Prison Outbreak In Arcahaie
According to inspector Garry Desrosiers, Yvener Carélus, the prisoner who caused the escape is a specialist. According to the inspector, this individual, who was arrested for his implication in cases of kidnapping, was already involved in other prisoner escapes in the country. He is also the presumed murderer of the policeman Fritz Gérald, 52 years old, said the communications manager of the PNH.
Out of the 266 prisoners who were incarcerated in Arcahaie, only 93 remain. A total of 173 others have fled, whose more than hundred have been recaptured. The police spokesman gave a clear warning to anyone who would try to help these fugitives.
A policeman assigned to the civil prison of Arcahaie is currently in isolation and suspected of being implicated in the escape, said Inspector Gary Desrosiers. He reassured the population that there was only a rifle taken by the escapees, contrary to what circulated in the press.
"The weapons of the prison are still there," he said. He also stated that the 93 prisoners staying in the prison of Arcahaie were transferred to another detention center, while a complete search of the Arcahaie prison was underway.
It is official: China is ready to bring electricity to Haiti with solar and wind energy
A 1.2 billion dollar contract was signed with China to bring electricity to all of the Republic of Haiti using wind and solar energy.
The Haitian delegation, led by Planning minister Aviol Fleurant, initialed this agreement with the Chinese, whose Bank of China will forward 85 % of the total cost of the project, while the Haitian government will contribute 15%.
According to the Minister of Planning and External Cooperation, the wind and solar systems, once installed, will supply all the country with electrical energy.
Taking advantage of the sun’s rays, which sweep the territory permanently, and the wind, which blows in strategic places, will allow Haiti to become autonomous when it comes to electrical energy. This will enable the country to resort much less to oil for all its needs. Such a project will establish the first stage of progress towards a complete quality of life improvement and social well-being for all Haitian citizens.
U.N. Plans to Pay 400 millions US to Victims of Cholera Outbreak It Caused in Haiti
24 Oct. 2016
"About $200 million of the package is meant for what United Nations officials call “material assistance” to families and communities that were most affected. (The other $200 million would help pay for cholera eradication and improved sanitation.) The officials avoid the term “compensation” partly over fear among donors that it could set a precedent.
But the United Nations does not have the money it needs for the proposed package,
Dr. Nabarro said the $200 million for payouts could be money for families of the dead — it would amount to roughly $21,000 for each of the estimated victims. Or it could be spent on helping the hardest-hit communities, with benefits such as scholarships or health insurance.
In the end, said Dr. Nabarro, who is one of six candidates vying to be the next head of the World Health Organization, it will depend on what donor nations are willing to pay for.
The official rollout of the package, expected in the coming weeks, is designed in part to repair the damage that cholera has done to the reputation of the United Nations, which regularly presses governments around the world to pursue accountability, and to help Mr. Ban’s legacy in particular."
CHOLERA IN HAITI
UN human rights expert: “UN lawyers undermine a just solution for the victims of cholera in Haiti”
Posted on the Internet by United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner
Republished by AlterPresse
United Nations human rights expert Philip Alston claimed today that flawed and unfounded legal advice provided by the UN lawyers is preventing the Organization from accepting responsibility for the cholera outbreak that UN peacekeepers caused in Haiti in 2010.
“The UN’s explicit and unqualified denial of anything other than a moral responsibility is a disgrace,” Alston said today. “If the United Nations bluntly refuses to hold itself accountable for human rights violations, it makes a mockery of its efforts to hold Governments and others to account,” he noted.
Cholera was brought to Haiti for the first time in the country’s history by UN peacekeepers exactly six years ago. Almost 10,000 people have died as a result and around 800,000 have been infected, affecting close to ten per cent of the population.
In a report to the UN General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights criticized the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) for coming up with a “patently artificial and wholly unfounded legal pretense for insisting that the Organization must not take legal responsibility for what it has done.”
Alston also noted that OLA’s approach “has been cloaked in secrecy: there has been no satisfactory official explanation of the policy, no public attempt to justify it, and no known assessment of its consequences for future cases. This goes directly against the principles of accountability, transparency and the rule of law that the UN itself promotes globally.”
