Haiti's president handed out medals to celebrities, aid-group directors and politicians for post-earthquake work

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti’s president handed out medals to celebrities, aid-group directors and politicians for post-earthquake work Monday in a ceremony designed to beat back criticism of an uneven recovery that has left 1.6 million people homeless and destitute six months to the day since the disaster.Just out of sight, baking in the oppressive noonday sun, were the fraying tarps of tens of thousands of homeless who live on the Champ de Mars, once a grassy promenade surrounding the government complex.

“That is just a way to put the people to sleep. But the people are suffering,” Edouard James, a 32-year-old vendor said when he was told of the ceremony. Unable to find a job with his degree in diplomacy, he sells pirated DVDs in a tarp-covered booth.”We are tired of the NGOs … saying we will have a better life and better conditions, and then nothing happens,” he said.Twenty-three honorees – including actor Sean Penn, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission – crossed a podium in front of the crushed, unrepaired national palace to steady applause. Some smiling, some solemn, each received medals and certificates deeming them Knights of the National Order of Honor and Merit.

President Rene Preval, whose successor is to be elected in November, defended the response to the quake. He said in two speeches during the ceremony that hard-to-see successes – like the avoidance of massive disease outbreaks and violence – obviates the perception that not enough has been done.”There are people who did not see all the big efforts that were deployed during the emergency stage: distributing tents, water, food, installing latrines, providing health care during the six months that have just gone by,” Preval said. “It is a major, major task.”The ceremony was resolutely upbeat. The focus was on successes past and plans going forward, with little talk of the 230,000 to 300,000 people killed in the magnitude-7 temblor.

The president and prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, both used the occasion to announce that a six-month emergency phase has ended and that reconstruction has begun.The distinction was lost on some Haitians.”I don’t know if I’m mad or happy,” Anne Bernard, a 24-year-old mother of two living in a metal shack a few hundred yards from the national palace. “All I know is they haven’t done anything.”

The most visible early-emergency programs like massive food distributions have stopped, and there still are few tangible effects of $3.1 billion in humanitarian aid for all but a handful of those left homeless by the quake, who rely on plastic tarps for shelter.Tarp-and-tent camps are growing instead of shrinking. Just 5,657 transitional shelters have been built of a promised 125,000, which even if completed would not be nearly enough for everyone.When building materials finally get through customs, there is nowhere to put them. Fights over land rights, customs delays and systemically slow coordination between aid groups and the government have hampered nearly everything. The Associated Press reported Sunday that the location of the largest of two relocation camps provided by the government was the result of an inside deal.Shortly after the ceremony ended, that camp flooded in a sudden summer squal, with 94 deluxe tents collapsing in the wind and rain.Compounding the problem in the city is that almost no rubble has been cleared. Preval said Monday it would take $1.5 billion to remove all of it.

Meanwhile donors have met 10 percent of a promised $5.3 billion in reconstruction aid – separate from the humanitarian aid – mostly by forgiving debts, not providing cash.Clinton, who also received a medal, said it will be his mission in coming weeks to make sure donors meet their pledges. He acknowledged that more could have been done, but that recovery has so far been faster than the rebuilding of coastal Indonesia following the 2004 tsunami.”To those who say we have not done enough, I think all of us who are working in this area agree this is a harder job (than the tsunami),” Clinton said. “Viewed comparatively I think the Haitian government and the people who are working here have done well in the last six months.”

CNN’s Cooper, who spent parts of January and February in Haiti following the quake and had not returned since, said he found out about the award while getting ready to board his plane to Haiti on Sunday.”I thought a long time about not accepting it. We finally came to the opinion that it was recognition by the country for all journalists,” he told resident reporters after the ceremony. “I don’t think this in any way impacts the desire or willingness to be critical of the government.”(AP)

50,000 people who live alongside Kenya's railway lines could see their homes destroyed

Kenya An estimated 50,000 people who live alongside Kenya’s railway lines could see their homes destroyed after the government railway gave the squatters 30 days to move, prompting residents on Friday to threaten to resist violently.The government order has received sharp criticism from an international human rights group and from those affected, most of whom are slum dwellers in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. The government order does not include a resettlement plan, and residents facing eviction say they don’t know where they will go.

“People have been living and working on these lands for years and a 30-day notice period is wholly inadequate,” said Justus Nyang’aya, director of Amnesty International in Kenya.The land in question is designated as a railway reserve for about 100 feet (30 meters) on either side of the tracks. Many of the slum dwellers, the city’s poorest residents, settled on the land to avoid paying rent.

The Kenya Railways Corporation said in a notice March 21 that squatters must leave in 30 days or be evicted to make way for a planned expansion of train services.A spokesman, George Tatache, the railway took note of the residents’ concerns but as of Friday had no plans to extend next week’s deadline. The railway does not plan to compensate people for their demolished structures, and violators could be prosecuted, he said.

Some residents in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, where a railway line connecting Kenya and Uganda winds through tens of thousands of iron-roofed shanties, threatened to resist violently if the railway does not relocate them.

Junk-seller Stephen Mutua Mutiso, 50, said he does not believe the corporation is serious about its expansion program because it gave similar a reason for evicting residents 15 years ago, but did not then expand the tracks.”The last time they came I did not resist but this time I will fight them off,” Mutiso said.Amnesty International said in a statement that Kenya will violate international human rights laws if it goes through with the evictions. Nyang’aya said that without proper safeguards the evictions will have a devastating impact on people’s access to water, sanitation, food and schools and could create a humanitarian emergency.

Sam Ouma, the chairman of the Railway Dwellers Federation, said the railway issued a prior eviction notice in 2004, but residents filed a suit against it, forcing the corporation to settle out of court.

Ouma said that he hopes a peaceful resolution will be found, but that if the evictions are forceful, officials will be met with fierce resistance.

Mutiso, the junk trader, said he had to start from scratch in 1995 after the corporation destroyed his home and business along the railway line. Mutiso said he had to take desperate measures and move with his six children and wife into a single-room house measuring 10 feet (3 meters) by 10 feet (3 meters).He said it took him a year to rebuild his business, which allowed him to rent a bigger house. Mutiso said during that eviction, two people he knew who had lost all their property committed suicide.(AP)