Belated hurricane relief headed to battered Caribbean islands

United Nations relief agencies are heading up a global mission to bring food, shelter and construction materials to Caribbean islands battered by super storm Sandy last week -- a belated response by the world body whose New York headquarters and staff were themselves hard hit by the deluge.

After a three-day closure amid the torrential rains and disrupted power, communications and transportation, U.N. agencies have swung into action to organize emergency aid to Haiti and coordinate the dispatch of relief supplies throughout the Caribbean.

More than 1.2 million Haitians are facing "food insecurity" and at least 15,000 homes were destroyed when the huge storm's drenching periphery lashed the world's poorest nation, where about 350,000 were still homeless and sheltering in tents nearly three years after the devastating earthquake of January 2010.

A yearlong drought and damage from Hurricane Isaac in August had already taken their toll on food production in Haiti and Sandy has significantly worsened the crisis, Johan Peleman, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti, told U.N. Radio in an interview.

"With this new tropical storm, we fear that a great deal of the harvest which was ongoing in the south of the country may have been destroyed completely," Peleman said.

Many of the rugged dirt roads that provide the only access to storm victims in Haiti's mountainous interior have been rendered impassible by the torrential rains of the last week, Peleman said.

In New York, U.N. officials said they had reports of at least 54 Haitians killed as a result of the storm.

At least 11 people were reportedly killed in Cuba, where the storm damaged or destroyed 188,000 homes and inflicted severe damage on about 245,000 acres of the vital sugar crop in the eastern part of the island, a U.N. report estimated Wednesday.

The opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation appealed to the government of President Raul Castro to allow foreign relief agencies to bring food and supplies to the stricken island. An array of religious and nongovernmental organizations, including Catholic Relief Services and Outreach Aid to the Americas, announced relief missions to Cuba, according to InterAction, an alliance of U.S.-based agencies. The Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations dispatched three plane-loads of aid for Cuba on Thursday, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Storm-related deaths were also reported in Jamaica, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, with the U.N. reporting at least 71 killed across the Caribbean in Sandy's wake.

ALSO:

Rich Chinese want to buy happiness -- by emigrating

Deadly Syrian stalemate spurs new diplomacy, little hope

Remittances to Mexico fell 20% in September compared with last year

-- Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles

Photo: Residents make their way through the flooded streets of La Plaine, in northwest Haiti. Credit: Carl Juste / Miami Herald

Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille resigns

 
REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- Haiti's political instability deepened Friday with the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Garry Conille, who took the job less than five months ago.

Conille was reportedly under enormous pressure from President Michel Martelly to quit. The two clashed over numerous issues, including the handling of millions of dollars in contracts for repair of damage from the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.

Conille, a gynecologist who also served on Bill Clinton's Haiti reconstruction board, was Martelly's third choice to head the government. The first two were rejected by Haiti's Parliament. It was not yet clear who Martelly, a former pop singer, would nominate to replace Conille.

Haitians and others worried that Conille's departure will create a political vacuum as the country continues to struggle to recover from the quake and emerge from endemic poverty.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti warned that political crisis threatened to "undermine the proper functioning of institutions and the democratic process" (link in French).

ALSO:

An exquisite Mexico beach, cursed by plastic

Haitians take comfort and find hope in soccer

Rape flourishes in rubble of Haitian earthquake

--Tracy Wilkinson

Photo: Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille speaks during his swearing-in ceremony in October in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Jean Jacques Augustin / European Pressphoto Agency 

 

Is bribery sometimes OK? How people answered across the Americas

Is it OK sometimes to use bribes, "given the way things are" in countries that may be grappling with corruption, crime and poverty?

People in Guyana and Haiti were roughly four times as likely to say yes as people in Brazil, Chile or Guatemala, according to a recently released survey of attitudes across Latin America and the Caribbean. The Vanderbilt University study found big differences in how bribery is viewed in different countries, based on a 2010 survey of nearly 41,000 people in 24 countries.

Researchers didn’t draw conclusions about why people in some countries were more likely to say bribery was justified. They did, however, find other factors that helped explain how people viewed bribery. People were more likely to believe that bribery was sometimes justifiable if they also believed that:

-- the national economy had taken a turn for the worse in the past year

-- crime was a threat to their future

-- corruption is rampant among government officials

The last point may help explain why the study showed that Haitian respondents were more likely than Chileans to say bribery was justifiable. In December, the group Transparency International ranked Haiti as one of the worst countries in the world for perceived corruption, placing it 175th out of 182 countries based on surveys. Chile, where people were much more likely to shun bribery, ranked 22nd.

