Stand with Haiti

Mar 15th, 2010 6:00 PM UTC
By ONE Partners

Here’s the latest post from our friends at Partners in Health. Stay tuned to the ONE blog for future updates on their work in Haiti.

A simple green circle marks the gate of a home that we pass. Two doors down, a red circle with a line through it. A seemingly meaningless change in color, but therein lies the all the difference for households here in Port au Prince. Behind the first, a structure spared, while beyond the second lies a home in ruins.

In the neighborhood where I have spent the past weeks, the destruction seems random. Along one street, only a few red circles, only a few scattered piles of rubble. Behind compound gates you catch glimpses of tents in driveways, the only safe housing for families fearful of returning indoors.

Driving toward the General Hospital, the distribution of suffering becomes ever less random. The equity of loss and destruction is overwhelming, yet numbing in its uniformity. The once majestic dome of the Presidential Palace slumps like a fallen souffle. The Ministry offices are like giant dollhouses, gaping structures missing the fourth wall. Here there are fewer tents, but many more people. Families here have no driveway left, their homes are now lean-tos made of sticks, sheets, and a layer of tarp if they are lucky.

The loss of shelter, sustenance and security are the result of natural disaster. The culpability for the continual erosion of the rights to housing, food, and water however, must be found elsewhere. The international community has yet to offer coordinated assistance to the Haitian government to fulfill these rights. Concerned individuals must not allow the urgency for Haiti and its population to fade in the coming weeks and months ahead. Of course the irony is that only now does the gap in the stark inequality of the distribution of suffering among Haiti’s population begin to close. We must each stand with Haiti, today, tomorrow, and in the years to come.

-Joan VanWassenhove, Partners in Health

TAGS: Earthquake in Haiti, From Our Partners, Haiti, Partners in Health