América do Sul e Central

Rebuilding on Their Own

Published in Wednesday February 27th, 2013 In Opinion

Since 2007, Gratz has owned a home in New Orleans, and she was giving me what amounted to a tutorial on her next book subject: the rebuilding of the city post-Katrina. “Look at this,” she said, gesturing to storefronts. “This is one of the longest shopping streets in the country. There are residential and commercial buildings, and local stores and chain stores. Very little was done for streets like this because the big money went to the tourism districts,” she said. “This grew back organically.” Which, she believes, is the way it always happens.

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Rio’s Red Card

Published in Thursday February 14th, 2013

Should one sporting event mean losing your home? In one small but valuable corner of Rio the answer is a very loud: No. “Without a home you have nothing. And Vila Autódromo is my home, my life is here. If they take my home, they take my identity, my past.”

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Haiti’s road to reconstruction blocked by land tenure disputes

Published in Tuesday January 29th, 2013 In In the media

A practically non-existent land registry, fraudulent land titles, unclear processes for land transfer, and a tangle of bureaucracy have halted the road project and similar major international investments.

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Indigenous Squatters Resist Eviction in Brazil

Published in Monday January 14th, 2013 In In the media

Police in riot gear surrounded a settlement of indigenous people next to Rio de Janeiro’s storied Maracana stadium on Saturday, preparing to evict them as soon as an expected court order arrived. The site commander, police Lt. Alex Melo, explained officers were “waiting for the order, and understand it can come at any time.” But the order still had not arrived after a tense, daylong standoff.

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Haiti’s earthquake generated a $9bn response – where did the money go?

Published in Monday January 14th, 2013 In In the media

Saturday marked the third anniversary of the tragic earthquake in Haiti that claimed between 230,000 and 300,000 lives. The grim landmark has prompted much discussion about the struggles surrounding reconstruction and also some hope about what may come next.
Most observers agree that the international response to the quake was overwhelming. Haiti received an unprecedented amount of support: more than $9bn (£5.6bn) in public and private donations. Official bilateral and multilateral donors pledged $13bn and, according to the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, almost 50% of these pledges ($6bn) have been disbursed. Private donations are estimated at $3bn.

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Avoiding reality: Land, institutions and humanitarian action in post-earthquake Haiti

Published in Wednesday January 9th, 2013

The international aid response to the earthquake in Haiti is often spoken of as being unprecedented in its scale and in the nature of the challenges it faced. This paper in HPG’s “livelihoods and institutions” series suggests that most of the issues faced in Haiti were in fact common, if present to an unusual degree. This makes the aid response in Haiti a useful case study for understanding how aid agencies cope when emergency needs occur in the real, and highly imperfect, world.

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Haiti’s Long Road

Published in Wednesday January 2nd, 2013 In Opinion

On the eve of the third anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010, the country remains in a fragile state. Billions of dollars in aid and lofty promises to “build back better” have brought it only so far. A recent article by Deborah Sontag of The Times showed, in disheartening detail, the distance between hope and reality.

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Rebuilding in Haiti Lags After Billions in Post-Quake Aid

Published in Wednesday January 2nd, 2013 In In the media

There is a marked deflation of the lofty ambitions that followed the disaster, when the world aspired not only to repair Haiti but to remake it completely. The new pragmatism signals an acknowledgment that despite billions of dollars spent — and billions more allocated for Haiti but unspent — rebuilding has barely begun and 357,785 Haitians still languish in 496 tent camps.

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Haiti quake survivors face eviction from camps says Oxfam

Published in Wednesday December 12th, 2012 In In the media

Tens of thousands of homeless earthquake survivors living in camps sprawled across the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince are at risk of eviction, Oxfam said on Monday. Some 78,000 living in camps on property owned by schools and churches and on private land face eviction by landowners and local authorities wanting to reclaim their land. “Thousands of people are in a very precarious situation and at risk of finding themselves on the street with nowhere to go. This government should ensure the security and protection of displaced people against violence, intimidation and unlawful threats to evict families,” Andrew Pugh, Oxfam’s country director in Haiti, said in a statement.

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Tent camp evictions on the rise in Haiti

Published in Wednesday November 14th, 2012 In In the media

After the 2010 earthquake, 1.5 million Haitians were forced to live in makeshift tents. Almost three years later, these displaced Haitians are facing a new threat – eviction by alleged landowners and government officials. More than 360,000 people still live in tent camps, according to estimates by the Internal Organization for Migration (IOM). But Haitians who say they own the land these tent camps sit on argue that they should get their land back. And in many cases, the local government authorities are supporting the landowners’ cause. Click here to watch the video.

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