In no case may the House of Deputies or the Senate be dissolved or adjourned, nor shall the terms of their members be extended.

On Sunday, January 11, 2015 the term of 10 Senators will come to an end and according to the article 111-8, their term cannot be extended. Therefore, on Monday, January 12, 2015, the Haitian Senate will not have a quorum to conduct any session and ipso facto, we will be observing the caducity of the Haitian Parliament.

It is unlikely that the electoral law will be voted in the Senate this year and on the second Monday of January 2015, the Haitian Senate will be dysfunctional.

In any negotiation, it cannot be my way or no way, take the highway! Once we are in a negotiation, we have to give and take and meet each other half way. And this will help us answering this question: what is politic? Politic is the science of compromise.

Clearly, Haiti is heading to a general election on Sunday, Nov 29, 2015! Our advice to anyone in the field: do not try to influence the outcome of the election; it will back fire and this time, whoever responsible will be charged. This nonsense needs to stop. Also, to the sectors that will be sending a new member to the NEW CEP; please, do not send novice, send knowledgeable people. If you cannot find 9 people who have electoral experience, use the Haitian Diaspora as a resource. It is not acceptable to send someone who never voted before in the CEP, it is not acceptable to send someone who never worked or volunteered his/her time in the electoral process. In this crucial election, there is no room for amateur,
professional and experts only.

ARTICLE 289:

Awaiting the establishment of the Permanent Electoral Council provided for in this Constitution, the National Council of Government shall set up a Provisional Electoral Council of nine (9) members, charged with drawing up and enforcing the Electoral Law to govern the next elections, who shall be designated as follows:

1. One for the Executive Branch, who is not an official;

2. One for the Episcopal Conference;
3. One for the Advisory Council;
4. One for the Supreme Court;
5. One for agencies defending human rights, who may not be a candidate in the elections;
6. One for the Council of the University;
7. One for the Journalists Association;
8. One for the Protestant religions;
9. One for the National Council of Cooperatives.

Susan P. Whit | December 6, 2012.

Yesterday’s New York Times features an article, “Trying to Close Orphanages Where Many Aren’t Orphans at All,” about the plight of impoverished children in Haiti and the government’s intention to reduce the use of orphanages. To most Americans, the term “orphan” means a child with no parents, however that’s not the way the term is used in the world of international relief. A child who has lost one parent is considered, in aid lingo, an “orphan.” And as the Times article points out, in severely impoverished nations like Haiti, where 80% of the population lives below the poverty line (60% in abject poverty), orphans are created when parents despair of being able to feed and educate their children.

The high incidence of rape, lack of birth control, and the lack of economic opportunity means that many Haitian children are born to single mothers and cared for by their extended families. However, the 2012 earthquake killed or injured parents, separated them from their children, and demolished their homes. It also destroyed whatever systems adults had for keeping the pieces of their lives together. Cassandra, a four-year-old living with her mother in my neighborhood tent city, roused the neighbors with her crying one morning. She had awakened to find her mother gone, abandoning her to the care of passers by. The authorities were called but the mother was never found; relatives took the child in. After the earthquake gangs of street children roamed through Jacmel, clinging together in the absence of other caretakers. I saw them sleeping en masse under trees at the side of the road.

There’s money to be made from orphans. They are frequently exploited because they attract aid money, donations from kind-hearted foreigners, and the contributions of desperate parents. I’ve seen orphanages that were hell-holes: semi-naked children crammed into airless sheds, underfed, diseased and living without sanitation. Their parents – single mothers or fathers widowed when their wives died in childbirth or of disease – lived in displaced persons camps and worked in the city. They were simply unable to care for their offspring. Paid pittances themselves, they gave tiny sums to these “orphanages” to take their children in. I met a few mothers stopping by occasionally to see their toddlers. But even better equipped orphanages practiced another kind of heartlessness: children imprisoned in sterile cribs, neglected by the staff with the tills.

