Already one of the poorest countries in the world, the Caribbean island nation of Haiti has this year been devastated not only by spiralling food prices but, in more recent times, the destructive force of a series of tropical storms and hurricanes which have torn through the island country.
The UN special envoy to Haiti, Hedi Annabi, said last month that the country had been “overwhelmed” following hurricanes Gustav and Ike and the tropical storms Fay and Hanna, saying the disaster was beyond the capacity of the government and the UN mission to deal with and calling on international donors for help.
Australian relief and development agencies are among those who have responded.
Paul O’Rourke, chief executive of child-development organisation Compassion Australia, describes the situation as “pretty desperate”.
“Because there’s been a series of hurricanes, a lot of the infrastructure has been wiped out,” he says. “There’s already been around 800 people killed – 500 in the port city of Gonaives – and there’s about a million people homeless as a result of homes being destroyed or significantly damaged.”
Compassion Australia aim to raise $75,000 to contribute toward an international fund of $1 million which will be used to provide emergency shelter, for medical care, food and clothing for the 62,000 families Compassion International already assists in Haiti. Compassion Australia has already raised more than $68,000.
About 80 per cent or about seven million of the population of about nine million live in poverty or less than $US2 a day.
It’s a situation, says Mr O’Rourke, which is exacerbated by the current food crisis and natural disasters such as the storms which have hit the nation in recent months.
He notes that even before the storms struck, the global food crisis had already meant that prices had increased for some staple items by 100 per cent.
Haiti has already faced food riots earlier this year – in one case some Compassion staff, a radio team, were caught in the midst of a riot in the capital, Port-au-Prince, but managed to get to the airport after people found out they were helping children.
“People are desperate,” says Mr O’Rourke. “They’re hungry and we’ve had instances in Haiti of kids eating dirt; of families actually making what we would call, laughingly with our kids, mud pies for their kids.”
The disaster will also not make life any easier for a group of children known as ‘restaveks’.
Named for a Creole term which means “to stay with” or “to remain with”, in Haiti the term describes a child whose family have given them to a wealthier family who they work for as a domestic servant in return for food, shelter and, supposedly, an education.
The reality is that many of these children are abused – physically, emotionally and sexually, suffer from problems such as malnutrition, and are denied access to education.
The UN estimates there are more than 300,000 ‘restavek’ children in Haiti, some of whom are as young as four-years-old, although others put the total at up to 500,000.
