Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
The world has been swept up in the large scale images of death and grief from Haiti since the January earthquake devastated the poor island nation, where 200,500 people were killed, 1.5 million people were displaced and billions of dollars are needed for recovery.
But the tragedy of the Haitian situation comes in small doses as well. Like when two children in a refugee camp were killed after heavy rains caused a wall to tumble down on tarp-covered shanties.
Kesnel Joseph, 8 months, and Kika Leus, 2, were killed, when rain caused the wall to collapse at the Terrain Acra camp in the Delmas neighborhood. Enrique Joseph, a police officer and father of Kesnel, mourned his child, saying he would have moved had he known the wall was so unstable.
More than 1.6 million people now live in temporary housing on the island.
International donors have promised $5.3 billion over two years to rebuild the island but less than 10 percent has been delivered.
A type of Catch-22 has delayed much of the giving, according to analysts.
Some nations who have pledged aid fear their money being wasted or stolen since Haiti has a reputation for government corruption, so they require action plans and blueprints providing detail on how money will be spent before releasing the funds.
Government and non-governmental organization officials say, however, that they have had great difficulty providing the requested plans without being able to find out which sectors of the the public infrastructure need the most help and how to best provide it, which needs funding.
Meanwhile, the threats of hurricanes through the summer continue to feed fears that the Joseph family won't be the last to mourn the death of loved ones.