By contrast, Tiny Hands and Feet is a beautifully orphanage run by American missionaries in Jacmel. One of their workers found what appeared to be a dead baby on the doorstep. Wrapped in a rag was a starving, ashen newborn. Inquiries in the neighborhood revealed that a young woman was left destitute with a newborn infant when her husband died suddenly of cholera. She drifted from the house of one friend after another, sleeping on the floor until she wore out her welcome. Starving and thirsty herself, she had no milk for the child and knew it would soon die. The orphanage seemed the only way to save it: in fact, it saved them both. The staff at Tiny Hands and Feet invited her to stay, nurse her infant, and earn her keep caring for other babies. I saw her sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, nourished, nursing, and grateful for help.

But not many parents are so lucky. Child slavery – legal in Haiti – is another option for the severely impoverished. They indenture their children as servants to wealthier households in the hope that they will be fed. Those children rarely receive an education but neither do they starve. They get enough food to be productive until they reach their teens, at which time they are released, illiterate, to fend for themselves.

Knowing how poverty destroys families and results in the abuse of children, our Haitian partners were determined to find ways to help parents keep their children. That is why we have a feeding program and provide emergency food kits during food crises. If parents know their children will be fed, they allow them to participate in our educational programs. And if their children bring food for whole family, their position in that family becomes more secure. The temptation to remove kids from school to make them work is less acute. Eventually even illiterate parents come to understand that the more education their children have, the better their chances for survival. Every year of school improves people’s opportunities to support themselves. Haitian parents want their children to have better futures just like we do. HEI can only make small inroads into the heartbreaking conditions in Haiti but every child fed, schooled, and secure for another year is a source of hope. Thanks to our donors and our Haitian partners, 120 children in Jacmel are better off.

By Oliver Ortega | Globe Correspondent | August 02, 2014.

A Harvard University health worker slain in Haiti last week shortly after landing at the capital city’s airport may have been the latest victim in a string of violent robberies targeting American travelers, authorities said.

Haitian leaders announced Friday that a coterie of police and government agencies, under the direction of the island nation’s prime minister, would work to tighten security at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince. It is a move, said Marjorie A. Brunache, Haiti’s general consul in Boston, that appears to have been spurred by the killing of Myriam Saint Germain, the 40-year-old Everett mother gunned down as she traveled from the airport to her coastal hometown.

A family spokesman said Saint Germain was stuck in traffic July 25 on her way to Les Cayes, her hometown in the south of Haiti, when men in a neighboring car asked her and a relative who was driving to hand over their money and valuables. After they complied, Saint Germain was shot in the chest, said the Rev. Guival Mercedat, the family spokesman, who said the account of the robbery and killing was provided by the uninjured relative.

Saint Germain’s body arrived in Boston on Friday, Mercedat said. A funeral is expected to be held Aug. 9 at Jubilee Christian Church in Mattapan.

In an advisory issued in June, the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince warned that travelers had reported being followed from the airport and robbed by armed bandits on motorcycles. In December, there were at least six cases of US citizens being robbed shortly after leaving the airport, a surge attributed to holiday travel, according to the embassy.

Warnings about travel to the Caribbean nation are likely to resonate with particular intensity in Greater Boston, which has the nation’s third-largest Haitian population.

On Friday, Saint Germain’s sister, Michaelle Saint Germain, recalled plans she and her sister had made to visit family in Haiti for Christmas. They harbored dreams, she said, of retiring in their native country. Saint Germain returned home each year, her sister said, bringing gifts and money for family and friends, and donations for the poor. “She was passionate about this,” the sister said.

Saint Germain emigrated from Haiti with her family when she was 16. She attended Fisher College for a few semesters but didn’t graduate. Instead, she studied to become a health aide at a technical school.

It was an occupation she held for the past 15 years, with the last five spent at Harvard, recording patients’ vital statistics and leading them to doctors, her sister said.

She had two sons, Elijah, 7, and Max, 11. In her free time, she volunteered at her church, Jubilee Christian, working mostly with children.

Saint Germain also took technology classes at the Harvard Bridge education and training program. Tamara Suttle, the program coordinator, said Saint Germain was a beloved member of the Harvard community.

