Kids forced into domestic servitude in Haiti

[doug]

updated 8:06 a.m. ET Jan. 31, 2010
‘Women-only’ aid handed out in Haiti
Young men often force way to front of delivery lines or steal from others

A woman and her son wake up after spending the night on the street in front of the collapsed National Palace in Port-au-Prince on Saturday.
The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Relief workers began handing out women-only food coupons, launching a new phase of what they hope will be less cutthroat aid distribution to ensure that families and the weak get supplies following Haiti's devastating earthquake.

Young men often force their way to the front of aid delivery lines or steal from it from others, meaning aid doesn't reach the neediest at rough-and-tumble distribution centers, according to aid groups.

The World Food Program coupons can be turned in by women at 16 sites in the capital starting Sunday, and entitle each family to 55 pounds of rice.

U.N. officials say they are still far short of reaching all 2 million quake victims estimated to need food aid.

Meanwhile, federal agencies scrambled to explain the U.S. military's suspension of medical evacuations of critically ill Haitians to the United States in a dispute over where the victims should be treated.

"We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don't Medevac them," said Dr. Barth Green, chairman of the University of Miami's Global Institute for Community Health and Development. That included 5-year-old Betina Joseph, who developed tetanus from a small cut in her thigh. Doctors said Saturday that she had just 24 hours to live if not provided with respirator care.

White House officials said they were working to increase hospital capacity in Haiti and aboard the USNS Comfort hospital ship as well as in the United States. U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said about 435 earthquake victims had been evacuated before the suspension, and that he was "sure the Department of Defense wants to do the right thing."

Growing sanitation crisis
Relief officials were facing a growing sanitation crisis that could spread malaria, cholera and other deadly diseases throughout the chaotic camps.

Shortages of food, clean water, adequate shelter and latrines are creating a potential spawning ground for epidemics in a country with an estimated 1 million people made homeless by the Jan. 12 quake.

In one camp, a single portable toilet served about 2,000 people, forcing most to use a gutter that runs next to an area where vendors cook food and mothers struggle to bathe their children.

Survivors have erected flimsy shelters of cloth, cardboard or plastic in nearly every open space left in the capital.

Women wait until night to bathe out of buckets, shielding their bodies behind damaged cars and trucks. Water is recycled — used first for brushing teeth, then for washing food, then for bathing.

"My 1-year-old has had diarrhea for a week now, probably because of the water," said Bernadel Perkington, 40. "When the earthquake happened I had 500 gourdes (about 15 U.S. dollars), which I was using for clean water for her. The money for that ran out yesterday."


Diseases spreading
The crowding and puddles of filthy water that breed mosquitoes have begun to spread diseases such as dengue and malaria, which were already endemic in Haiti. Some hospitals report that half the children they treat have malaria, though the rainy season — the peak time for mosquitoes — won't start until April.

Tight quarters also expose people to cholera, dysentery, tetanus and other diseases.

The U.N., Oxfam and other aid organizations have started to dig latrines for 20,000 people, said Silvia Gaya, UNICEF's coordinator for water and sanitation, even if that's a small fraction of the 700,000 people that officials said were living in the camps last week.

"In some parks, there is no physical space" even to dig latrines, Gaya said.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

updated 2:43 p.m. ET Jan. 31, 2010
Baptist group denies trafficking in Haitian kids
Charity official tells NBC that one girl said she still has parents

Laura Silsby, of Boise, Idaho, speaks to The Associated Press at police headquarters in Port-au-Prince on Saturday after 10 Americans were detained for trying to bus 33 Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic without proper documents.
NBC News and news services
Video: Church group denies trafficking claim

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Ten American Baptists were being held in the Haitian capital Sunday after trying take 33 children out of Haiti at a time of growing fears over possible child trafficking.

The director of the charity now watching the children told NBC News that one child said she still had parents and was only expecting a brief vacation.

He added that a policeman believed the group was trying to sell the children for $10,000 each, an allegation denied by the church members.

"As far as we know they would have been, I say it clearly, sold for $10,000 each," said Georg Willeit, who runs the SOS Children's Village outside Port-au-Prince. "That's what one of the policemen told us. Every child was very desperate, hungry, thirsty. They all were in a bad condition."

"One of the elder girls told us, 'I'm not an orphan. I still have my parents,'" he added. "She thought she was going on a summer holiday vacation given by friendly people from America and the Dominican Republic."

The church members, most from Idaho, said they were trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children. But officials said they lacked the proper documents when they were arrested Friday night in a bus along with children from 2 months to 12 years old who had survived the catastrophic earthquake.

The group said its "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" was an effort to help abandoned children by taking them to an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic.

"In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing," the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told The Associated Press at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held pending a Monday hearing before a judge.

No charges had been filed, though Haiti's national secretary for security, Aramick Louis, said a judge had already done a preliminary investigation into the case.

The Baptist group planned to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, that they were converting into an orphanage, Silsby told the AP.

Political firestorm

Whether they realized it or not, these Americans — the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 quake — put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

The quake apparently orphaned many children and left others separated from parents, adding to the difficulty of helping children in need while preventing exploitation of them.

While many legitimate adoption agencies and orphanages operate in Haiti, often run by religious groups, the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration reported in 2007 that bogus adoption agencies in Haiti were offering children to rich Haitians and foreigners in return for processing fees reaching $10,000.

The agency said some Haitian parents were giving their children to traffickers in return for promises of financial help.

Silsby said the group, including members from Texas and Kansas, only had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, whom she said they obtained from Haitian pastor Jean Sanbil of the Sharing Jesus Ministries.

Naive?

Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was asked if she didn't consider it naive to cross the border without adoption papers at a time when Haitians are so concerned about child trafficking. "By no means are we any part of that. That's exactly what we are trying to combat," she said.

She said she hadn't been following news reports while in Haiti.

Social Affairs Minister Yves Cristallin told the AP that the Americans were suspected of taking part in an illegal adoption scheme.

Many children in Haitian orphanages aren't actually orphans but have been abandoned by family who cannot afford to care for them.

Children's rights groups have urged a halt to adoptions until it can be determined that the children have no relatives who can raise them.

The government now requires Prime Minister Max Bellerive to personally authorize the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking — though that has not stopped the flow of orphans abroad.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist told ABC News' Good Morning America on Sunday that his state has taken in 300 Haitian orphans since the quake, with 60 to 80 orphans arriving there Friday night alone.

Temporary shelters

UNICEF and other NGOs have been registering children who may have been separated from their parents. Relief workers are locating children at camps housing the homeless around the capital and are placing them in temporary shelters while they try to locate their parents or a more permanent home.

U.S. diplomats met with the detained Americans and gave them bug spray and field rations, according to Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and 18-year-old daughter were being held.


