Haiti remembers devastating quake: problems persist two years on

Jan 12, 2012, 21:04 GMT

Washington - Haiti remembered Thursday the quake that killed more than 222,000 of its citizens and left 1.5 million people homeless on January 12, 2010.

Two years after the natural disaster that ravaged the poor Caribbean nation, destroying even the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, calls for aid were renewed.

In Lemonade, Haiti, on Thursday, Haitian President Michel Martelly commemorated the anniversary in a ceremony with Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, according to the European PressPhoto Agency (epa).

The ceremony marked the donation by Dominican Republic - which shares the island of Hispanola with Haiti - of an entire university campus from Haiti's neighbour.

While there has been progress over the past two years in what was even before the quake the poorest country in the Americas, Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), recalled in Washington that half-a-million people are still living in camps in Haiti.

'To face this in a more effective way, I think all the interested parties, including NGOs and donors and international agencies, have to renew their commitment to coordinate and work with Haitian authorities,' he said.

Several international organizations have denounced in recent days that barely half of the 11 billion dollars that were pledged to Haiti for reconstruction have made it to the Caribbean country.

Moreover, an ongoing epidemic of cholera that broke out in late 2010 has made life even more difficult in Haiti in the wake of the quake, which measured 7.0 on the Richter scale. More than 7,000 people have died in the epidemic, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Wednesday.

PAHO experts noted that, without sufficient investment in infrastructures to improve water supply, sanitation and hygiene and gradually eradicate the cholera, reconstruction efforts to get over the quake may well prove futile.

Also on the anniversary, a report highlighted the impact of sexual exploitation on displaced Haitian women and girls.

'Displaced women and girls are being forced by circumstance into survival sex. It is an epidemic, but one that has gotten little attention from the Haitian government or international community,' said Marie Eramithe Delva, co-founder of the Haitian NGO Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV).

'Survival sex will not end until Haitian women and girls can access what they need to live,' said Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

She said Haitian women need economic opportunities and access to basic resources. 'The international community should work closely with the Haitian government to create jobs, extend microcredit to women and provide free education to all,' she said.

As he marked the anniversary, Insulza called for an assessment, led by Haitian authorities, of 'what has been achieved to date, where the new priorities are and what can be done better.'

The OAS further called for investment in Haiti.