Though she maintained ties to Haiti, Saint Germain also loved her adopted country, Mercedat said. She made sure to vote in local elections and to participate in community organizations, he said.

Family and relatives said they were surprised Saint Germain fell victim to armed robbery in Haiti. Michaelle Saint Germain said that neither she nor her sister had ever been attacked during their previous visits there. Jean Jacques, Saint Germain’s friend of 15 years, said his yearly trips were also uneventful.

Mercedat, a Christian minister in Everett who went to high school with Saint Germain, said security in Haiti had improved in recent years. But when violent crime happens, the minister said, the Haitian government tries to avoid publicizing it.

“It used to be worse, but from what I understand, it seems like the government is pushing to have people go back,” he said. “But when things happen, they try not to publish it.”

But Brunache, the general consul, said people sometimes wrongly perceive that Haiti is crime-ridden. The government has made strides in making the country safer, particularly for visitors of Haitian origin, she said.

“We need the diaspora,” she said. “They have family here and resources that are good to have.”

Oliver Ortega can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ByOliverOrtega.

…and the HaitiChildren family is there.

The photo (above) is a bit odd for HaitiChildren. Not the bubbly children theme we like to update and share with you but this is very appropriate as it is protecting our children. It is a photo of mosquito nets purchased to protect the orphanage from a mosquito epidemic in Haiti right now. The epidemic is called CHIKUNGUNYA. The staff at M&S has been efficient in their efforts to protect themselves and the children. We are grateful for them. We have been touched by it though as some of our employees in other areas and their families have been bitten and it sounds like a scary ordeal and very uncomfortable for all. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone that has been impacted and hope for a speedy recovery. The unfortunate thing for us is that the market is taking advantage of this situation and cost are so high for these mosquito nets, bug spray, and fumigation of our properties that we trying to find the extra funding to protect our beloved Haitian family. We are fortunate for everyone’s support emotionally and financially.

. . . . . .

Bonjour,

I am currently living in Cyvadier right outside of Jacmel and there has been an alarming number of community members, friends, children, and colleagues coming down with the vector-disease, especially due to this years’ rainy season that brought torrential rains for over the past two months. Numbers being reported of cases do not represent the actuality the MSSP released a report saying over 5,500 cases, but other sources are claiming realistically the numbers are closer to 32,000 in Haiti already and believe that at least 1/3 will become infected.

We are mobilizing ground efforts for community clean-ups of stagnant water and trash — the mosquito’s breeding grounds. We will also be putting out an appeal this week for assistance to distribute awareness and prevention material and for mosquito nets for newborns and the elderly.

While Chikunguna (CHIKV) isn’t fatal, it can cause major health complications for those at high-risk. Two ex-pat families have small children who suffered from seizures yesterday as a result of the symptoms of the disease. The children were taken to Jacmel’s Saint Michael hospital where they received no help because there is no treatment for it.

There is otherwise NO visible assistance on the ground or awareness campaigns yet this disease is so debilitating and painful and for some individuals can be detrimental to their livelihoods.

In late April I returned to NYC from Haiti and ended up the hospital the first week back with CHIKV symptoms. I had told them I had come from Haiti but they hadn’t been informed of the breakout. Currently I know Florida hospitals are equipped to test for CHIKV and have awareness material some even in creole. This disease carried by mosquitos has already made its way across the Caribbean and has several hundred cases reported in the states already. People and communities stateside need to start educating themselves as well!

Kara E. Lightburn
Executive Director
Social Tap, Inc. | The Haiti Initiative (THI)
“Tapping Resources for Community Capacity-Development”

Following is an article about the plight of hunger in Haiti. Having been in the area for 20 years and starting our presence there with a feeding program, we understand the importance of helping the community around us as well as maintaining schools and our orphanage. With the help of The Vibrant Village Foundation we are combating hunger in the Paulette and Phaeton areas of Haiti by providing an average of 960 meals per day (28,800 per month) to the community. It is something we are so proud to partner with The Vibrant Village Foundation on.