The Special Rapporteur noted that the Organization’s legal position appears to be largely explained by the approach of the United States of America, Haiti’s close neighbor and the main contributor to the UN’s peacekeeping budget.
“There are many reasons to believe that the reluctance by OLA to accept legal responsibility is consistent with views strongly pressed by the United States. Despite numerous requests to do so, the United States itself has never publicly stated its legal position on the responsibility of the UN for causing cholera in Haiti,” the expert said.
“Instead, it seems to have pressed the UN to adopt the position frequently taken by lawyers in the US that responsibility should never be accepted voluntarily, since it could complicate future litigation. But this rationale is completely inapplicable to the UN which enjoys absolute immunity from suit in national courts, and whose reputation depends almost entirely on being seen to act with integrity,” he noted.
Alston explained that, for six years, the UN ignored claims by victims for a remedy, focusing exclusively on measures to contain the outbreak, and only after his draft report leaked to the New York Times in August did the UN announce a ‘new approach’.
“The good news is that, under the courageous leadership of the UN Secretary-General and Deputy Secretary-General, the UN has recently set up the Haiti Cholera Response Multi-Partner Trust Fund (MPTF) with the goal of raising at least $400 million to greatly enhance its cholera eradication efforts and to assist victims of the disease. The bad news is that the UN has still not admitted factual or legal responsibility, and has not offered a legal settlement as required by international law,” said the independent human rights expert.
Alston said that even sympathetic and well-informed observers had asked him why it was so important that the UN admits legal responsibility. “Far from being a legal technicality, the OLA position has deep and lasting consequences, for Haiti and all future cases,” he noted.
“The current stance of its lawyers ensures that the UN will never admit its responsibility for introducing cholera,” Alston said. “And avoiding legal responsibility hinders the UN from learning lessons and making sure that the fatal mistakes made in Haiti are not repeated elsewhere.”
“If the UN wants to salvage its reputation and credibility, which have been severely damaged by the cholera crisis, and ensure that this case will not haunt it forever, it needs to do the right thing and admit legal responsibility. There is no justification, legal or otherwise, for any other course of action,” the Special Rapporteur concluded.
Vaccination against cholera will begin this week
More than 800,000 people will be vaccinated.
Two lots of vaccines, each with 500,000 units, arrived in Port-au-Prince. The Ministry of Health and the Population (MSPP) does not intend to lower its guard regarding cholera. It announced the launch of a vaccination campaign on November 8th with the anticipation of eliminating the epidemic by 2030.
A total of 800,000 people who are at least a year old will be affected. They will receive their dose free of charge. According to the ministry, nine municipalities of Grand’Anse, about seven municipalities in the South and other districts in the department of Nippes will be targeted due the fact that they were badly affected by Hurricane Matthew.
The vaccine is viewed as an additional intervention to save lives. However, it does not replace the government’s efforts to create a framework urging the population to respect hygiene procedures. This is in addition to ensuring the consumption of clean drinking water.
The vaccine will be administered to the population and will last up to four years. It is part of the entire effort to eradicate cholera in Haiti by 2020.
1,000 Housing Units in 100 Days: Food For The Poor Accelerates Rebuilding in Haiti After Hurricane Matthew
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. As the threat of disease spreads and desperate families cling to hope with no place to call home, Food For The Poor is launching a campaign with the support of donors to build 1,000 new housing units in 100 days in Haiti as the country recovers from Hurricane Matthew.
The new homes are in addition to repairing 450 homes that sustained damage in Haiti's southern peninsula.
"It is important that we move quickly so that people can get their lives back fast and start again. Through our donors here, the people of Haiti will know that they are not forgotten and that there is hope for the future," said Robin Mahfood, President/CEO of Food For The Poor. "It's going to be magnificent, believe me."
Acknowledging it is an aggressive goal, the charity's leader points to the need to give people hope and move them quickly into sturdy, safe shelter.
The charity sent funds recently for reconstruction to begin on the roofs of fishing villages and the 450 homes that need repair. Two months' worth of building supplies are in Haiti now and more are being shipped.
