Vezina said.
There were no reports of tear gas or gunshots being fired during the two-hour operation. Witnesses said the targeted men scrambled into whatever shelter they could find to hide from authorities.
"We had a lot of cooperation from the people inside the camp," Vezina said.
Jean Brunel, a 32-year-old who sells medication for a few cents a pill, said he was pleased.
"I wasn't able to work today (because of the raid), but I'm happy police are getting involved to provide security in the camp," he said.
One of the men captured is suspected of escaping Port-au-Prince's national penitentiary when a wall cracked during the magnitude-7 quake. All the inmates fled from the dangerously overcrowded prison, where the vast majority were held awaiting prosecution.
The 30 men arrested Friday are being held at a Port-au-Prince police station.

In Postquake Haiti, an Influx of Dominican Prostitutes
By JESSICA DESVARIEUX / PORT-AU-PRINCE Monday, Aug. 02, 2010



On any given Friday night, as you pass the gated nightclubs of the Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétionville, you will hear reggaeton and bachata — musical styles from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic respectively — blasting out into the streets. Inside the gentlemen-only clubs, cross-border commerce is taking place, but the trade is not in music but human flesh. The clients of these clubs — members of Haiti's elite and businessmen both local and foreign — can pay for sex with women from the country on the other side of the island of Hispaniola.
Sex workers have always traveled to Haiti from the Dominican Republic, but the astonishing thing is that even after Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, the network of prostitution continued to grow, according to a recent U.N. report. In fact, its expansion may have been encouraged by all the reports of overseas aid raised to help with disaster relief in Haiti. (In March, for example, an aid conference announced pledges totaling more than $5 billion.) Juanita, 22 (her name has been changed to protect her identity), says she decided to take a two-month contract to work in Port-au-Prince, leaving her hometown of Santiago de los Caballeros. A friend had convinced Juanita that she could make a sizable income because of the influx of foreigners and the huge amount of financial assistance headed toward Haiti. A June 2010 "Trafficking in Persons Report" by the U.S. State Department found forced prostitution of Dominican women in brothels in Haiti allegedly frequented by peacekeeprs in the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti. The U.N. forbids peacekeepers from patronizing brothels and is currently investigating the cases.
(See a TIME cover story on the global sex trade.)
Meanwhile, although Haitian prostitution does exist, Dominican prostitutes have a certain cultural cachet, supposedly because of their more racially mixed appearance — a factor that makes them more desirable to Haitian men who are willing to pay more for their services.
"But there wasn't a lot of money," Juanita says of her experience. (Indeed, in the larger perspective, of the billions of dollars pledged by donors, perhaps only 2% has actually reached Haiti.) Customers ordinarily pay $150 a night. She (and her pimp) would keep two-thirds, with the rest going to the club owner. However, after room and board, Juanita says she rarely has enough to send back to her 2-year-old son in the Dominican Republic. She also says the living conditions are cramped, with 25 women sharing one room. She says she often has to sleep with three women in a single bed. "More and more keep coming to the club every day."
(See why human trafficking rises during recessions.)
Juanita says when she first arrived she had thought of running away since she felt unsafe and overworked by her Haitian pimp. She says he would take her at night to stake out casinos and restaurants, and on the weekend go to the beach to find customers. She says she was tempted to leave, especially after a few of the girls she crossed the border with found a way back home.
Many of the Dominican women in the same situation feel trapped. Maribel, 25 (her name has also been changed to protect her identity), says when she arrived in Haiti her employers "told me I would work at a bar as a waitress, not that I would be doing this kind of work. I don't like it here, and I miss home. But I don't have a choice." Often, Dominican women's passports are confiscated by their employers when they arrive in Haiti. Maribel says she was told that she wouldn't be able to return until she finished at least a month of her contract. And then there is the threat of violence, says Luis CdeBaca, the U.S. State Department ambassador at large with the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, referring to reports of women threatened by pimps to make them work and incidents of physical abuse.
CdeBaca adds that although prostitution is illegal in Haiti, it's often difficult to prosecute offenders. "Haiti doesn't have a law to prosecute people. That's a big gap in the penal code," says CdeBaca. He recommends tighter control of the Dominican-Haitian border on both sides as a solution.
Dominican women rank fourth in the world — behind women from Thailand, Brazil and the Philippines — in the number of prostitutes working abroad, according to a report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Zoe Stopak-Behr, an IOM operations official in the Dominican Republic, says the typical trafficked Dominican woman is under the age of 25 with a low level of education and low socioeconomic status yet carrying the economic burden of her family. "In many cases the victims have been lured by attractive offers of high-income employment and find themselves in a trafficking situation upon arrival," says Stopak-Behr.
Maribel made her way back to the Dominican Republic with the help of a benefactor who paid the rest of her contract. But Juanita says she's looking to stay until her contract expires in a month. She feels that she knows how to leave if she decides to: "Many of the girls don't realize that they could just go to the [Dominican] embassy and leave." "No one in my family knows I'm here," Juanita says. "I hope I can save enough money to give my son a better life."


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Katrina Adams
" There is a difference between a dominican woman who came over to prostitute herself for money and a dominican woman who was tricked into prostitution with a different job often. Especially since it is common for women who are looking for work to be dragged into sex trafficing through false ads. Even if Maribel was released after a month, it would have been a month of being raped repeatedly since Maribel didn't consent to selling herself. Maribel was a victim of sex trafficing and was never in the same situation as Juanta. Juanta knew from the start that she was going to be a prostitute and decided she was going to stay for the full term of her contract. This article could have made better distictions between women desperate for money to keep their families alive and women held against their will by sex trafficers.
However, I have no problem admitting the article does more good than harm by bringing up the fact that some volunteer are the ones who pay for prostitutes. Some articles are so focused on the men native to an area supporting prostitution that foreign costumers are not mentioned. Considering that the foriegners as examples were aides in a time of disaster, they should have been aware of sex trafficing and refuse to support it even by accident. "

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Post-quake Haiti: A sex trafficking hot spot
The promise of billions in aid has lured Dominican prostitutes to the country -- and into forced labor
BY TRACY CLARK-FLORY

AP
Women walk in the rain in a camp for Hatians displaced by the earthquake
In the wake of a catastrophe that leaves people fighting for food and shelter, you wouldn't expect there to be a market for prostitution. But the influx of foreign aid (or at least the promise of it) has served as a beacon of hope, drawing a growing number of Dominican women to the quake-ravaged country in search of sex work, Time magazine reports today. There is the lure not only of the pledged $5 billion in donations -- some 2 percent of which has actually made it to the country -- but also the flood of cash-strapped foreign aid workers. It seems desperation feeds on desperation.

It also creates yet more desperation: Not only have these imported sex workers found that business isn't exactly booming, but many have also had their passports confiscated by pimps who threaten them with violence and prevent them from returning home. Time reports that a U.S. State Department report even "found forced prostitution of Dominican women in brothels in Haiti allegedly frequented by peacekeepers in the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti." That isn't to mention the uptick in prostitution and sex trafficking among actual Haitians (or, more generally, the increase in sexual harassment, rape and violence against women in the country).

As I wrote earlier this year, even before the earthquake Haiti was considered a "special case" in the war on sex trafficking -- and it's only becoming more so every day.

Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter. More Tracy Clark-Flory