"They have to go in front of a judge on Monday," Lankford told the AP.

"There are allegations of child trafficking and that really couldn't be farther from the truth," he added. The children "were going to get the medical attention they needed. They were going to get the clothes and the food and the love they need to be healthy and to start recovering from the tragedy that just happened."

Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities before taking the children to the border.

She said the children were brought to the Haitian pastor by distant relatives and only those with no close family would be put up for adoption.

The 10 Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. Friends and relatives have been in touch with them through text messages and phone calls, Lankford said.

The group had described its plans on a Web site where it asked for tax-deductible contributions to help it "gather" 100 orphans and bus them to Cabarete before building a more permanent orphanage in the Dominican town of Magante.

"Given the urgent needs from this earthquake, God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now versus waiting until the permanent facility is built," the group wrote.

ITN correspondent Emma Murphy, reporting for NBC News, as well as the Associated Press contributed to this report.

© 2010 MSNBC.com

[doug]

updated 5:45 p.m. ET Jan. 31, 2010
U.S. military flights of Haiti injured to restart
White House says assurances were provided that hospitals can treat them

Betina Joseph, 5, lies with her mother, Denise Exima, at a field hospital at Haiti's airport in Port-au-Prince on Saturday. Doctors said that tetanus developed in Betina's leg wound and that she might die if not evacuated and treated soon. A private relief group flew her and two others out Sunday.
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Following the suspension of U.S. military flights for critically injured Haitians, the White House said Sunday that those will resume soon after assurances were given that hospitals have the capacity to deal with them.

"Having received assurances that additional capacity exists both here and among our international partners, we determined that we can resume these critical flights," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

The U.S. military medevac flights had been halted since Wednesday over a dispute over where the patients would be treated and the costs of their care.

The statement, issued Sunday afternoon, stated the flights would resume within 12 hours.

Exactly what led to the suspension of medical evacuation flights remains unclear. Military officials said some states refused to take patients.

Florida officials say none were ever turned away, though Gov. Charlie Crist had sent a letter Tuesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying the state's hospitals were reaching a saturation point.

Florida: Costs top $7 million

The letter also asked for federal help paying for patient expenses — a request Crist on Sunday said could have been misinterpreted. He also said federal officials have indicated he would receive help covering the costs, totaling more than $7 million.

The White House has said hospitals were running out of space and officials were working to increase capacity in Haiti and the U.S., as well as aboard the USNS Comfort hospital ship.

Col. Rick Kaiser said Sunday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to build a 250-bed tent hospital in Haiti to relieve pressure on the Comfort and on Haitian facilities where earthquake victims are being treated under tarpaulins.

Several hospitals in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.

U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said about 435 earthquake victims had been evacuated before the suspension, and that he was "sure the Department of Defense wants to do the right thing."

Individual hospitals were still able to arrange private medical flights — such as one Sunday that brought three critically ill children to a hospital in Philadelphia.

Doctors have said the makeshift facilities in Haiti aren't equipped to treat such critical conditions and warn that patients in similar condition could die if they aren't treated in U.S. hospitals.

Flights came unannounced, Florida says

Crist also has asked Sebelius for better coordination of the evacuations.

The state had been relying on air traffic controllers at Miami International Airport to relay information about the evacuations because the U.S. military flights headed to the state without notice, David Halstead, the Florida Division of Emergency Management's interim director, said Sunday.

"The governor's request is, 'Just tell us a plan,'" Halstead said.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

Haitians Granted TPS - On January 21, the USCIS began accepting applications for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of Haiti. Haitians in the U.S. must apply for TPS before July 20, 2010. They will be granted work permits valid until July 22, 2011. The message is posted on the USCIS website at

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=9236745543256210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=68439c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

The Notice in the Federal Register may be accessed at

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/2010-1169.htm

(from shusterman.com)

[doug]

updated 6:00 p.m. ET Feb. 1, 2010
Arrests intensify Haiti adoption debate
Some groups call for moratorium, others fear long-term clampdown
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - The debate over international adoption, already a bitter one, has intensified in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake and the arrest of 10 Americans for trying to take children out of the devastated country without permission.

Some groups are urging a long moratorium on new adoptions from Haiti, saying there is too much chaos and too high a risk of mistakes or child trafficking. Other groups fear any long-term clampdown will consign countless children to lives in institutions or on the street, rather than in the loving homes of adoptive parents.

Chuck Johnson, chief operating officer of the National Council for Adoption, said the arrests of the 10 U.S. Baptists would probably undercut his organization's push to expand adoptions from Haiti as soon as feasible.

'Critical mistake'
"It was a critical mistake — the Haitian government has been very clear they did not want any children leaving without its express permission," Johnson said Monday. "Maybe the Americans thought they were helping 33 kids, but now there's going to be a much slower process and maybe even a ban on future adoptions — and that would be a tragedy."

The Americans, arrested Friday near Haiti's border with the Dominican Republican, were being held in a police headquarters in Port au Prince while Haitian and U.S officials discussed their fate.

Even before the arrests, the Haitian government called a halt to new international adoptions. Numerous organizations have endorsed the moratorium, some of them citing U.N. guidelines recommending that at least two years be spent tracing lost families before adoptions should be considered.

"No matter how horrific the situation looks ... the full process of reuniting children with parents and relatives must be completed," said Deb Barry, a Save the Children child protection expert.

The next steps, says UNICEF, should be compiling a registry of children separated from their families, an extensive campaign to trace relatives, and development of safe, well-supplied places where these children can stay during the search process.

The consequences of rushing to help children leave Haiti can be severe, according to the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

Added trauma
In one case, LIRS said, a 12-year-old boy who was allowed onto a U.S. military plane without documentation or relatives in the U.S. and is now in limbo while officials try to find out if he left family behind in Haiti. In another case, a 3-year-old boy arrived on a private plane with other orphans even though the family who had been planning to adopt him had changed their mind and abandoned the process.

"It's an example of why it's important to be patient and thorough," said Olivia Faires, director of children's services for LIRS. "It does add trauma, even in the midst of the chaos, to remove them from their customary surroundings."

The differing views on adoptions from Haiti mirror a long-running global debate — fueled recently by adoptions of African children by Madonna and other celebrities. Some advocates say international adoptions should be expanded so that more abandoned, destitute Third World children can be lovingly raised in comfort, while others say this is a patronizing attitude that ignores the benefits of being raised in one's own culture.


Down the road, whenever Haiti manages to stabilize itself and re-establish documentation for vulnerable children, there is likely to be vigorous debate on whether international adoptions should be resumed on an expanded scale.

There were 330 adoptions of Haitian children by Americans last year, about 900 more were in the works at the time of the quake, and Johnson said the Haitian government had identified an additional 7,300 orphans as eligible for international adoption.


