BOGOTA (AlertNet) - Around a quarter of a million Haitians living in precarious tent camps could face a "catastrophe" unless they are moved quickly to safer areas ahead of the approaching rainy and hurricane seasons, the United Nations has warned.
More than two months after the Jan. 12 earthquake that wrecked Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince and surrounding cities, rain and storms threaten to turn some of the city's squalid tent camps into toxic rivers of mud and human excrement, and protecting the 250,000 residents who are judged to be most vulnerable is a race against time.
As of last week, only around 200 families had been moved to temporary shelters outside of the capital approved by the government.
"We just can't let people continue to live in these conditions," France Hurtubise, public information officer for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told AlertNet by phone from Port-au-Prince.
"Some sites sit on flood plains and on hills, which is very dangerous and could lead to landslides. That would be a disaster. These people will have to be moved or it will be a catastrophe if they remain in these sites."
The government wants some quarter of a million people in around seven of the capital's 461 camps considered at high risk of flooding and landslides to move by mid-April.
It says relocating people to new temporary sites is the last resort, and is encouraging quake survivors to return to their homes or seek shelter with host families in and around the capital.
The plans mean finding at least 600 hectares of land for alternative settlements, which is hard to come by in an already crowded capital city, says OCHA.
Only around a third of the land needed for resettlement has been identified by the government so far, according to a recent OCHA report.
"We are urging the government to identify more land. Work needs to move faster to move people out of harm's way before the rainy season starts," OCHA spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs told AlertNet from Geneva, echoing growing frustration among aid agencies.
DELAYS
Progress has been slow in moving people to safer sites because of difficulties in finding rubble-free land to build on, agreeing land deals and obtaining government approval and building permits, the United Nations says.
Tension between landowners and displaced people settling on private land is also a growing concern, according to OCHA, and in some cases people have been forcefully evicted.
"A strategy to address the legal rights of land owners while also protecting the affected population needs to be developed," the U.N. agency says in a report.
Aid agencies also highlight delays in customs procedures that are holding up building materials planned for new shelters.
The lack of accurate date on the number of Haitians left homeless by the earthquake makes it difficult to plan and implement relief efforts, aid groups say, as settlements continue to swell with more people returning daily to Port-au-Prince.
"The continuing increase in both the number of camps and the size of existing camps is proving quite challenging for implementing agencies," notes an OCHA report.
Aid agencies say they are ready to begin building temporary housing - often simple wood structures with steel frames to help homes withstand hurricanes - but many are waiting for approval from the Haitian government.
The Haitian authorities, though, say they are making progress on selecting sites, often in closed-door negotiations with large private landowners.
EMERGENCY SHELTER
Building work has so far started on only a handful of government-designated sites, where U.N. troops, the Red Cross, and other aid agencies working on shelter are levelling plots of land and building houses as fast as they can.
While the myriad of aid groups, the United Nations and the Haitian government debate what kind of new settlements should be built and what type of shelter is needed - transitional, temporary or permanent - the process of relocating people becomes ever more complicated.
Meanwhile, providing displaced Haitians with emergency shelter, including tarpaulins, fixings and toolkits, remains an urgent priority. OCHA says over 70 percent of the estimated 1.3 million people left homeless have been reached, but in the isolated mountainous areas around the towns of Leogane and Gressier, people are still waiting.
The authorities hope 40 percent of the homeless will return to houses that may still be habitable. But a lack of structural engineers to assess building safety means many Haitians are reluctant to go home. So far, some 200 engineers have surveyed just over 11,000 of the estimated 189,000 damaged homes.
People are also reluctant to leave the city's camps where food and shelter is often easier to come by.
"No one wants to move out of the city," said OCHA's Hurtubise. "It's not ideal for anyone. No one wants to move from their immediate area because they can't move all their belongings with them."
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