Haiti: The year of surviving in squalor

Even allowing for some unique difficulties, the efforts of the government and outsiders to rebuild have been disappointing
The Economist
Jan 6th 2011

Excerpt:
But when visiting journalists parachute in to Port-au-Prince for the anniversary of the earthquake, they will see few signs of progress and many of stasis. Rubble still blocks many streets. Even if the work of removing it goes according to the official schedule, less than half will be cleared by October. Only about 30,000 temporary shelters have been built. The National Palace, the emblem of Haitian sovereignty, has yet to be demolished, let alone rebuilt. The tent camps that dot the city look ever-shabbier, and their inhabitants thinner and more bedraggled.

This landscape of neglect and degradation mocks the widespread hope in the weeks after the quake that Haiti could “build back better,” as Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy to the country, put it. The government’s promising reconstruction plan, unveiled at a donor conference in March, envisioned moving many people outside the swollen capital and injecting economic life into rural areas, as well as rebuilding Port-au-Prince.

Little of this has happened. The only official relocation site is a barren wasteland on the outskirts of the capital which shelters fewer than 10,000 people, many of whom feel they were tricked into moving there. Donors pledged $5.8 billion for recovery and reconstruction until September 2011. But less than half of that has been disbursed, and a big chunk has gone on debt relief rather than fresh funds. the rest image