According to the latest assessments from teams on the ground, 13 of 29 fishing villages built by Food For The Poor in southwest Haiti were destroyed and must be rebuilt. Another 16 suffered significant damage such as loss of roofs, freezers and equipment and must be repaired. Funded and built through donations, the fishing villages provide deep-sea fishing opportunities for food and needed income to communities that previously struggled to get either one from the sea.
The goal is to have all the new housing units, repairs and fishing villages finished in 100 days.
Will Haiti Be Able to Recover From Hurricane Matthew?
Hurricane Matthew, the most powerful Caribbean hurricane in nearly a decade, ripped through Haiti early this month. The storm is believed to have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced thousands more. In light of the storm and its anticipated aftermath, authorities postponed until November presidential elections that had been scheduled for scheduled for Oct. 9, following repeated delays after a presidential election last year had been declared null. What parts of the country and sectors of Haiti’s economy are most in need of aid following the hurricane? How and from where will assistance to Haiti materialize? What does the further postponement of Haiti’s presidential elections mean for the country’s political stability, and when is it likely that a vote will finally be held?
According to Kenneth Merten, Haiti special coordinator and deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs: “There are currently 1.4 million Haitians in need of humanitarian assistance following Hurricane Matthew. The top priority is to provide food, safe drinking water and other relief commodities to communities cut off by the hurricane. Other priorities include mitigating the spread of cholera, developing a comprehensive shelter strategy and determining additional humanitarian needs. USAID is providing nearly $14 million for initial relief assistance in the Caribbean and is working with partners and the government of Haiti to provide critical food assistance and relief supplies to hard-hit areas in Haiti’s southwestern peninsula. Together, USAID and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are ramping up cholera response activities to help prevent the spread of the disease in the aftermath of the storm. With the government of Haiti, the two U.S. government agencies are also working to re-establish cholera surveillance and reporting systems in affected areas in order to facilitate strategic and coordinated responses to potential cholera outbreaks.
The United States reiterates its belief that democratic elections are the only path for Haiti to return to constitutional rule in order to address the many urgent issues facing the country. Haiti is recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. We call on all actors to remain peaceful and to refrain from any action that hinders either disaster recovery activities or the organization of credible and timely elections. The United States supports the efforts of the government of Haiti to pursue these objectives. We support the CEP’s decision by the Provisional Electoral Council to assess Hurricane Matthew’s impact on Haiti’s ability to conduct credible elections. The United States looks forward to transparent, credible, and fair elections in Haiti on Nov. 20.”
Raymond Joseph, former ambassador of Haiti to the United States: “By far, Haiti’s Greater South region suffered the bulk of the damage. Parts of the Western department, which includes Port-au-Prince, as well as the Artibonite and the Northwest were also affected. About 80 percent of the houses in cities on the southwestern peninsula are roofless. The countryside of one of the most verdant parts of Haiti now looks bare. The people must brace for famine resulting from uprooted gardens and the loss of cattle. Also, a spike of cholera will complicate matters. Roads and bridges must be rebuilt. Electricity and clean water must be provided. With help from the United States, Latin America, Canada, the European Union and fewer NGOs than after the 2010 earthquake, some areas in the interior have been reached by helicopters making drops of provisions and water. But the situation turned ugly when gangs attacked truckloads of supplies.
The Dominican military had to return home with its fleet of vehicles reportedly loaded with $12 million worth of produce and equipment. Nationalists blamed President Privert for the Dominican military on Haitian soil. Postponing the elections was logical and accepted by all. But there’s trouble with the recent announcement of the vote to be held Nov. 20, with a second round scheduled Jan. 29. Final results for the presidential vote won’t be known until Feb. 20. Nothing is said about the date for swearing in the new president. It was generally expected that the Feb. 7 constitutional date for power transfer would be kept. Accusing President Privert of hoarding power, six justices of Haiti’s Supreme Court published a letter calling for delaying the elections and for a judge of the court to assume the presidency in accordance with the 1987 Constitution. Amended in 2011, that charter no longer provides for such a solution. Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Peter Mulrean says his government backs the November elections to allow for a democratically elected president and a new legislature to deal with pressing problems after the passage of Matthew.”