Ammunition for anti-adoption groups
"We'd hoped to focus on those 7,300 — but now it gets harder and harder to do that," he said. "The arrests give those anti-adoption groups more ammunition to call for a permanent moratorium, and the kids suffer."

Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard law professor who supports expanded international adoption, expressed concern about a possible overreaction to the arrests.

"If not all their paperwork was together, that doesn't seem to me the worst crime in the world," she said. "The Haitian authorities should be trying to help a lot of kids get out — both the kids in the process of adoption and others who appear not to have parents or relatives able to take care of them."

"It is astoundingly hypocritical," she said, "that people, in the name of helping children, would close down adoption."

Other groups, however, say international adoptions should not be promoted until other options are exhausted.


SOS Children's Villages, which is caring for the 33 Haitian children targeted by the arrested Americans, said international adoptions "should be avoided until every effort has been undertaken to reunite each child with her/his family or to provide suitable care within the country."

The organization's CEO, Heather Paul, said American families might prove useful at some point in providing adoptive homes for children suffering medical or psychological problems from the quake. Meanwhile, she urged restraint.

"Sometimes Americans believe that children are better off in an American middle-class environment almost as a priority over being with their own family who are impoverished," Paul said. "I don't believe that. Children — they just love their families."

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
[/code]

[doug]

updated 4:08 p.m. ET Feb. 2, 2010
U.N.: Haiti situation ‘potentially volatile’
Attempt by armed men to hijack food convoy cited as one sign

A U.N. peacekeeper from Nepal mans a machine gun from atop an armored vehicle as Haitians wait for food in Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, on Monday.
The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Twenty armed men blocked a road and tried to hijack a convoy of food for earthquake victims, but were driven off by police gunfire, U.N. officials said Tuesday.

The incident underscored what the United Nations calls a "potentially volatile" security situation as frustration has grown at the slow pace of aid since the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Most quake victims are still living outside in squalid tents of sheets and sticks and aid officials acknowledge they have not yet gotten food to the majority of those in need. Mobs have stolen food and looted goods from their neighbors in the camps, prompting many to band together or stay awake at night to prevent raids.

About 20 armed men blockaded a street Saturday and attacked a convoy carrying food from the airport in the southern town of Jeremie, according to U.N. spokesman Vicenzo Pugliese. U.N. and Haitian officers fired warning gunshots and the men fled the scene, Pugliese said. No injuries were reported and no one was hurt.

Haitian police have increased their own patrols and are accompanying U.N. police guarding aid distribution.

"The overall security situation across the country remains stable but potentially volatile," the U.N. mission said in a statement Tuesday.

In Jacmel, also a southern city, 33 escaped prisoners were apprehended Sunday, the U.N. said. Many prisoners escaped when prisons collapsed.

While Haitians are still mourning friends and relatives, many still unburied, anger at the government's sluggish response to the quake is feeding political resentment.

Memorial service turns political

Hundreds gathered Monday at a gravel pit in Titanyen where countless earthquake victims have been dumped, turning a remembrance ceremony for the dead into one of the first organized political rallies since the disaster.

Many denounced President Rene Preval and called for the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

"Preval has done nothing for this country, nothing for the victims," said Jean Delcius, 54, who was bused to the memorial service by Aristide's development foundation. "We need someone new to take charge here. If it's not Aristide, then someone competent."

Preval has rarely been seen in public since, leaving his ministers to defend his performance.

Haiti's government also has had to deal with the 10 Americans who tried to take a busload of undocumented Haitian children out of the country. The Idaho-based church group was being held without charges at a police station on Tuesday as officials debated what to do with them.


Prime Minister Max Bellerive said that "what they were doing was wrong" and that they could be prosecuted in the United States because Haiti's shattered court system may not be able to cope with a trial.

"It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents," Bellerive said. "And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong."

U.S. Embassy officials would not say if a U.S. court process is possible.


Meanwhile, discontent with Preval appears to be growing, three weeks after the disaster.

"He came Saturday and then just left," said Jude John Peter, 23, in a camp across from Haiti's demolished National Palace, where some 2,000 people are crammed into tents. "He's nowhere to be seen at first and then leaves when things get hot."

Aristide also faced criticism during his presidency. The former slum priest had a huge grassroots following among Haiti's poor but was ousted in 2004 as corruption and drug trafficking grew rampant and some of former supporters accused him of abandoning his early followers to line his own pockets.

Aristide has said that he would like to return from his exile in South Africa — a move that would add political instability to the post-quake chaos and likely face resistance from the international community.

Before legislative elections scheduled for Feb. 28 were postponed, Haiti's presidentially appointed electoral council had excluded more than a dozen political parties from the next round of elections in 2011. Opposition groups accused the council of trying to help Preval's Unity party win majorities in parliament so he could push through constitutional reforms and expand executive power.

Aristide backers plan rallies

The most prominent excluded party is Aristide's former Lavalas party, which now plans more demonstrations. That will force thousands of American soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers to worry about containing political violence as well as providing relief.

Some who attended the memorial said they simply wanted new leadership. Voter discontent is a constant in impoverished Haiti, where for years after the dictatorship, some even claimed they wanted the return of Jean-Claude Duvalier, whose father, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, launched a 29-year family dynasty of terror.

Tens of thousands were killed by the Duvaliers — many of them also buried anonymously in the gravel fields of Titanyen.

Across the capital, Haitians have voiced anger over the hasty burials of earthquake victims.

Many Haitians believe that bodies must be properly buried and remembered by relatives and family so their spirits can pass on to heaven. In Voodoo, some believe that improper burials can trap spirits between two worlds.

The mourners on Monday gathered near a white metal cross erected on a mound of gravel that covered nameless bodies dropped into a pit by dump trucks. The corpse of a woman lay uncovered at the base of a nearby gravel pile.

One by one, people tied black pieces of cloth to the cross as a Catholic priest sprinkled the ground with holy water. A choir sang traditional Haitian hymns as religious leaders prayed for the dead.


"We've come here to bless these people, to bless this spot," said the Rev. Patrick Joseph Neptune.

Meanwhile, others in the crowd planned another political rally for Tuesday.

"If Preval comes, we will kill him!" they shouted.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

updated 3:44 p.m. ET Feb. 4, 2010
Haiti charges U.S. church members with kidnap
Case of 10 missionaries sent to a judge to determine group's fate

American missionaries, accused of illegally trying to take children out of Haiti, pray before hearing the charging decision from a Haitian prosecutor in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.
NBC News and news services
PORT-AU-PRINCE - Ten U.S. missionaries in Haiti were charged Thursday with child kidnapping and criminal association for allegedly trying to take children illegally out of the earthquake-hit country.

After announcing the charges, Haitian Deputy Prosecutor Jean Ferge Joseph told the 10 their case was being sent to an investigative judge.

