The Race to Zero: How Prioritizing Closure of IDP Camps Aids and Abets Illegal and Forcible Evictions of Haitians

By Mark Snyder, International Action Ties

It has been several months since false promises were used to lure forty-three displaced families from their makeshift shelters in the camp at Barbancourt 17. The men, women and children living there had fled to the mostly vacant construction lot following the devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. After facing repeated threats from the purported landowner that they would be forcibly evicted, the welcome option of an alternative place to live was proposed. Despite what you might expect, it wasn’t the man who claimed to own the land where the internally displaced persons (IDPs) were living who finally succeeded in removing them. Instead, they were deceived by the leading agency for coordination and management of Haiti’s displaced people: the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The IOM convinced the IDPs to pack their things and leave in rented buses for what turned out to be a long and disappointing trip, one that ended with them sleeping on the ground outside a police station. With these actions, the IOM side-stepped Haitian law and ignored the Guiding Principles of Internal Displacement. Is the IOM acting as the world's leading international organization for migration and "uphold[ing] the human dignity and well-being of migrants"¹ by "spreading best practices"²? Or are they complicit in forced evictions, and encouraging other humanitarian actors to be similarly complacent?

Click to read more ...

Where There is No Will: Haiti’s Internally Displaced

When the landowner shouted “Why are you here?” Mr. Glover responded without hesitation: “I am here to represent these people.”During a visit to Port-au-Prince in August this year, I had a crystalline moment. I was standing between a spitting, gesturing and shouting Haitian landowner, and actor Danny Glover, surrounded by a hundred homeless Haitians in front of the gate to a construction company lot turned internal displacement camp, more than eighteen months after the earthquake. As I took stock of the situation around me, I felt it clear and bright as the Caribbean sun: there is not enough will to save these people.

We had been en route to another location, Camp Carradeux, so the delegation could see the line that had been drawn between the families “officially” relocated to the site and those that had fled there in the first days and weeks after the quake, just searching for a place safe from the collapsing that continued to go on around them in the city. 

Click to read more ...

A Tale of Eviction in Haiti

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Despite the lack of attention in the media, the situation in Haiti remains dire. Despite money donated by international organizations and regular people, real relief has not reached the people who need it the most. The blue tarps that blanketed the city, reminiscent of the early reporting by Anderson Cooper, are still there – an obvious sign that things have not returned to normal.

Click to read more ...

“We Are Tired of Living under Tents”

By Alexis Erkert, Another Haiti is Possible Co-Coordinator, Other Worlds - October 6, 2011

On Monday morning, October 3, ten women stood across the street from the Ministry of Social Affairs, waving their arms, wailing and chanting. They were calling on Osany, of the pantheon of vodou lwa, or spirits, for assistance. The lyrics of their chant, repeated over and again, were patently simple:

Stop stealing this country’s money
This country’s money belongs to the poor.

Click to read more ...

Rep. Payne to Haiti: "Continued Evictions Must Cease"

I am appalled to hear of the continued forced evictions of displaced people in Haiti. It is even more disappointing to see that this is being led by leaders in local government who should be working to alleviate the hardships of those already suffering.  I strongly condemn the actions of Mayor Jean-Yves Jason for forcefully evicting displaced Haitians from an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) Camp in the parking lot of the Sylvio Cator Soccer Stadium on Friday, July 15. On the spot, the 514 families were unfairly made to choose between leaving the camp for a small sum of $250 USD or be forced out of the camps.

Click to read more ...