HAITI / HUMANITARIAN REPORT LAUNCH

The humanitarian needs of people affected by January’s earthquake in Haiti remain immense, United Nations agencies and their partners said today (12 July) in a report, which also takes stock of the response effort and presents lessons learned from the challenging and complex emergency.

According to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) - the forum for coordination, policy development and decision-making of key UN and non-UN humanitarian partners - the devastation caused by the 12 January quake – in which more than 200,000 people were killed, 1.3 million more were left homeless and key infrastructure was destroyed – was compounded by underlying vulnerabilities in Haiti, including systemic poverty, structural challenges, weak governance, and an almost annual exposure to floods, hurricanes and related disasters.

Nigel Fisher, the UN Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator in Haiti noted that the earthquake took place in a country “where two thirds of the population were living in deep poverty and where six out of seven, six out of seven inhabitants of Port-au-Prince where living in slums”, with no regular access to water, sanitation or health care and where “most kids were not going to school”.

An already week government, he said, “in 35 seconds lost over 60 percent of its government buildings and 20 percent of its staff.”

The report noted the need for the humanitarian community to review how it should adapt to urban responses and to identify the necessary expertise, tools, knowledge, and partnerships to be able to operate effectively in such environments.

Fisher said that the humanitarian response has been “quite significant” as millions of people have been fed on a regular basis and “still well over a million are receiving clean water everyday”.

While one-and-a-half million people are still in camps, the current focus is to “provide additional resources in time for the rains that are going to start.”

Response was made difficult by the fact that earthquake occurred in an urban setting, a context unfamiliar to many humanitarian actors and which presented significant logistics and access hurdles.

The humanitarian organizations said that despite the challenging operating environment, the relief operation largely achieved its immediate objectives and responded effectively to the critical needs identified.

Fisher said that together with the Ministry of Public Works, the UN has so far assessed one-hundred-and-seventy-thousand houses, out of which almost half “are not structurally damaged” and can be repaired or reinforced “to be stronger than they were before at relatively low cost”.

In camps and spontaneous settlements housing internally displaced persons (IDPs), basic services such as health clinics, educational support, and water and sanitation facilities have been provided, while joint patrolling by the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and Haitian police is helping to protect the most vulnerable.

In rural areas, over 142,000 farming families have been supported with critical inputs for the spring planting season, while targeted nutritional programmes have aimed to reduce severe acute malnutrition among those affected by the earthquake.