UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Office of Press Relations
For Immediate Release
January 24, 2023
PRESS RELEASE
United States Provides Additional $56.5 Million for Urgent
Humanitarian Needs in Haiti
Today, USAID Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman announced the United
States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is
providing an additional $56.5 million for the people of Haiti in response to the
country’s humanitarian crisis and cholera epidemic. Haiti’s alarming levels of
gang violence, including attacks on civilians, have prevented people from
accessing critical food, fuel, safe drinking water, and other basic supplies.
This funding will help partners meet urgent humanitarian needs of more than
868,800 people across Haiti by distributing medical supplies and medicines,
improving access to safe water, and bolstering health facility operations,
including cholera treatment centers – critical to slowing the spread of the
dangerous disease. The new assistance will also provide urgent food assistance,
as 4.7 million people face a severe food crisis, and will support gender-based
violence prevention and response services for the most vulnerable. Since USAID
deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team to Haiti in mid-October, it has
supported the provision of life-saving food assistance to 144,500 people and
transported more than 300 metric tons of health and hygiene supplies into the
country for partners combating cholera.
The United States continues to stand with the people of Haiti during this
challenging time. Since 2021, USAID has provided more than $228 million in life-
saving humanitarian assistance and earthquake recovery, risk reduction, and
resilience programming. USAID also continues to explore how we can partner
and work with local partners in Haiti to focus on advancing responsive and
accountable governance while promoting a prosperous and engaged citizenry, as
envisioned under the 10-year U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote
Stability. USAID will continue working in partnership with Haitians to save lives
and alleviate suffering caused by the humanitarian crisis and cholera epidemic.
(End of text)
National Center of Haitian Apostolate
REFLECTIONS - READING 4TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR A 29-01-
2023
Zephaniah 2, 3 +12-13; Psalm 146; 1 Corinthians 1, 26-31; Matthew
5, 1-12
Msgr. Pierre Andre Pierre
Today we meet Jesus at the beginning of his public mission in Galilee. St
Matthew presents us with his great sermon on the mountain. In eight striking
sentences, Jesus delivers the key teaching of the Gospel, the basic principles to
those who seek the kingdom of God. There are called the beatitudes.
The message of the Beatitudes is perhaps the most disconcerting, provocative,
and challenging page of the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is precisely the heart
of the Gospel itself. The rich, the arrogant, and the powerful feel self-satisfied:
they have what they want. But they find themselves dangerously closed in on
themselves and everything they have. Despite their possession, they are in
danger. They took the wrong path that is opposed to God. Jesus, instead,
praises the poor and those who suffer, not because they have little or nothing,
or they are persecuted, but because the poor, the humble, the kind,
and those who cry for the sake of others, are aware that they have nothing but
themselves to give. For this reason, they trust totally in God and in their
brothers. Jesus counted them among the blessed.
Blessed are those who are poor, suffering, and crying!
Jesus spends more time in his ministry comforting, healing, saving people,
and feeding the hungry. He cares for the poor. He fights all suffering and all
infirmities. God does not want poverty. Crying for food out of hunger does not
make you happy. If a person has pain and sorrow, he or she is not a blessed
person. But when we cry with tears in front of the misfortune, abomination,
and cruelty that people strike their brothers and sisters with, these are cries of
conversion and repentance.
Let us also remember that Jesus was talking to Jews who understood his
teaching. Like Zephaniah and the other Prophets, what He told them is to seek
God with all their hearts, to rely on God, to convert, and to trust the Lord their
God. Beatitude is then good news. People are meek, not because they are naive
or shy, but because they have a love with the power to defeat evil. Those who
have a pure heart, and who work for justice and peace, are the ones who seek
God. They are the blessed ones.
Jesus says clearly that detachment from worldly wealth opens the door to true
human fulfillment. Indeed, we are the stewards of the world’s riches, yet greed
disfigures the human soul and blocks the progress of Justice and Peace. On
the contrary, a healthy and sober use of the goods of the earth disposes the
heart to wisdom. We are called to seek a treasure much more fulfilling than
earthly riches. Beware therefore of the devastating effects of greed!
These beatitudes are the portrait of Jesus himself. He calls us to follow Him.
He invites us to seek the happiness of life where we will find it: in God and in
solidarity with people.
Kidnapping cases are on the rise, the
population is on their own
Lenz Bethferlyn Alparete
23 janvier
Kidnapping cases have been increasing in Haitian society for several
days. According to information available to our editorial staff, 22 cases
of kidnapping were recorded last week in Port-au-Prince.
The lines do not move in Haiti, the news has always been the same in the
country for a long time. Kidnapping, thefts, rapes, political instability, galloping
inflation, deterioration of living conditions form the backdrop of daily Haitian
life. Regarding insecurity, the cases identified in several areas of the
metropolitan region of Port-au-Prince are mostly produced under the helpless
gaze of the National Police.
Faced with the outbreak of acts of kidnapping, beleaguered citizens refuse to
silence their indignation. In exchanges that we had with citizens of the Haitian
capital, most deplore that this phenomenon has serious consequences on the
proper functioning of the country.
For Jean Joseph Steevenson, the very fashionable acts of kidnapping in
Haitian society are the result of the absence of a security plan from our
leaders.
« If the state authorities had a security plan and if the majority of our leaders
did not have close relations with gang groups, the phenomenon of kidnapping
would be eradicated in our society, » he said.
For a young student in Psychology at the State University of Haiti (UEH),
whom we had met at Avenue Christophe, the growing rise in kidnapping
simply testifies to the non-existence of the State.
“There is nothing to add on this subject. The phenomenon of kidnapping
which is in full swing in the country expresses the non-existence of our
leaders, basically, the non-existence of the State. We arrived in this situation
because of the participation of the international community in our policy which
imposes incompetent leaders on us hammered the young student.
Further on, a merchant whose relatives have been victims of kidnapping
deplores the fact that citizens are obliged to have the money to pay gang
groups in case their relatives are mown down by the infernal machine of
kidnapping.
A citizen met at rue du Champ-de-Mars, on condition of anonymity, informs
that there must be a change in this system in order to find a solution to this
phenomenon. If not, Haiti risks the worst.
If acts of kidnapping are increasing within Haitian society, this does not seem
to worry the Haitian authorities. On the contrary, they prioritize a history of
political consensus aimed at organizing elections without having any plan to
facilitate the task for voters.