"That judge can free you but he can also continue to hold you for further proceedings," the deputy prosecutor told the five men and five women in a hearing.

The U.S. citizens were whisked away from the closed court hearing to jail in Port-au-Prince. One of them, Laura Silsby, waved and smiled faintly to reporters but declined to answer questions.

The Americans, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, were arrested last week on Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic when they tried to cross with a busload of 33 children they said were orphaned by the devastating Jan. 12 quake.

Haitian authorities said the group lacked the authorization and travel documents needed to take the children out of the country. The group denies any wrongdoing.

The group's lawyer, Edwin Coq, who attended Thursday's hearing, said the church members face three to nine years in prison if they are found guilty at trial. Under Haiti's legal system, there won't be an open trial, but a judge will consider the evidence and could render a verdict in about three months, he said.

"We're not 100 percent sure if they will find them guilty. I don't think they will, I don't think there will be a charge," Coq said.

Earlier, Coq said that nine of his 10 clients were “completely innocent,” but added that “if the judiciary were to keep one, it could be the leader of the group.” He appeared to be referring to Silsby, who helped organize the mission to Haiti and has spoken for the Americans since they were detained last Friday.

'Other legal avenues'

Silsby has said the church members were trying to take orphans and abandoned children to an orphanage in the neighboring Dominican Republic. She acknowledged they may have lacked paperwork but said they just meant to help victims of the quake.

Haitian officials say many of the 33 still had parents, though they may have handed over the children willingly.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington the U.S. was monitoring the case and was open to discuss "other legal avenues" for the defendants — an apparent reference to the Haitian prime minister's earlier suggestion that Haiti could consider sending the Americans back to the United States for prosecution.


"But right now the matter rests within the Haitian judicial system," Crowley said. "We respect that. And we will continue to have discussions with the Haitian government as this case proceeds."


People in the village of Callebas have contradicted claims that the children, aged between 2 and 12, came from orphanages or were handed over by distant relatives.

They said they had surrendered their children after a local orphanage worker, fluent in English and acting on behalf of the Baptists, convened nearly the entire village of 500 people on a dirt soccer field to present an offer from the Americans.

Parents jumped at offer

Isaac Adrien, 20, told his neighbors the missionaries would educate their children in the neighboring Dominican Republic, the villagers said, adding that they were also assured they would be free to visit their children there.

Adrien said he met Silsby in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 26. She told him she was looking for homeless children, he said, and he knew exactly where to find them.

He rushed home to Callebas, where people scrape by growing carrots, peppers and onions. That day, he had a list of 20 children. Many parents said they had jumped at the offer.

"It's only because the bus was full that more children didn't go," said Melanie Augustin, a 58-year-old who gave her 10-year-old daughter, Jovin, to the Americans.



Laurentius Lelly, a 27-year-old computer technician who gave up his two children, ages 4 and 6, said: "I am living in a tent with a friend. My main concern is that if the kids come back I'm not going to be able to feed them."

Lelly said he was worried the Haitian judicial system would not properly investigate the case.

"I would like to find out if these people were really going to help the kids or were trying to steal them," Lelly said.


Representatives of the missionary group said Wednesday from the Dominican Republic that the missionaries "willingly accepted kids they knew were not orphans because the parents said they would starve otherwise."

Prime Minister Max Bellerive has suggested the Americans could be prosecuted in the United States because Haiti's shattered court system may not be able to cope with a trial.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the attempt to bring undocumented children out of Haiti was "unfortunate whatever the motivation" and the Americans should have followed proper procedures. She said U.S. officials were in discussions with Haitian authorities about how to resolve the case.

© 2010 msnbc.com

[doug]

updated 6:53 p.m. ET Feb. 4, 2010
Jailed missionary left trail of legal woes
Idaho woman who led ‘rescue’ mission in Haiti faces court woes at home

Laura Silsby, 40, center, and Charisa Coulter, 24, left, both of Meridian, Idaho, are escorted out of the court building in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
PORT-AU-PRINCE - The leader of a group of American missionaries charged Thursday with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-ravaged Haiti faces legal troubles in her home state of Idaho as well.

Laura Silsby, 40, is the subject of several lawsuits accusing her and her Boise-based company, PersonalShopper.com, of failing to pay her employees. She also has a history of failing to pay debts, and the $358,000 house at which she founded her nonprofit religious group, New Life Children's Refuge, was foreclosed upon in December, according to a report in her hometown newspaper, the Idaho Statesman.

The Boise newspaper said Silsby has been named in at least eight civil lawsuits and 14 unpaid wage claims.

On Thursday, she and nine other Americans appeared in a Haitian court, following their arrest on Jan. 29 for allegedly trying to cross into the Dominican Republic with a busload of Haitian children they said were orphaned by the quake. A prosecutor forwarded their case to a judge to determine their fate.

Silsby said at the hearing: "We simply wanted to help the children. We petition the court not only for our freedom but also for our ability to continue to help."

A longtime Idaho businesswoman, Silsby founded PersonalShopper.com, an Internet gift-shopping service site, in 1999. As its CEO, she was named businesswoman of the year in 2006 by eWomenNetwork, which lauded her for founding a company "based on a conviction that busy working mothers, like herself, needed a time-saving personal shopping service that would help simplify their hectic lives."

The Idaho Department of Labor confirmed that 14 claims for nonpayment of wages were filed against Personal Shopper Inc. in 2008 and 2009. The company’s former marketing director also filed a civil lawsuit against Silsby and the company in October for unpaid wages, wrongful termination and fraud, the newspaper said.

Silsby is due in Idaho court next week in the case and a jury trial is scheduled for Feb. 22.

Court records show that Silsby also is due in court in March to answer to another civil lawsuit filed by Beer & Cain, a Boise law firm. The lawsuit says Silsby has failed to pay more than $4,500 for services rendered.

An e-mail circulated Wednesday at PersonalShopper.com urged employees not to speak to the press or post any information on Web sites. "Given the aggressive nature of the press and the fabrications already being invented, we need to make sure nothing in writing is published that can be misconstrued in any way," the e-mail said, according to the Statesman.

Mission gone wrong

Silsby and her nanny, Charisa Coulter, 23, who are both members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, founded New Life Children Refuge, a nonprofit that Silsby incorporated in Idaho in November.

The religious charity’s mission was to build an orphanage for Dominican and Haitian children.


"The folks in the church embraced their vision, and it became a shared vision," Coulter's father, Mel, told the Statesman. "The church made it part of their mission's program."

Before the Jan. 12 earthquake devastated Haiti, the charity had planned to buy land and build an orphanage, school and church in Magante on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, BBC News reported.

