Above: US Congressman John Conyers
By the Caribbean Journal staff
The United States must ensure that all aid funding to Haiti is allocated in a “transparent manner and in close consultation with Haitian authorities,” according to US Congressman John Conyers, a Democrat from the Michigan.
Conyers issued a statement to mark the three-year anniversary of the quake.
“We join with the people of Haiti in this painful moment of reflection, mourning, and loss,” he said. “We also recall the heroic efforts to assist the earthquake’s victims carried out by Haitians as well as international aid workers, and the extraordinarily generous outpouring of financial support from tens of millions of individuals, and from governments around the world. Unfortunately, there is also much work that needs to be done to heal and rebuild Haiti.”
Conyers pointed to data from the Office of the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, which calculated that only 62 percent of post-quake international donor funds have been spent, with less than 4 percent of those funds spent on permanent housing.
The latter comes “despite the enormous need for adequate shelter,” he said. “Funds promised for post-quake assistance need to be disbursed quickly and invested in sustainable projects so that ‘reconstruction’ can finally be a reality for Haiti.”
Conyers also mentioned Haiti’s ongoing cholera epidemic, one which several studies argue was brought to the country by UN peacekeepers from Nepal.
“Given the UN’s unfortunate responsibility in causing this pandemic, I initiated a letter to our Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, encouraging her to urge the United Nations to take a leading role in ridding Haiti of cholera,” he said. “That letter was signed by 104 of my colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The UN recently announced an initiative to expand its existing anti-cholera programme.
“I am heartened that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon supports the plan and has committed to help mobilize the resources needed to fund it,” he said. “However, to date, the implementation of the plan has been reputedly delayed and a mere 10 percent of the necessary funding has been secured.”
The Congressman said he called on the UN to “step up its efforts to secure the necessary funds to ensure that Haiti can quickly acquire the water and sanitation infrastructure that will stop the deadly spread of cholera.”