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Beth Carroll, who is Haiti's head of programs for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) says there are funerals everywhere you go. It brings a sense of overwhelming grief when that many people pass away, she says.

Family members of at least two CRS staff are among the Magnitude 7.2 earthquake.

The earthquake disaster has piled another level of suffering on the already stressed population, Carroll says.

The stressors she is referring to concern the difficult political, economic and social crisis that has been making life in Haiti almost unbearable for the past two years.

Over 2,200 people died and another 12,000-plus were injured in the initial 14 August quake. In addition, government estimates say 130,000 homes were damaged, including 50,000 which were completely destroyed.

"It is very visible in the affected communities, where 90 percent of homes, schools and churches were flattened in the hot spots," says Carroll.

"There is also significant damage which is less visible: a lot of water systems are damaged and no longer functioning, or the water is dirty and not usable."

CRS staff have been headquartered under tarps at a parking lot near their operations center in Les Cayes because of damage to their offices.

Following the tragedy, CRS has focused on distributing emergency shelter and hygiene kits. They are working hand in hand with the Haiti government to help Haitians rebuild their lives at home and discourage them from relocating to tent cities or sleeping in the streets.

While CRS maintains a stockpile of emergency supplies in Haiti, additional resources have come from the U.S. military, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the United Nations and World Vision.

Les Cayes is Haiti's third-largest city. Carroll says local hospitals and health clinics are doing the best they can with their available resources and are moving toward normalcy. They have also moved many patients to other hospitals away from the disaster area.

A major concern in the region is damage to schools and the effect this has on children. Children are already losing classroom time due to a number of factors: the pandemic, Haiti's dysfunctional political situation and widespread food insecurity.

"We would really like to see how we can prevent a late start to the school year, and many schools aren't going to be able to accept children," Carroll says. "They really can't afford to miss further class time."

CRS is working closely with Les Cayes Catholic diocese and the regional office for Caritas Internationalis, which recently lost its regional director to COVID-19.

Caritas has "started a very rapid response program, and we are supporting them and doing training with them despite the upheaval of a new (Caritas regional) director, an earthquake and a recent tropical storm (Grace) — and yet they are still out there doing their project," Carroll says.

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: Reuters

Their promise follows an investigation into international aid organisation Oxfam

The Times newspaper found Oxfam UK workers demanded sex for money following a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

The newspaper also accused Oxfam officials of financial mismanagement, harassment, bullying and negligent supervision.

"We are aware of The Times' investigation of Oxfam UK members and their conduct in the Haiti earthquake response," Catholic Relief Services Communications Director, Kim Pozniak, says.

"First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of these atrocious acts.

"We unequivocally condemn any act that violates the rights and human dignity of individuals."

Following The Times revelations, Catholic Agency For Overseas Development (CAFOD) dismissed a former Oxfam worker who joined CAFOD after working with Oxfam in Haiti.

Oxfam confirmed the employee was accused of sexual misconduct.

CAFOD Director Chris Bain said: "We were not aware of allegations made against this employee and received two references, as standard practice, at the time of recruitment."

David Adams, the Vice President of Missions for Cross Catholic Outreach, lived and worked in Haiti for years as Mission Director for the US Agency for International Development.

He says the majority of humanitarian aid workers in Haiti did not abuse their power in such an appalling way.

"Cross Catholic Outreach was deeply involved in the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake and observed that the great majority of humanitarian workers including our own staff responded to the needs of the vulnerable with nothing but love and compassion," he said.

"We deliberately select staff with work experience in Haiti who understand the cultural context and underlying causes of poverty rather than aid workers who accept short-term positions moving from one country or disaster situation after another."

Other Catholic aid organisations who work in Haiti also say that they have protocols for aid workers and partners in international development.

These protocols are intended to ensure the protection of the vulnerable people they serve.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) say their protocol includes a whistleblower system and a protection training course.

All CRS employees and partners must complete the course.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Crux
• Image: Catholic News Agency

About 200,000 people died in the 7.0 magnitude quake which displaced over a million others.

Removing the TPS will affect between 50,000 and 60,000 people who sought refuge in the United States (US).

The US is giving the Haitians until July 2019 to leave the country.

Ashley Feasley, who is the Director of the Migration Policy and Public Affairs at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, says the Bishops are "extremely concerned about what's going to happen to these individuals and their families."

Many Haitians have built new lives in the US.

About 6,200 have mortgages and 27,000 have US-born children.

The TPS policy allows people, who are unable to live safely or return home because of issues like armed conflict and natural disasters, to stay in the US while the situation in their home country resolves.

The US feels the situation in Haiti has improved enough for the TPS refugees to go home.

"Significant steps have been taken to improve the stability and quality of life for Haitian citizens, and Haiti is able to safely receive traditional levels of returned citizens," Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke says.

"Haiti has also demonstrated a commitment to adequately prepare for when the country's TPS designation is terminated."

The opposite view is held by David Quinn, a Catholic missionary who has lived in Haiti for the past two years.

Whether Haiti is able to support an influx of 60,000 people is a question that hasn't been resolved, he claims.

He says Haiti has not recovered from the earthquake or from the Category 5 Hurricane Matthew which further devastated the country a year ago.