But after the disaster, the mission's aim became to "rescue Haitian orphans abandoned on the streets, makeshift hospitals or from collapsed orphanages in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, and bring them to New Life Children's Refuge in Cabarete, Dominican Republic," the charity stated in an online document.


© 2010 msnbc.com

[doug]

updated 11:21 p.m. ET Feb. 6, 2010
Haitian lawyer for jailed Americans fired
Group’s other attorney says attempt was made to bribe their way out
The Associated Press
Video: Americans in Haiti jail: ‘We fear for our lives’
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The Haitian lawyer for 10 U.S. Baptists charged with child kidnapping tried to bribe the missionaries' way out of jail and has been fired, the attorney who hired him said Saturday night.

The Haitian lawyer, Edwin Coq, denied the allegation. He said the $60,000 he requested from the Americans' families was his fee.

Jorge Puello, the attorney in the neighboring Dominican Republic retained by relatives of the 10 American missionaries after their arrest last week, told The Associated Press that he fired Coq on Friday night. He had hired Coq to represent the detainees at Haitian legal proceedings.

Coq orchestrated "some kind of extortion with government officials" that would have led to the release of nine of the 10 missionaries, Puello charged.

"He had some people inside the court that asked him for money, and he was part of this scheme," Puello said.

Coq denied the requested $60,000 payment amounted to a bribe.

"I have worked for 10 people for four days working all hours," he said. "Look at what hour I'm working now, responding to these calls. I have the right to this money."

On Friday, Coq had told the AP that he was working for no fee.

Asking for more?
Puello said Coq initially requested $10,000 but kept asking for bigger and bigger amounts. He said that when Coq reached $60,000, he said he could guarantee it would lead to the Americans' release.

A magistrate charged the group's members Thursday with child kidnapping and criminal association for trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-ravaged Haiti without the proper documents.

The Americans said they were a humanitarian mission to rescue orphans after Haiti's catastrophic Jan. 12 quake.

But at least 20 of the children had living parents. Some told the AP they gave the kids to the group because the missionaries promised to educate them at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and said they would allow parents to visit.

Coq said Thursday that the group's leader, Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, deceived the others by telling them she had the proper documents to remove the children from Haiti.

Warnings to leader
Puello raised similar concerns. He told the AP that he warned Silsby on Friday, the day the group was detained at the border, that she lacked the required papers and risked being arrested for child trafficking.

Asked if Silsby had deceived the other nine Baptists in assuring them she had the proper papers, Puello said, "I believe that is true."

He referred further questions on that issue to Sean Lankford, also of Meridian and the husband and father of two of the jailed missionaries.


Reached by the AP on Saturday night, Lankford would not comment. "I don't have time right now to talk to you," he said.

NBC News reported Saturday that there are divisions within the jailed group.

It said some of the missionaries handed an NBC producer a note through bars of their holding cell earlier in the day that listed the names of all of them but Silsby and her former nanny and partner in the orphanage, Charisa Coulter.

"We only came as volunteers. We had nothing to do with any documents and have been lied to," NBC quoted the note as saying. "Please we fear our lives."

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

updated 9:51 a.m. ET Feb. 8, 2010
Haiti awash in Christian aid, evangelism
In quake crisis, there were sure to be some ungodly fumbles

Members of Idaho-based charity called New Life Children's Refuge are shown at a police station in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 31.
By Kari Huus
Reporter
msnbc.com
The horrific destruction and human suffering in Haiti exert an almost irresistible pull on U.S. Christian missionaries eager to help. But as the jailing last week of 10 missionaries from a small Baptist church in Idaho illustrates, best intentions don’t always translate into good deeds in the chaotic aftermath of the monster earthquake.

Many mission groups provide essential services for Haitians — indeed some have evolved into key service providers, working alongside nonprofit groups and the U.N. to fill gaps that the Haitian government can’t fill.

But other missions, even when well-meaning, risk running afoul of Haiti’s culture and laws.

“There’s an issue that is coming up a lot right now,” said Laurent Dubois, a professor of history and romance studies at Duke University and an expert on Haiti. “It’s the difference between wanting to help and being able to do good. Most don’t speak any Creole, or have the cultural knowledge. … (As a result) they are going to be very surprised by what they see in Haiti.”

Patrick McCormick, a spokesman for UNICEF, said that in the case of the Idaho church members, naiveté apparently blinded them to the legal implications of their actions. They were charged with kidnapping after being accused of trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border to the Dominican Republic without proper documentation.

“Just because there’s a natural disaster, you don’t start cutting corners on a serious and complicated process like international adoption,” he said.

Haiti has been a popular destination for missionaries at least since 1804, when Haitians threw off French rule. Catholicism, which had been imposed on them by the colonial power, was left on an uncertain footing, and the country became a spiritual battleground. Various Christian denominations and sects aimed to win converts and prevent Haitians from reverting to Voodoo, a religion adapted from the beliefs of their African ancestors.

“Every church and mission group has a presence in Haiti,” said Wendy Norvelle, spokeswoman for the International Mission Board, which supports foreign missions for the Southern Baptist Church. “It’s very, very, very saturated with those who would want to go and share God’s love and do hands-on ministries providing humanitarian relief.”

There’s no comprehensive count of missionaries in Haiti, because they are dispatched by so many different groups, and the number is always changing.

Before the earthquake, there were about 1,700 long-term, professional missionaries in Haiti, according to Bert Hickman, research associate at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. He said that number is about average for Latin and South American countries with populations similar to Haiti’s 10 million.

But that count doesn’t include the thousands of American missionaries who go to Haiti each year on trips that last just a few weeks or a few months, drawn by Haiti’s extreme poverty and its proximity, just a two-hour flight from Miami.

Some of these missionaries go on their own. Some are sponsored by churches or denominations, or through groups like Campus Crusade for Christ, which sends college students all over the world. Since the quake, there has been another wave of trips thrown together by churches to help needy Haitians and to check on mission properties supported by their churches.

What they do
Their missions vary. Some are there exclusively to evangelize and “plant churches.” Indeed, even small villages in Haiti will sometimes have six or seven churches built by missionaries of different denominations.

Others prefer to convey their faith though deeds rather than words: digging wells, filling teeth or teaching soil conservation, for instance.

This is the spirit espoused by members of Lifechurch, a nondenominational church profiled by msnbc.com last month when members rushed to Haiti to check on the orphanage they run in Port-au-Prince. The Allentown, Pa., church regularly sends congregation members on missions to the developing world to install water filtration systems and build school cafeterias, playgrounds and clinics.

“Our main focus is to … show the people we really care about them,” said church business administrator David Jones. “If we have time to talk about Jesus then we do it. (But) our philosophy is that you cannot effectively evangelize if you don’t show you care by dealing with people’s real needs.”


The desire to help the most vulnerable of Haiti’s earthquake victims — its children — is especially strong.

