When police and the landowner commanded Michel\u00e8ne Pierre to vacate her tent on a Sunday afternoon so that they could light it on fire, she responded: \u201cIf you want to light me on fire along with this entire camp, go ahead. I\u2019m not leaving.\u201d The police bypassed her tent, but continued to threaten other residents of Camp Kozbami, setting flame to six tents.<\/p>\n
Camp Kozbami is the fifth camp to be arsoned in two months. As landowners and the government push to close camps inhabited by those displaced by the earthquake that rocked Haiti 26 months ago, a reported 94,632 individuals<\/a> are facing forced eviction.<\/p>\n Residents of the 660 displacement camps<\/a> scattered throughout the Port-au-Prince area are experiencing increasing levels of threats and violence. Repeated acts of arson have both killed six people and displaced hundreds. Though cramped living conditions and a lack of available water during Haiti\u2019s dry season have made camps vulnerable to accidental fires, camp organizers believe that all the recent fires have been deliberate.<\/p>\n Until her own tent was burned down, Arlette C\u00e9lissaint lived in Camp Lyc\u00e8e Toussaint. At a press conference on Friday, March 23, C\u00e9lissaint and four other camp residents described the horror of waking up at 2:00 in the morning to a camp engulfed in flames. \u201cFire took over… We were all in our tents, all asleep and suddenly it was, \u2018Run!\u2019 and everyone started to get up and run. There were people burned on the spot and six went to the hospital\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n That morning, 96 of approximately 120 shelters were burned and five people, including a mother and her three children, were killed. Families lost everything they had managed to salvage from the earthquake and the little they have saved since, including money and legal documents. To date, none of the relevant government authorities have launched an investigation into the crimes. Neither the government nor aid agencies have stepped up to provide these doubly-displaced\u2014and doubly-traumatized\u2014communities with adequate disaster assistance.<\/p>\n \u201cLook out for us.\u201d Looking directly into a TV journalist\u2019s video camera, Marie Charles, another former Camp Lyc\u00e8e Toussaint resident said quietly, \u201cWe ask the government to look out for us. We\u2019re people, not animals, but the conditions that we\u2019re living in are not fit for people.\u201d<\/p>\n Camp residents like C\u00e9lissaint and Charles are raising the volume of their denunciations about the fires and about evictions in general with protests, press conferences and letters to the government. Others, like the families in Camp Ma\u00efs Gate, are physically refusing to move. Though paid thugs have been harassing them for weeks, families refuse to leave until they are provided with an adequate alternative.<\/p>\n No such alternative yet exists. Though the government is touting a plan called \u2018 16\/6<\/a>\u2019 as a solution to Haiti\u2019s housing crisis, it does not address the underlying structural challenges to relocation by making land available to camp dwellers for permanent resettlement or building houses. Instead, \u201816\/6\u2019 targets six camps, or approximately 5% of the displaced population,[iii] providing families $500 apiece to relocate into 16 communities. Critics say implementation of the plan has been rife with corruption and that it has accelerated rates of violent forced evictions in other camps. Though the \u201816\/6\u2019 model is being replicated by aid groups in a handful of additional camps, there is still a glaring absence of any comprehensive housing plan.<\/p>\n Human rights advocates and camp residents point to the eviction of a camp called Place Jeremie in late December as a prime example of the corruption and disregard for displaced peoples endemic in the relocation process. Though families were supposed to receive $500 apiece to relocate, police came to the camp in the middle of the night, armed with machetes and batons, destroyed tents and violently evicted the families living there. The Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA) reports that the majority of residents received $25 in compensation.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether families receive $25 or $500, there is no evidence that they do indeed wind up in safer, more dignifying circumstances once they\u2019ve relocated. Housing in Haiti is expensive and the numbers make it clear that there is not enough undamaged housing available in Port-au-Prince to absorb displaced people, 80 percent<\/a> of whom were renters before the earthquake. According to data from the International Organization for Migration, current shortages will leave\u00a0more than 300,000<\/a> without housing.<\/p>\n With the displaced population down to 490,545<\/a> from\u00a01.2 million<\/a> just after the earthquake, Antonal Mortim\u00e9 of the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) wonders where people who have left the camps have gone. \u201cHave they moved to the countryside? Back into their houses? Are enough new houses being built? Are new camps springing up? Or are people returning to fissured and unsound homes? No-one knows.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus, an assembly of local human rights groups called the Right to Housing Collective is supporting camp dwellers in a call for a comprehensive national housing plan that includes public housing for the displaced. In the short-term, they are calling for an end to the violence plaguing camps and for a moratorium on evictions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are struggling alongside the people whose rights are being trampled, to create a movement that forces the government into taking responsibility for its citizens\u2026\u201d said Jackson Doliscar. Doliscar is a community organizer with FRAKKA, a coalition of 26 camp committees and grassroots organizations and a key member of the Right to Housing Collective.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are unaware of their specific rights, especially as displaced people. They don\u2019t think that they have the right to ask anything of their government\u2026 That\u2019s beginning to change\u2026 Many camps are ready to join hands.\u201d And indeed, the arson attacks have renewed camp dwellers and rights advocates\u2019 sense of urgency.<\/p>\n During Friday\u2019s press conference, Mortim\u00e9 reminded his government that the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement require that they make every effort to guarantee the right to life and security of all earthquake victims.<\/p>\n Mortim\u00e9 adds, \u201cWe aren\u2019t just denouncing, we are pronouncing. We are proposing and advocating for solutions that come from displaced people themselves and we will not give up on pressuring the government to take responsibility for meeting these demands.\u201d To read more about the ways that the Haitian housing movement is creating and promoting solutions to the housing crisis, read<\/em> Home: From displacement camps to community in Haiti<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Alexis Erkert is the Another Haiti is Possible Coordinator for<\/em> Other Worlds<\/em><\/a>. She has worked in advocacy and with Haitian social movements since 2008. You can access all of Other Worlds\u2019 past articles regarding post-earthquake Haiti<\/em> here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
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