Until today, IOM had provided pre-positioned emergency relief supplies to about 60,000 people. But with new supplies now coming in on a daily basis, the Organization and humanitarian partners working on helping survivors with shelter and non-food assistance are scaling up their response.
IOM and partners are also focusing on solutions for those living in spontaneous settlements whose homes were damaged or destroyed.
There are more than 300 of these settlements scattered throughout the city, with an estimated 370,000 people living under improvised shelter and no access to water supplies, according to assessments by IOM and its partners. Until tents can be provided, priority needs for those in these settlements include plastic sheeting, water containers, and water purification tablets.
“There are entire neighbourhoods that are empty,” says IOM’s Chief of Mission Vincent Houver. “The poorest of the poor have stayed in the city but many people have left Port au Prince, mainly to other towns where they have relatives or friends.”
A second wave of people leaving the capital are those that have no relatives or friends and are going to towns that do not have the capacity to absorb these flows.
A large influx of displaced survivors are reported to have arrived from the capital in Miragoane in Nippes department, with another 5,000 people having arrived in Grand Anse department by boat and road, including injured people, according to humanitarian partners on the ground.
IOM sub-offices in Haiti report that local governments want to establish settlements to house those displaced from Port au Prince.
Elsewhere, a joint IOM, European Union, WFP and UNDAC assessment in Jacmel on 18 January found an estimated 12,000 people displaced from damage to their homes and camping out in up to eight different settlements. Immediate needs identified included medical assistance, shelter, water and sanitation and burying the bodies of those killed.
IOM supplies of water-purifying tablets, jerry cans, hygiene and kitchen kits as well as mosquito nets, plastic sheets, sleeping mats and tarpaulins were distributed in Jacmel last weekend by UNICEF.
Meanwhile, work has started at a site identified over the weekend in the suburb of Croix des Bouquets for a large temporary settlement. A Brazilian battalion deployed with MINUSTAH is levelling the land for the establishment of a tented settlement that would facilitate aid delivery to large numbers of displaced and where the Inter-American Development Bank is planning to build permanent houses for 30,000 people.
IOM and its partners estimate that 200,000 families or one million persons are in need of immediate shelter support.
As part of an initial appeal launched last week, the Organization is asking for US$30 million to provide emergency shelter, non-food assistance, track internal displacement and among other things, establish a food-for-work programme that would include rubble removal.
IOM has so far received pledges totalling USD 16.3 million from the US government (OFDA/USAID), Sweden’s development agency Sida, the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), Argos Cement Company of Colombia, and the Clinton Foundation to support ongoing relief operations and future rebuilding efforts.
Private donations can be made to IOM through the IOM website at www.iom.int and in the United States at http://www.usaim.org/PROJECTHaiti.asp
For further information, please contact Niurka Pineiro, in
Port au Prince, on Tel: + 509 3490 6678, email: niurkapineiro@yahoo.com,
or Jean Philippe Chauzy or Jemini Pandya, IOM Geneva,
Tel: + 41 22 717 9361/+ 41 79 285 4366 Email: pchauzy@iom.int and + 41
22 717 9486/+ 41 79 217 3374 Email: jpandya@iom.int
respectively.