U.S. churches run and support hundreds of orphanages and schools in the country.

Even before the quake, an estimated 15 percent of all children in Haiti were said to be orphaned or abandoned. About 200,000 of these children lived in institutions, and the rest were fostered, living with relatives or living on the street. That number has risen sharply since the quake, though it is not clear by how much.

The huge population of vulnerable kids makes them susceptible to abuse, including the trafficking of Haitian children into the sex trade and slavery.

Missionaries, aid workers and U.N. peacekeepers have been implicated in such crimes. In a U.S. federal court on Feb. 2, a Colorado missionary who has worked at a school for Haitian street children, faced charges of sexually abusing up to 18 boys in Haiti, luring them with cash and other rewards, and threatening them with expulsion if they did not comply.

Seeing even greater risk in the chaos after the earthquake, Haiti’s government issued a warning to foreigners who were working with Haitian children not to rush adoptions and not to take them out of the country without complete legal documentation. UNICEF called for measures to prevent children from disappearing and potentially falling prey to traffickers. And the U.S. State Department has warned that children could fall victim to pedophiles.

Vying for souls
In Haiti, many Christian and nondenominational groups work together, but there are rivalries as well.

Some, evangelical Protestants in particular, are in a pitched battle with Voodoo in Haiti, which they view as satanic. As evangelist Pat Robertson put it shortly after the earthquake, Haitians’ adherence to Voodoo was a “pact with the devil” that caused the disaster.

Some Protestants also are vying for the souls of Catholic Haitians. The rivalry is in part a reflection of a historical global competition between the major Christian groups. But it is heightened because many Haitian Catholics also observe Voodoo traditions.


“Most Voodoo ceremonies begin with Catholic prayers,” says Dubois of Duke University. “At this point Catholic priests don’t spend much energy trying to stop Voodoo.”

That doesn’t sit well with groups like Campus Crusade for Christ, which includes this description of Haiti’s spiritual landscape on its Web site:

“An estimated 75 percent of Catholics are also increasingly involved in voodoo, spiritism and witchcraft. … The steady growth of Protestant churches in the difficult economic and spiritual climate is cause for praise.”


Christian missions also sometimes come into conflict with other aid efforts in the country.

Bryan Schaaf, a former Peace Corps worker, said he ran into all kinds of missionaries when he was living in Haiti from 2000 to 2002. He recalled one American missionary man living in his village who quietly visited rural areas and helped Haitians build wells.

“They built this large network of wells that wouldn’t otherwise have been there,” said Schaaf. “It was a missionary family that was well accepted by the community, and using sound development principals.”

Purging evil, providing water
On the other hand, he said, another American missionary family in the village seemed to focus on countering his own efforts in health education. After he talked to young people in the village about birth control and prevention of AIDS, which is epidemic among Haitian youth, Schaaf learned that the missionaries were following up with a message of their own.

“They would hold prayer circles with these adolescents to purge the evil thoughts of condoms from their minds,” he said.

Schaaf, who is back in the States and spends his spare time running a nonprofit consultancy called Haiti Innovation, derided missionaries who lack understanding or respect for Haitian culture and treat the country as their “spiritual sandbox.”

“I wish I could tell you I was surprised; I’m really not,” he said of the 10 American missionaries being held in Haiti. “Many missionaries come in and think they are in a position of authority.”

Some provide vital aid
But Schaaf was quick to point out that many of the missionary organizations are not only respectful, but provide essential services.

Some relief organizations that have been pivotal since the quake in Haiti were founded on faith, he said, citing groups like Catholic Relief Services and Episcopal Faith and Development. Other groups started out evangelizing and emerged as key providers of services.


For example, he said, Partners in Health, founded by an Episcopal priest in 1987 as a community clinic, has grown into the largest medical complex in Haiti.

In this case, the conviction and willingness to work with the community turned this faith-based operation into the best medical facility in Haiti and created a model that has been replicated throughout the developing world, he said.

Or, as he put it: “No priest, no PIH.”

© 2010 msnbc.com

[doug]

updated 9:36 p.m. ET Feb. 10, 2010
Reuters: Haiti judge will free 10 Americans
Missionaries, who were accused of kidnapping, could be released Thursday

U.S. missionaries accused of kidnapping children, leave a Judicial Police office in Port-au-Prince Feb. 10. They are, from left, Corinna Lankford, Charisa Coulter and Silas Thompson.
msnbc.com news services
A Haitian judge has decided to release 10 U.S. missionaries accused of kidnapping 33 children and trying to spirit them out of the earthquake-stricken country, a judicial source told Reuters Wednesday.

However, NBC News reported that no final decision had been made, though it's possible a decision could be made as early as Thursday. A lawyer representing one told The Associated Press he expects Judge Bernard Saint-Vil to issue his recommendation to the prosecutor Thursday.

The prosecutor has the right to appeal if the judge recommends that charges be dropped, but the judge has the final say.

The source told Reuters that the missionaries, who have been in jail since they were stopped at Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29, could be released as early as Thursday.

"The order will be to release them," the source, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. The decision has not yet been made public.

"One thing an investigating judge seeks in a criminal investigation is criminal intentions on the part of the people involved and there is nothing that shows that criminal intention on the part of the Americans," the source said.

The missionaries, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, were arrested trying to take the children across the border to the Dominican Republic 17 days after a magnitude 7 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

The five men and five women have denied any intentional wrongdoing and said they were only trying to help orphans left destitute by the quake, which shattered the Haitian capital and left more than 1 million homeless. But evidence has come to light showing most of the children still had living parents.

As part of Haiti's legal requirements, investigating Judge Bernard Sainvil must send a notice of his decision to the prosecutor. That will be done on Thursday, the source said.

Once he receives the order, the prosecutor could offer an opinion that one or more of the Americans should be held but that would have no legal effect on the judge's decision, the source said.


The case has been a distraction to the Haitian government as it tries to cope with the aftermath of the earthquake and was diplomatically sensitive for the United States as it spearheads a massive international effort to feed and shelter Haitian quake survivors.

Haiti's beleaguered government had warned that unscrupulous traffickers could try to take advantage of the chaos that followed the quake by taking away vulnerable children, and it tightened adoption procedures.

Meanwhile, Lynn University officials in Florida said they had received word that the U.S. Department of State confirmed the death of Lynn student Courtney Hayes. Courtney was one of four students still unaccounted for in Haiti. Two faculty members and three students remain missing.

© 2010 msnbc.com

[doug]

U.S. vows to repatriate quake evacuees

The Naples Daily News in Florida reports that that U.S could see a mass influx of Haitian migrants as a result of the devastating earthquake that shook the country early in January.