Drought Threatens Population in the Northwest of Haiti

Reuters - BY AMELIE BARON - April 8, 2014. PORT-DE-PAIX, Haiti - Only cactus grows along the dirt road fringing arid fields on the way to the isolated village of Bas des Moustiques, on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Port-de-Paix in Haiti. A lack of rain in recent months has killed crops in Haiti’s poorest region, and left people struggling to survive.

Read Full Article »

Hello to our North American Family! The children wanted me to send their hugs and say thank you! Merci! They are working hard at school and playing harder at recess!

How International Organizations Are Carrying The Poorest Nation In The Americas

International Business Times - By Patricia Rey Mallén - March 24 2014.

Four years after a devastating earthquake that wrecked the country in early 2010 and killed up to as many as 160,000 people, Haiti still bears scars. With a failing government and a damaged economy, the impoverished Caribbean nation has increasingly depended upon its wealthy and powerful neighbor to the north, the United States.

Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, according to the World Bank, has depended upon foreign aid for decades, but since the 2010 natural

catastrophe, that dependence has skyrocketed. The Port-au-Prince government is failing, the country remains in ruins — and desperately needed infrastructure and reconstruction projects are firmly in foreign control.

“There have been advances … but they are slow,” said Jose Agustín Aguerre, director of the Haiti department at the Washington DC-based Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), one of the international organizations that are overseeing the aid programs in the country.

After the earthquake, the IADB, which created a specific department for Haiti, canceled the country’s outstanding debt, which amounted to some $487 million. Subsequently, the organization decided to donate money to Haiti,

rather than issue loans: every year until 2020, Haiti will received $200 million to use for improvements in transportation, energy, water, education, agriculture and development of the private sector.

Aguerre’s principal job is to negotiate with the Haitian government to determine what projects will receive what amount of funding. Subject to mutual approval, such plans are carried out by Haiti with the help of IADB’s 100-person staff in Port-au-Prince, and 50-person team in Washington.

The IADB is one of several international organizations that have taken an all-hands-on-deck approach to rebuilding Haiti from their headquarters in the U.S. capitol, along with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

According to the United Nations, IADB was the largest donor of funds to Haiti between 2010 and 2012, with $491.7 million - an amount greater than even that provided by several major western countries, including Canada ($374.8 million), the U.S. ($298.1 million) and Spain ($292.5 million.). The World Bank ranks fifth, with $287.4 million in donations, with the IMF at ninth at $152.4 million.

The World Bank and the IMF have a similar modus operandi as the IADB — projects in need of funding are negotiated with the Haitian government and approved by their senior officials in Washington.

However, some have criticized the bureaucratic system as inefficient and slow.

Robert Fatton, professor of political science at the University of Virginia, lamented that only a minimum portion of donations earmarked for Haitian development actually reach the Haitian government and local entities, although he conceded that corruption at high levels in Port-au-Prince’s government complicates matters.

Meanwhile, Haitians suffer under grinding poverty.

According to a group called Haiti Partners, a network of educators, church and community leaders, which engages in development projects in Haiti, gross national income per capita in Haiti amounts to $660, about one-half

the total found in Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the Americas. More than three-quarters (78 percent) of Haitians live in poverty, that is, surviving on less than $2 a day, while more than half (54 percent) live in

extreme poverty (less than $1 per day). In rural areas things are even worse; poverty and extreme poverty rates are estimated to be 84 percent and 69 percent, respectively.

In addition, more than two-thirds of the workforce do not have formal jobs, and one-half of children under the age of five are malnourished.

Link to original article here »

One hospital is an advertisement for the world’s vow to rebuild Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The other is a cesspool of broken promises.

By: Catherine Porter Columnist, The Star - Published on Mon Feb 17 2014.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — If you want to be inspired by progress in Haiti, drive 1.5 hours north to the new University Hospital of Mirebalais.

If you want to be depressed by the dismal state of affairs four years after the 7.0-Richter earthquake, go downtown to the old University Hospital of Haiti.

