ARTICLE - RED CROSS - GOVERNANCE PLIGHT

HAITI PLIGHT DUE TO GOVERNANCE: RED CROSS
(AlertNet) - By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI - Weak governance in quake-hit Haiti is to blame for poor progress by relief agencies in spending billions of dollars of aid one year after the disaster, the head of the international Red Cross federation said.

There has been a barrage of criticism over Haiti's painfully slow recovery and reconstruction, despite an outpouring of generosity by the international community after the magnitude 7.0 quake on Jan. 12, 2010.

According to a report by the Disaster Accountability Project, which monitors U.S. disaster relief, only half the funds raised by aid agencies including the American Red Cross have been spent one year on.

"It is a headache shared by all of us,” Tadateru Konoe, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told AlertNet in an interview.

“But nobody should be blamed for that. There has not been any strong functioning government for some time now."

The quake, described by some experts as the biggest urban catastrophe in modern history, killed more than 300,000 people and over a million homeless.

One year on, most of the displaced still live in tents and makeshift shelters in and around Port-au-Prince, which is still clogged with rubble and filled with wrecked buildings.

Yet the Disaster Accountability Project said that according to its survey - in which only 38 aid groups out of 196 responded - $1.4 billion was raised by the 38 groups, yet only $730 million, or 52 percent, has been spent.

The organisation said the American Red Cross was among the agencies still sitting on large amounts of money. It received $479 million in donations but had spent less than half a year on.

Some critics have accused the Red Cross of hoarding the money to earn interest to be used elsewhere, a charge denied by the organisation.

Konoe, who is on a visit to India, said a lack of a strong leadership by the government of President Rene Preval in the aftermath of the disaster was one of the main factors why aid groups could not effectively help Haitians recover more quickly.

He cited the thorny issue of land registration, which he said was stifling the ability of the American Red Cross to roll out programmes such as the building of shelters.

"There is the question of land ownership that hinders most of the development and humanitarian initiatives,” he said. “There may be registration of land, but there is no working government where one can verify who a particular piece of land belongs to and therefore get permission to remove rubble.

"According to one estimate, it could take 10 years before all the rubble is removed and because of the very limited space, you cannot even build temporary shelters unless the rubble is removed."

Observers - even those who speak up for the Preval government's quake response, citing the decimation the disaster wreaked in civil service ranks - see a real risk to recovery from the political uncertainly now gripping Haiti.

The outcome of chaotic Nov. 28 presidential and legislative elections has remained in limbo since violent protests greeted the preliminary first round results.