Although many countries have sent aid to Haiti in the form of food, water, equipment and manpower, there have been many obstacles in delivering the aid. There are no reports of a mass exodus from Haiti as of yet. However, as the situation in Haiti continues to destabilize, U.S. officials want to prepare in case of a large migration from Haiti to the United States materializes.

The Department of Homeland Security has begun to relocate between 250 and 400 immigration detainees from South Florida’s main detention center to accommodate any Haitian migrants who manage to reach U.S. shores. Under the mass migration plan known as Operation Vigilant Sentry, Haitian vessels found at sea will be intercepted by the U.S Navy and repatriated to Haiti. There are also talks that intercepted vessels carrying Haitian migrants will be temporarily sent to the U.S Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in order to process the migrants’ claims.

Only those Haitians who were in the United States before January 12, 2010 will be granted Temporary Protected Status and not repatriated to the earthquake-torn nation.

http://visalaw.c.topica.com/maanMw9abWaquboVcGUb/

[doug]

Government clears 200 Haitian children for humanitarian visas

The Miami Herald is reporting that due to the efforts of Miami Doctor Barth Green and Florida Senator Bill Nelson, 200 injured Haitian children will travel to Florida on humanitarian visas for life-saving medical treatment. Prior to these efforts, only Haitian children who were in the process of being adopted by American parents before the January 12 earthquake were granted visas.

Young earthquake victims are being granted humanitarian visas on the condition that a doctor in Haiti deems that the child will die if not given advanced medical care.
Many of the children being transported under this program have treatable injuries within the capacity of the United States to fix. However, these young earthquake victims would likely die with the lack of adequate equipment and specialized care in Haiti.

In the past, the United States has had a system in place for taking sick or injured children from other countries on a case-by-case basis. But that system required a time consuming process full of documentation that is now lost due to the earthquake. Thirteen children's hospitals in Florida will be treating the youngest victims of the deadly earthquake that hit Haiti in early January.

http://visalaw.c.topica.com/maanMw9abWaqAboVcGUb/

[doug]

updated 6:47 p.m. ET Feb. 11, 2010
After month of chaos, Haitians help themselves
With no jobs or homes, people are creating their own communities

Dieudone Bernard, 87, sits in a damaged public bus, called a tap-tap, that she is using as her shelter at a makeshift camp for earthquake survivors in the Marassa neighborhood of Port-au-Prince on Thursday, Feb. 11.
The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - In the month since the worst disaster in Haitian history, an enormous international aid effort has not provided the people of Marassa 14 with the food, shelter and security they need. So they built a new community from scratch.

Cardboard street signs mark the rows of makeshift plastic tents where more than 2,500 people sleep in the dirt. Handwritten ID cards stamped by a security committee show who belongs, and women serve cheap fried plantains and breadfruit for families struggling to feed their children.

One month after 40 seconds of terrifying shaking killed more than 200,000 of their relatives and neighbors and leveled most of their capital, Haiti's endlessly resilient people are struggling to recreate their lives.

Food has yet to reach all of the 3 million people who need it. Infrastructure problems and supply backlogs continue to hamper an international aid effort that has drawn $537 million from the United States alone. Schools remain closed. And on Thursday morning, in a taste of the new horrors the impending rainy season promises to bring, an early morning downpour muddied the dirt in which 1.2 million people have pitched makeshift camp.

Tent-and-trailer city

Downtown, hundreds of Haitians marched Thursday from the destroyed National Palace to the temporary government headquarters demanding the resignation of President Rene Preval, who has been largely out of sight since the catastrophe. He appeared Wednesday to bicker publicly with his own communications minister over the death toll.

Amid the chaos and unmet needs, there are obvious signs of progress: The United Nations, itself devastated by the quake, has established a tent-and-trailer city on the airport grounds to coordinate the efforts of 900 aid agencies who finally appear to be overcoming huge problems with communications, transportation and infrastructure.

Cell phone coverage has vastly improved. Gas stations have reopened — though that has also meant traffic is back to its normal, intolerable state. Massive amounts of rubble are still everywhere — loaded into dump trucks, the convoy would stretch from Port-au-Prince to Moscow, officials said — but at least it has been pushed to the side of the road.

And while handwritten signs still plead for foreign help, opportunistic vendors are back on the streets, selling miniature American flags as soldiers' wide desert-camouflage Humvees roll by. The once ubiquitous dead, and their overpowering smell, have largely been carried away.

But even though top foreign and Haitian officials say immediate needs are being met, in villages like Marassa — a district whose name means "twins" in Creole — children are going unfed and families are competing for disgraceful shelter they know will not hold up for long.

In such communities, people are looking out for themselves.

‘We're living in a hole’

In Marassa, people have made their homes in a dry riverbed that constantly floods in the rainy season. Before dawn Thursday, a surprise downpour soaked everyone's few belongings, rendered their cooking charcoal unusable and coated their beds in mud.

"We're living in a hole," said Dieusin St. Vil, a 46-year-old tailor who heads the new neighborhood's security committee. "We heard on the radio that the government was supposed to build tent cities around here, but they haven't come by."

That's because, unbeknownst to the people of Marassa, those plans have changed. On Wednesday, with just 49,000 of a requested 200,000 tents provided, officials announced that deliveries will stop. Foreign governments, aid groups and Haitian officials have decided that tents take up too much space and will not last long enough.

"Tents are great, they're a lot better than nothing, but they basically impede the process of economic development and reconstruction," said Lewis Lucke, the U.S. Special Coordinator for Relief and Reconstruction.

Instead, 250,000 families will get one sheet of plastic each between now and May 1, and will later receive temporary, earthquake-resistant structures of metal and wood. If those numbers hold up, they will help about 60 percent of the population in need.


In the meantime, there's not enough space, even in the riverbed that is Marassa — and the self-appointed leaders decided to split their sprawling community into two camps.

In the western half, members of St. Vil's security committee patrol with sticks and make sure residents produce ID tickets that match numbers written in no obvious order on their tents.

An abandoned grandmother named Dieudone Bernard kept getting her tarps stolen, so the security committee told her to move into the hollowed-out wooden trailer of a junked tap-tap, as Haiti's colorful buses are known.


‘Everyone isn't going to get help’

Since she can't get to one of the 16 fixed U.N. food distribution sites, the 87-year-old woman eats only if relatives bring her rice or a neighbor snags a high-energy biscuit from a handout meant for children.

Even when food aid does arrive in the village — as did 2,000 hot meals of rice and beans from a Dominican Republic government agency Thursday afternoon — those without the right connections risk not getting any.

"Even if the government says they are going to help everyone, everyone isn't going to get help," said the Rev. Moise Farfan, who holds prayer meetings amid the tents of Marassa every night because his church collapsed in the earthquake.

Nearby, an earthquake widow sold fried bits of potato, breadfruit and plantain from her tent, charging whatever her neighbors had in their pockets.