I visited both last month. At the first facility, I found bright new buildings covered with solar panels, patients wandering around clean leafy courtyards with trickling fish ponds, and an American technician teaching employees how to work a gleaming new $700,000 CT scanner — the first in a public hospital in Haiti.

At the second, known locally as the general hospital, I watched the body of a young man be wheeled down a urine-soaked brick lane between broken buildings and then hoisted onto a jumbled pile of cadavers inside a shipping container. That is the hospital’s — and city’s — current morgue.

Patients were getting blood tests outside in a canvas tent. Abandoned kids sat tied to their rusty cribs inside a series of plywood buildings that for three years now have served as the hospital’s pediatric unit.

Excerpt of interview with Paul Farmer. See entire article at here »

UMCOR is a US registered non-profit 501(c) 3 organization dedicated to alleviating human suffering and providing humanitarian relief around the globe. UMCOR has partnered with HaitiChildren for many years donating much needed supplies such as diapers, health kits, school kits and most recently 245 layette kits for babies. UMCOR not only helps take care of our precious children but those also in desperate need, Haiti’s most vulnerable and abandoned children. HaitiChildren sends a HUGE thank you to UMCOR for partnering with us in our mission to protect and provide for Haiti’s most vulnerable children! UMCOR is in need of volunteers to create the kits they donate to HaitiChildren and others in need. To learn more, click here.

Al Jazeera | by Cath Turner | February 10, 2014.

The numbers associated with the Haiti earthquake in January 2010 are still hard to comprehend: more than two-million affected; 222,750 killed; 80,000 bodies missing; 188,383 houses destroyed or damaged; 1.5 million displaced.

In the aftermath of that devastating event, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) recognised the enormous emotional and psychological damage inflicted on millions of Haitians, and carried out an assessment of psychosocial needs. The staff interviewed 950 families in displacement camps over a four month period, from May to August of 2010.

Before the earthquake, there was no mental health system in the country. There was a great deal of social stigma surrounding mental health. “Psychologist” was a dirty word.

Alwrich Pierre Louis from IOM explains: “When we discuss mental health with them, the person says, ‘No, I don’t have any kind of problem, maybe it’s another thing. You think that I’m crazy but you’re wrong.

In the days and weeks and months after the earthquake, millions of Haitians were confronted with death, trauma, loss, grief, survivor guilt and fear.And for many, those still haven’t gone away.

Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in tent cities, four years after the quake. The IOM study revealed anxiety and depression are compounded by concerns about overcrowding, lack of clean water and facilities, fear of sexual assault, gangs and a lack of police.

IOM found thirty-two percent of those surveyed said they had experienced at least one of the three major distress indicators: panic attacks, serious withdrawal or suicide attempts.

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the maximum, 60 percent of those interviewed said their pain level was 5.

When participants were asked to list their three main needs, more than 70 percent said housing, health was second, followed by work and security.

So where can Haitians go for help? What mental health services are available? The short answer is, not many.

IOM told Al Jazeera that mental health has never been a priority for the Haitian government and it still isn’t. 15 percent of its budget is allocated to health; less than 5 percent of that is spent on mental health.

This was painfully obvious when our crew visited a state-run mental health hospital in Port-au-Prince. According to Dr Louis Marc Jeanny Girard, the facility can only take in 112 patients, and more Haitian psychiatrists are needed across the board.

He says the most common conditions associated with the earthquake are agitation, delusional and bipolar disorders, epilepsy, schizophrenia and drug-related mental disorders.

One of the most persistent obstacles to better mental health services is deeply entrenched in Haitian culture: religion.

Alwrich from IOM explains “Maybe they don’t have the capacity or inclination to go see a psychologist. So instead, they go to see a person of voodoo.”

But mental health professionals say they’re committed to working with religious people because they have such large connections and influence in their communities. They are making inroads.

IOM staff say it took a devastating earthquake to push mental health out into the open and now there’s less stigma and more mental health support.

But hundreds of thousands of people still aren’t getting the help they need. There are growing pleas to the Haitian government to increase its investment in the mental health system and make it a priority. But no-one is sure if anyone is listening. #