But the corruption rankings do not explain all of the gaps between countries when it comes to bribery: Guatemala ranked only a little better than Guyana in perceived corruption, despite vast differences in their attitudes about bribery.

The study also found that men were much more likely than women to think bribery was permissible, wealthy people were more likely to think it was OK than poorer people, urbanites were more likely to condone it than people living in rural areas, and young people justified it more easily than older ones.

Curious where other countries stack up? Here is the full list of country rankings from the Vanderbilt report, sponsored by the Latin American Public Opinion Project:

 

ALSO:

Chavez holds parade to commemorate 1992 overthrow attempt

Slasher attacks Ciudad Juarez activist who was shot previously

Mexico's incumbent party picks a woman as its presidential candidate, a first

-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

U.N.: Haitian ex-dictator should face human rights charges

The United Nations says former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier should face charges for human rights abuses on his watch.

“We are extremely disappointed at reports that Mr. Duvalier may not be charged with any human rights crimes, despite numerous complaints by victims to the prosecutor,” Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement released by the world body.

Colville said serious human rights violations, including torture, rape and extrajudicial killings, had been extensively documented by Haitian and international human rights organizations during his reign.

A Haitian judge on Monday recommended that Duvalier, who is also known as Baby Doc, be tried only on corruption charges, saying that the statute of limitations had run out on any human rights crimes.

Duvalier returned unexpectedly to Haiti last year, stirring up memories of his repressive rule, which stretched from 1971 to 1986. The Times' Tracy Wilkinson reported from Haiti last year:

The younger Duvalier's regime was characterized by brutal repression of opponents enforced by the notorious Tonton Macoutes secret police and the excessive lifestyle of the first family, who allegedly embezzled tens of millions of dollars. The chubby, baby-faced Duvalier lived as a playboy until marrying extravagant divorcee Michele Bennett Pasquet, who enjoyed the high life and alienated Haiti's masses.

With hunger and poverty deepening, protests against the regime mounted in the early 1980s, along with ever-bloodier government crackdowns and international condemnation. The rebellion, along with pressure from the Reagan administration, drove Duvalier from power in February 1986. A U.S. Air Force jet took him and his wife to France, where they lived in exile on the Riviera until their divorce in 1993.

RELATED:

'Baby Doc' Duvalier returns to a tense Haiti

Theories abound over why Baby Doc came back

Duvalier breaks silence, offers condolences to quake victims

-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: Ousted Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier speaks at a news conference Jan. 21, 2011, in Petion Ville, Puerto Principe, Haiti. Credit: Hector Retamal / Agence France-Presse

Haiti, two years after devastating earthquake

 

REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- Two years have passed since a ferocious earthquake leveled much of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed about a quarter-million people. It was, as The Times put it, "one of modern times' worst natural disasters," striking "one of modern times' poorest nations."

Today there is progress, including the election and seating of a new government, the clearing of much rubble, the rebuilding of some housing and other infrastructure, the expansion of access to healthcare.

Yet, more than half a million Haitians who lost their homes still live in often-squalid camps, where women and children are especially vulnerable to sexual attack and other violence. Jobs remain scarce; the vast majority of Haitians barely scrape by. Much of the billions of dollars in promised aid has yet to penetrate. And a post-quake cholera epidemic continues to kill.

"We need to help [Haitians] build back better their communities, give them more support, bring them water, infrastructure, electricity, drainage and police," President Michel Martelly said this week, presenting his first formal government report since taking office in May. He noted that 80% of Haitians still live on less than $2 a day.

Martelly, a singer and political novice until he ran for the presidency, admitted mistakes, and his government clearly is still gaining its footing. Delays in holding the elections that brought him to power cost Haiti precious recovery time because many Western governments and relief agencies were reluctant to give money to Martelly's corrupt predecessors. There is hope now that will change.

"The challenge for Haiti is to build on this momentum and turn the aid-underpinned rebound into sustainable growth and more formal sector jobs," said the Inter-American Development Bank, which held a major investors' conference two months ago. The bank sees a bright prospect in the opening of a 600-acre industrial park which will include a South Korean garment factory prepared to hire up to 20,000 workers.

Progress in Haiti is difficult to measure.