St. Vil appeared with a scowl, furious that it would keep them from receiving food.

"The journalists are blocking the aid!" he bellowed as a heated argument broke out among residents.

His concerns are not entirely unfounded. When pleading for aid it is much easier to speak in absolutes than to explain the much more complex reality: There is food in Haiti, but especially following the earthquake it has grown increasingly expensive and hard to get.

The price of heavily subsidized imported rice — already at levels that caused rioting in April 2008 — has shot up 25 percent since the earthquake to $3.71 a 2.7-kilo (6-pound) bag, according to USAID. Corn is up more than 25 percent, wheat increased by half. Charcoal, needed for cooking, has shot up 17 percent.

With no jobs or homes, and nowhere to go, help from others — and each other — means everything.

"The conditions here are no good, but being dead is even worse," said Johnny Joseph, a 48-year-old father of six. "As long as you're living, you might have a friend who's alive too.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

updated 9:28 p.m. ET Feb. 13, 2010
Haiti's homeless get tarps, want tents
Aid agencies tell quake refugees they’ll need to get by with plastic sheets

People are seen at a makeshift camp for earthquake survivors in the Marassa neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.
The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Ask any of the hundreds of thousands of earthquake victims living outdoors in Haiti's shattered capital and you're apt to get the same plea: "Give us a tent."

Few will get one. Aid agencies and Haitian officials have given up plans to shelter the homeless in tents, even if that means many will likely face hurricane season camped out under flapping sheets of plastic.

Tents are too big, too costly and too inefficient, aid groups say. So Haitians must swelter under flimsy tarps until fixed shelters can be built — though no one believes nearly enough can be will be up in time for spring storms.

"A tent would give us more space. There are too many people in here," said Marie-Mona Destiron, sweating under the hot blue light of her family's donated plastic tarp. When it rains, she said, water slides through the gaps and turns the dirt floor to mud.

Destiron, 45, got her tarp from U.S. soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division. Her husband, Joselin Edouard, tied it to a thin mahogany tree on a dusty slope below the country club that the soldiers use as a forward-operating base. It is home to them and their six children.

The Destiron family tarp site sits atop what passes for pretty good real estate in post-quake Port-au-Prince. The family is near where soldiers distribute food, though when helicopters land, it's blasted by dirt and leaves. They moved in the day after the Jan. 12 catastrophe shattered their concrete home.

But theirs is a space prone to floods and mudslides. And come the spring rains — not to mention the hurricanes of summer and fall — they and many other Haitians are vulnerable.

International aid officials at first announced a campaign to put the homeless in tents and appealed for donations from around the world. Some 49,000 tents had reached Haiti when the government announced Wednesday it was opting for plastic sheets.

Distrust deepens

With an estimated 1.2 million people displaced by the earthquake — some 770,000 of them still in the capital — officials say there is no room for family-sized tents with their wide bases.

Besides, they are bulky and don't last long enough to justify their cost, the aid community has decided.

Further, the cluster of foreign and Haitian officials in charge of shelter decisions does not trust the mishmash of aid organizations involved to buy the right ones.

It has issued a warning that only that those with "existing expertise in the procurement of humanitarian tents" should buy them, saying that after the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, 80 percent of tents distributed were not waterproof.

Instead the officials are mobilizing a plan they call the "shelter surge:"

By May 1, one plastic tarp will be given to each of about 250,000 displaced families.
Transitional shelters of 194 square feet, with corrugated iron roofs, will then be built.
Shelters will have earthquake- and storm-resistant frames of timber or steel and are supposed to last for three years.
But putting up such shelters will take serious time and effort. Land must be procured. Money — at least $1,000 per transitional home — must be found. And desperate people who just weeks ago lost their homes must be persuaded to relocate yet again, and getting them to abandon neighborhoods and friends won't be simple.

"This is a big problem. We need to move people and they need to agree to move," U.N. Under-Secretary-General of Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said after visiting tarp cities in the quake-decimated city of Leogane.

EU operations to step in

Getting even the bulk of that done before the June 1 start of hurricane season seems unlikely. And plenty of people — including politicians from donor nations as well as today's tarp-dwellers — are concerned.


The European Union said Thursday that it would mount a military operation — including heavy equipment and engineers — to level the ground for the shelters and put them up. It did not say how many troops would be sent, by which nations or when.


Video: One month after Haiti quake marked with protests

"I hope it happens soon. Let's see how effective the European military are," said Edmond Mulet, the acting U.N. envoy to Haiti.

A delegation of visiting U.S. lawmakers led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised concerns over tarps in a Friday meeting with President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

"We can't just put tarps up in those low-lying areas and hope for the best," said Senator George LeMieux, a Florida Republican.

Preval declined to answer questions about the problem after the meeting. But in a hushed voice, he expressed concern in side conversations with aides.

Asked about tents vs. tarps, Pelosi simply replied: "That's a decision that has to be made here."

Ironically, many of those charged with deciding are themselves sleeping in tents.


Camps

U.N. civilian staff, who lost their peacekeeping headquarters and other buildings in the quake, have turned their airport logistics base into a tent-and-trailer city. Foreign soldiers sleep in camouflage tents all over town. U.S. diplomats are bivouacked on the 18-month-old $75 million 10-acre embassy compound. Journalists and aid workers have their own, pitched behind walls and beside hotel pools.

The sealed edges, covered floors and ability to close a door affords comfort. And those who have received them are appreciative.

Micheline Antoine, 25, had been living under a cloth bedsheet with her daughter and a friend near the collapsed high school of St. Louis de Gonzague until Doctors Without Borders gave the residents broad white domes last week.

They crowd each other, leaving little room to walk, but give more space inside.

"When I'm in the tent I'm not going to get wet ... and I can close the door, so my things won't be stolen," Antoine said.

Space is tight in the tarp-dominated camps as well. In Leogane, Holmes viewed camps whose populations are exploding as people cluster in areas where aid is being distributed. Aides said one camp grew from 30 to 3,000 people in the last week.

On the Port-au-Prince golf course, Destiron's family does not have much space either.

One of Destiron's walls consists mostly of the neighbor's lean-to.

Scrap wood for poles is getting hard to find, and newcomers arrive every day. One newcomer could no longer afford the rent for her home because nobody was buying clothes she sold in the street.


Destiron's 22-year-old son, Daniel Maxi, lay on a scavenged piece of dirty orange carpet atop flattened cardboard boxes wincing with fever and stomach pains.

Competing hymns from two weekend memorial services for the 200,000 earthquake dead mixed in the air as helicopters roared low overhead.

What would make this tarp more of a home? More material, perhaps. Beds for the kids. But what about something more permanent?

Destiron thinks for a moment, sweat streaming down her face.

"I would like to live in my house," she says. "That would be best."

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.