Two Years After The Earthquake, Where Did The Money Go? Human Rights Groups Urge Immediate Changes In The Recovery Effort

As Haiti marks the two-year anniver­sary of the dev­as­tat­ing Jan­u­ary 12, 2010 earth­quake, TransAfrica, Insti­tute Of Jus­tice & Democ­racy In Haiti, Let Haiti Live and The Cen­ter For Con­sti­tu­tional Rights are rec­om­mend­ing the imme­di­ate changes to recov­ery efforts  to ensure that crit­i­cal human rights con­cerns are addressed. Too many peo­ple have been left behind and too much money have been wasted to con­tinue with busi­ness as usual.

The groups rec­om­mend: (1) effec­tive over­sight of aid’s dis­tri­b­u­tion to hold pub­lic agen­cies and non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions (“NGOs”) account­able for the money they have received in the name of Haitians, and more efforts on Haiti-led recov­ery efforts; (2) increased atten­tion to build a jus­tice sys­tem which strength­ens rule of law for all Haitians, but espe­cially for Haiti’s poor and mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tion that have lit­tle access to jus­tice; (3) real­lo­ca­tion of funds spent on United nation’s sol­diers to secure basic ser­vices for Haitians, such as build­ing the clean water and san­i­ta­tion infra­struc­ture, nec­es­sary to con­trol the cholera epidemics.

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