In his view, Haiti is ill-equipped to provide for the people who already live there, let alone the tens of thousands who left seven years ago.

"They have never recovered from the earthquake from what I can see," Quinn says.

"They've cleaned up some things here and there, but as far as returning to what they had before? Not even close. Their economy hasn't improved since the earthquake, it's been continuing to degrade, and many, many people are without work yet."

Quinn says in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, people are still living in "tents and tin boxes".

He points out that most people subsist off a "pittance of an income and a really poor diet."

Unemployment is already high and adding a further 60,000 people to the mix is going to cause further difficulty.

"How are they going to feed themselves?" he wonders.

He notes the government was not prepared to handle the earthquake's aftermath and did little to help its own people.

Most work to improve living conditions has been done by non-profit and charitable organisations, he says.

Source

• Haiti Libre
• Vox
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Oxfam America

Regis University in Denver presented Lacey the Opus Prize. The prize includes a cash award of one million dollars.

Lacey's organisation, called "Mercy Beyond Borders," provides educational and economic help as well as job training to over 1,400 displaced women and girls every year. Read more

Poverty certainly exists in the U.S., but the percentage and severity of poverty in Haiti is far worse.

According to the U.N.'s World Food Program, 2.5 million Haitians live in extreme poverty - on less than $1.90 a day. Approximately 100,000 children under five years of age suffer from severe malnutrition. Fewer than 50 percent of Haitian households have access to safe water, and 75 percent do not have adequate sanitation (see: http://bit.ly/1lW0NBf).

The ultimate causes of Haiti's misery are rooted in human greed and power, says retired Webster University professor Bob Corbett, whom I contacted.

Having visited Haiti over 50 times in support of various development projects, Corbett explained that much of Haiti's suffering is rooted in French colonial exploitation and slave labor, Haitian elites' continuation of similar exploitation after independence, the international boycott of slave-holding nations against the first black republic, the imposed payment to France for repatriated lands of former slave owners, and the 1915 invasion of U.S. Marines accompanied by a 23 year American occupation of Haiti. Even to this day certain U.S. policies negatively dominate Haiti.

According to the Climate Risk Index, Haiti is rated the third most affected nation to extreme weather events. The massive 2010 earthquake that virtually leveled Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, killed more than 220,000 people and destroyed or damaged nearly 4,000 schools (see: http://cnn.it/1KpKmr5).

For the last three years Haiti has suffered from a bone-dry drought that has withered up to 70 percent of crops in some areas, contributing to the threat of more than 1.5 million Haitians now facing malnutrition, according to the World Food Program.

Enter Hurricane Matthew!

According to the BBC (see: http://bbc.in/2dNudBy) approximately 900 people have been killed by this recent hurricane. And parts of Haiti's south have experienced "complete destruction" according to aid workers.

Catholic Relief Services is on the ground in Haiti helping in towns like Jeremie where their workers report tremendous destruction with nearly everyone out of water.

Kindly make as generous a donation as possible to CRS' emergency work in Haiti (see: http://bit.ly/2eHjRVp).

Bread for the World's director of government relations, Eric Mitchell, asked that readers please email and call their two U.S. senators and congressperson (Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121) urging them to pass a State Foreign Operations Bill that robustly increases the USAID budget for Haiti, as well as for other extremely poor nations.

An additional and more personal way of helping this long suffering nation is to establish a sister-parish relationship between your parish and a parish in Haiti. If your diocese is not twinned with a Haitian diocese, Dr. Mortel, M.D. (missions@archbalt.org) from the Archdiocese of Baltimore's mission office would be glad to help facilitate a twinning arrangement.

And here's yet another way you and your parish can help the poorest country in the Americas: Purchase Fair Trade coffee from Haitian growers by going to http://www.serrv.org/product/mountain-bleu/coffee-tea).

Always trying so hard to set a Christ-like example for the Catholic Church and world, Pope Francis is sending $100,000 in initial emergency aid to help the hurricane ravaged Caribbean region, particularly Haiti (see: http://bit.ly/2djrqk8).

The Holy Father's donation is being made through the papal charitable office Cor Unum, which means "One Heart."

May we pray and build a world that reflects the oneness in heart that God wills for all of his children.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net

The city of Les Cayes and coastal towns and villages in the south west of Haiti experienced the most destruction.

Les Cayes and surrounding areas are the focus of concern for Catholic Relief Services.

Matthew hit the island with 145-mile-per-hour winds.

It has reduced from a category four to a category three storm but may strengthen again to a category four storm when it hits the Bahamas and Florida.

It has so far claimed the lives of 11 people in Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Forecasters expect Matthew to dump up to 40 inches of rain in some areas.

Catholic Relief Service communications manager, Kim Pozniak, said Les Cayes landslide potential is high.

She added staff are troubled over the well-being of residents who decided to stay in their homes despite calls to evacuate.

"I was told by staff in Les Cayes yesterday that the government was going around with megaphones to alert people.

"But many decided to stay put to protect their homes and belongings.

"We've heard that some people did not think the storm would be as severe as predicted," Pozniak said.

She said Chris Bessey, Catholic Relief Service country director, had been in contact with CRS staff in Les Cayes, despite disruptions in electrical and internet service.

"Trees were knocked down and also there was some flooding already," she said.

Source

• The Tablet
• www.bostonglobe.com