RELATED:

Haiti Photographs

Haiti still mired in post-quake problems

Rape flourishes in rubble of Haitian earthquake

-- Tracy Wilkinson

Photos, from top: The Desallines neighborhood in Port-au-Prince is shown is present day, and on Jan. 16, 2010, four days after the earthquake. Credit:  Orlando Barria / EPA

Brazil announces plan to rein in immigration from Haiti

REPORTING FROM RIO DE JANEIRO -- Brazil has announced plans to grant amnesty to thousands of Haitian immigrants but deport any who cross the border from Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia without visas in the future.

Brazil will issue 100 visas a month in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, both to ease the burden on border towns that have been overwhelmed by refugees seeking visas and to try to reduce dangerous smuggling operations, authorities said.

Since a 2010 earthquake in their nation, 4,000 Haitians have arrived in Brazil, rapidly expanding the already growing ranks of immigrants. They come seeking a better life and relying on relatively tolerant policies toward undocumented migrants.

The Brazilian economy has been growing rapidly and unemployment is at historic lows, but the arrival of immigrants quickly pushed against the limits of a bureaucracy that has been more used to seeing its own citizens go abroad in search of work.

Manuel Noriega extradited home to Panama after 21 years [updated]

  Updated at 8:00 p.m., Dec. 11

REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- Manuel Noriega, the onetime military dictator of Panama who also moonlighted as a CIA spy and successful drug-trafficking money launderer, was flown home Sunday after two decades in U.S. and French prisons and facing yet more jail time in Panama.

Noriega, 77, was extradited from France, where he was convicted of laundering several million dollars through Paris real estate, and placed under heavy guard on a flight to Panama City.

Television footage from a Panama airport Sunday evening showed a stooped man covered in a hooded parka arriving and being loaded onto a wheelchair for transport to the Renacer (“Rebirth”) prison.

“Gen. Noriega wanted to return and face the charges against him,” one of his attorneys, Julio Berrios, said in a crush at the airport, as a small knot of angry relatives of Noriega’s victims shouted in the background.

Noriega returned to Panama for the first time since the 1989 U.S. invasion of that strategic isthmus nation -- at the time, the largest U.S. military operation since the Vietnam War -- wrested him from power.

For decades, Noriega had functioned as an ally of Washington, recruited by the CIA in the 1960s, serving as a secret envoy to Cuba’s Fidel Castro. He operated at times to support leftist movements in Latin America, at other times to support U.S. efforts to fight them.

Haitian president receives Aristide, 'Baby Doc' Duvalier

In a gesture rare for politically polarized Haiti, President Michel Martelly convened an unusual meeting Wednesday with two of his predecessors, both ousted from office in coups.

Martelly brought together Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former priest and fiery leftist leader who was toppled from power twice, and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, the dynastic dictator forced into exile in 1986.

Both Aristide and Duvalier represent, each in his own way, unresolved chapters of Haitian history. And both returned to Haiti this year amid an election season and faltering efforts to rebuild the country after a devastating earthquake in January 2010.

A pop music star with no political experience when he was elected this year, Martelly said he hoped to promote reconciliation so that Haiti can recover from quake damage that killed more than a quarter of a million people.

ALSO:

Personality, not politics, divides Haiti's presidential candidates

 Haiti still mired in post-quake problems

'Baby Doc' Duvalier returns to tense Haiti

-- Tracy Wilkinson

Photo: President Michel Martelly, left, greets former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at their meeting in Port-Au-Prince on Oct. 12, 2011. Credit: Associated Press

HAITI: Martelly's pick for prime minister approved, finally

 

REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- It took many critical months, but Haiti finally is about to get a new prime minister. The choice is Garry Conille, an urbane expert in development for the United Nations and former aide to Bill Clinton during the ex-president's time as special envoy to earthquake-devastated Haiti (link in French). 

Conille, also a gynecologist, was the third candidate proposed by President Michel Martelly since he took office in May, after the Haitian Senate rejected two previous choices. The time lost has been costly to Haiti's struggle to recover from the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that flattened the capital of Port-au-Prince and killed more than a quarter of a million people. Without a functioning government, international donors have been reluctant to continue funneling money to the island nation.

In an interview with Reuters, Conille, 45, said his priority would be "jobs, jobs, jobs" as he embarked on what he called his country's reconstruction battle.

ALSO:

Rape flourishes in rubble of Haitian earthquake

Personality, not politics, divides Haiti's presidential candidates

More photos of quake destruction in Haiti here

 

-- Tracy Wilkinson

Photo: Garry Conille, center, is shown with Bill Clinton in this file photo from Aug. 16, 2011, taken near Port-au-Prince. Credit: Associated Press