Following is quoted from Sunday, January 16, 2011 http://www.jamaicaobserver.com
...former President Bill Clinton -- who co-chairs the 26-member Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) -- about equal representation on the IHRC from the international donors and Haiti? Does she realise that the IHRC is dominated by non-Haitian policy-makers and management to the point of provoking complaints over 'sovereignty' from the Haitian Cabinet?
President Clinton would have told the congresswoman of some of his own deep disappointments over the US failure to match DELIVERY of aid with PLEDGES made. By last year end, an official assessment had pointed to a mere 10 per cent delivery, at best, of the original US$9 billion identified as 'recovery' aid from the US and its allies.
The Haitian professor of sociology at Wesleyan University and author of The Prophet and Power -- Jean Bertrand Aristide, the International Community and Haiti, noted in a recent article in the Washington Post that of the estimated US$267 million doled out so far in more than 1,500 contracts, only 20 of those, worth US$4.03 million, or $1.60 out of every $100: have gone to Haitian firms. The rest went to US firms with 23 per cent awarded to two large American firms in "no-bid contracts..."
In the meanwhile, the BBC, as well as CNN and other leading US media continue to report on the nightmarish existence that an estimated one million Haitian earthquake victims continue to face every day and every night. They live in the most dehumanising conditions in make-shift tents where women and girls are routinely raped and are unable to get protection from whatever the designated security arrangements might be.
In more recent reports Amnesty International and the UK-based charity, Oxfam, have expressed deep concerns about the hellish survival conditions for more than 800,000 Haitians, huddled in these tents that offer no proper security and where criminality and sexual violence against women and girls have become a way of life.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Is-Caricom-too-timid-to-speak-up-for-Haiti-_8291609#ixzz1BDQLZ5nN
