World Bulletin
In Haiti, UN Workers Endure the Strife as Part of the Job By Barbara Crossette
Edmond Mulet, acting special representative of the secretary-general for Haiti and chief of the peacekeeping mission there, at a service for mission staff in Port-au-Prince. UN Photo/Sophia Paris. |
Feb. 3 -- Jens Kristensen, a 48-year-old Dane in the UN’s Haiti mission, had been trapped for five days in a coffin-size space under the rubble of his office when an American rescue team found him, miraculously alive. Bruised, dehydrated and no longer able to keep track of time, Kristensen nonetheless sized up the disaster all around him, skipped trauma counseling and was back at work within three days.
People do not join the UN for a life of luxury, John Holmes, the under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said at a recent briefing sponsored by the United Nations Foundation. “They are used to working in difficult places.”
Even by those standards, Haiti is exceptional. Holmes said that UN workers have been sleeping on crowded floors, packed “like sardines.” They have to do without regular meals, desks or showers, “straining every nerve” to keep working while overcoming the psychological shock of knowing that so many of their colleagues are dead.
Kristensen, who told his story to UN News, said that he was in total darkness during his five-day ordeal, unable to tell day from night. In the past, he survived major earthquakes in Afghanistan, Turkey and Ecuador, he said, but “nothing as traumatic as being buried alive for five days under dirt and not knowing if you will live.”
Back at work, Kristensen, a senior humanitarian officer, coordinates relief work between his department and UN peacekeepers and numerous UN agencies, each with special skills and equipment to offer Haiti. In an e-mail message, he described how the UN goes to work on the spot after a disaster, not waiting for orders from above.
“Each agency is different,” he wrote, “but as a general response, the country offices have significant leeway to program and execute activities, so agencies can largely take action locally to respond to emergencies without awaiting instruction from the global headquarters.” Coordination is built in as they go along and as communications among agencies and between them and the outside world are restored.
“Similarly, the flash appeal [for $575 million] that has been put out after a few days of the disaster was developed and compiled at the country level -- obviously, since the agencies at country level are the ones that know what has happened and can prepare the projects and requirements for donor support accordingly,” Kristensen said.
The job of coordination is enormous, and it pains many UN workers to hear complaints that the organization was too slow in responding to the earthquake, which destroyed large parts of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, and outlying towns. In public statements, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon seemed impassive to the horror and uncertain of what was happening even to the UN mission.
In the Field, UN Agencies Take Action
On the ground, the situation was different. Statistics show that in the first two weeks after the disaster, the World Food Program fed half a million people with 10 million prepared meals and more being delivered daily. Tens of thousands of tents have been erected as temporary shelters, with plans to set up many more for several hundred thousand homeless families.
At the end of January, a new system of food distribution was introduced, with each family to be given a 55-pound bag of rice. That will be distributed only to women to prevent gangs of men and boys from disrupting and diverting supplies, though male help in carrying the food away is allowed. To judge from television footage, the plan has produced orderly lines and smoother delivery. The World Food Program developed this women-only system to good effect in other parts of the world.
Looking ahead, a cash-for-work plan has been introduced by the UN Development Program, paying $5 a day for helping to remove rubble, repair streets and distribute aid. About 220,000 people will ultimately be paid through this program, according to Jordan Ryan, a UNDP assistant administrator for disaster response. The pay seems small, but it can begin to allow families to buy locally produced food and other necessities. It is estimated that before the earthquake about 80 percent of Haitians were living on less than $2 a day.
Women are getting special attention from two UN agencies, the Population Fund and Unifem, the development fund for women. Jemilah Mahmood, head of humanitarian response at the Population Fund, described to reporters recently the two emergency kits prepared especially for women: individual “dignity kits” for menstruating women and girls, which contain sanitary supplies, soap and other needs; and larger reproductive kits for neighborhoods, clinics and hospitals, which include everything from items needed for clean deliveries of babies in emergency situations to surgical equipment for Caesarian sections in hospitals for difficult births. Haiti has a very high maternal mortality rate and a large proportion of births with complications, even in good times.
Unifem is working to rebuild a ministry for women’s status and rights, whose building was destroyed with the deaths of female leaders. Roberta Clarke, of Unifem’s Caribbean regional bureau, told reporters that 45 percent of Haitian household heads are women, and many have been victims of gender-based violence. Unifem is setting up temporary shelters for abused women while trying to strengthen local groups that were formed to protect them and help them find information about their rights and the services available.
Unicef, meanwhile, is organizing help for newly orphaned children or those who have been separated from their families and have no place to live or who cannot support themselves. The children's fund is putting a strong emphasis on reuniting children with relatives whenever possible, and does not generally advocate easy adoption by outsiders as a primary solution.
Unicef is also providing clean water for 235,000 people at hospitals and other sites
around Port-au-Prince. The agency
(http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/haiti_52603.html) plans to scale up its
water distribution significantly, aiming to reach half a million people with a
consistent supply of water within the next few days. There are some UN agencies few might expect to see in Haiti in this disaster. The International Atomic Energy Agency, for example, is supplying mobile X-ray clinics and the generators to power them. The Universal Postal Union, working with the courier DHL and the US Postal Service, is rebuilding Haiti Post, a vital link to overseas Haitians who send money to their families or rely on letters to stay in touch.
Holmes, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator, says that the UN has been working “smoothly” with the US military, a number of nongovernmental agencies such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and many relief organizations.
“The US accepts the UN’s central role,” Holmes said; and “The UN accepts the important presence of the US.”
Everyone in the UN involved in Haiti, he added, is committed to one long-term recovery slogan: “Build back better.”
Barbara Crossette is the United Nations correspondent for The Nation and a former New York Times UN bureau chief. Keywords: Haiti, UN Development Program, Unicef, John Holmes, International Atomic Energy Agency, Jens Kristensen, World Food Program, Unifem, UN Population Fund, Universal Postal Union
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