GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two of the main Geneva-based aid organizations are reporting very different situations in the field this week. The IOM (International Organization for Migration) Tuesday 28 February announced the relatively good news that the number of people still living in camps in Haiti has fallen to under half a million people for the first time since the massive earthquake in 2010.
ICRC enters Hama for first time with blankets, hygiene kits
The ICRC (International Red Cross), which is publishing daily updates on its work in Syria, says it is entering the city of Hama for the first time, with emergency supplies for 12,000 people. But it reported Sunday that efforts to remove scores of injured people from Syria were cut short when it failed to get the agreement of both government forces and rebels to a ceasefire that would allow it to provide emergency services.
Times journalist escapes; Bouvier may also be in Lebanon
Aljazeera reports Tuesday morning that one of the injured Western journalists hurt in the shelling that killed two others last week in Homs, Syria, has escaped to Lebanon. Paul Conroy, a photographer for the Sunday Times in the UK made it safely out of Syria and French reporter Edith Bouvier, who has made headlines with her video appeal from Homs, where she suffered a broken leg, may also be in Lebanon. Bouvier’s whereabouts has not been confirmed, according to Aljazeera.
Haiti situation: refugees being moved into new homes
The IOM reports that the reduction in camp numbers
“comes as the Government of Haiti’s newly created housing authority L’Unité de Construction de Logements et de Bâtiments Publics (UCLBP) starts to deliver results and the pace of relocation picks up. An initiative known as “16/6″ is helping earthquake displaced people living in six public spaces to return to sixteen communities which are undergoing redevelopment. It was launched by President Michel Martelly last year and a government-led steering committee is now setting the pace for reconstruction and relocation.
“In the last two weeks, under this programme, some 200 families have permanently left Champ de Mars, the historic plaza in front of the ruined National Palace. Over the coming months the square will be returned to public use under the project, which is funded by Canada.”
Update 12:50 Bern / Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The argument over who gets the Duvalier millions, some CHF5.8 million of them, will finally be heard in court, with the Swiss government 2 May initiating forfeiture proceedings at the Swiss Administrative High Court. The proceedings are the first under a Swiss law that went into effect in February 2011. The Haiti proceedings are also currently the only case requested by the federal government, spokesperson Roland Meier told GenevaLunch, but, he notes “the law was created to cover other cases” as needed.
The new law allows what are known as failed countries to ask for help without pressing criminal charges first, a lengthy, costly and often, as in the case of Haiti, near-impossible task.
If the government’s case for restitution is successful, “the Swiss Confederation will return the Duvalier assets to Haiti in accordance with the provisions of the new Federal Act on the Restitution of Unlawful Assets (RUAA).
The funds were frozen in 1986 shortly after Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti, ending his family’s decades-long dictatorship. They have been continually frozen in Switzerland since then.
Amount that could go to Haiti probably more than CHF5.8 million
The forfeited assets should amount to somewhat more than CHF 5.8 million, according to the Federal Department of Finance (FDF), which announced the opening of proceedings.
The amount appears to have risen and fallen over the years, but Meier, spokesperson for the FDF, told GenevaLunch that it is not yet clear if this is because the funds were in dollars and the dollar has moved against the franc, or if the amount involved is only part of the original funds in question.
Duvalier said in February 2011 that the money belonged to his family’s foundation, and he mentioned a sum of CHF6.8 million. At that time the Swiss government spoke of $5.8m, not Swiss francs (background story, GenevaLunch). Asset Recovery, which has published an online history of the attempts to give the Duvalier funds to Haiti, mentions $4.8 million in 2009. Reuters notes today that the amount of which Duvalier has been accused of embezzling is between $300,000 and $800,000.
Duvalier returned to Haiti 21 January 2011 for the first time since he left in 1986, saying he wanted to help his people, following the massive earthquake there. He had been living in exile in France, initially with a luxurious lifestyle, but he lost much of his money in a costly divorce to his wife Michele.
25 years to close the Swiss law loophole
The RUAA was created to close a loophole in Swiss law that had made it impossible for Switzerland to return the money to Haiti, which never had a stable government long enough in the post-Duvalier days to be able to instigate a claim itself and supply the information required by Switzerland.
Swiss authorities, who made it clear over the years they did not believe the money should be allowed back in Duvalier family hands, kept the funds blocked, but early in 2010 there was a close call where it appeared that Switzerland would not be able to legally continuing blocking the funds.
The federal government 2 February, the day after the new law went into effect, asked the Federal Finanace Department to start proceedings.
Background story, Duvalier funds, GenevaLunch, February 2010
Michel Martelly, a Haitian popular singer known as “Sweet Micky,” was officially declared on 20 April as the country’s President-Elect.
Preliminary results, released by the country’s electoral council show that Martelly won 68 percent of the vote in last month’s run-off election to beat former Haitian first lady, Mirlande Manigat.
Martelly was backed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his visit to the United States in which he criticized the “desperately slow” reconstruction efforts.
Links: AFP, Washington Post
The World Bank’s Food Price Watch, published 15 February ahead of the Paris G20 meeting, shows that the World Bank’s food price index rose by 15 percent between October 2010 and January 2011. It is 29 percent above its level a year earlier and is only 3 percent below its 2008 peak, with the result that 44 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty since June 2010, according to the bank. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than US$1.25 a day.
Wheat prices have doubled and maize (corn) prices rose 73 percent between June 2010 and January 2011. The cost of rice has risen more slowly, slowing down the slide into deep poverty in some parts of the world.
The broader picture hides the multiple facets of the impact of food prices on poverty: maize crops have been good in many African countries, easing the situation there, but in Haiti, fears of cholera, which has hospitalized 150,000 people, is keeping migrant workers out of the rice fields and a ripe crop risks going unharvested.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, The Globe & Mail
Swiss government begins proceedings to return funds under new law
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Jean-Claude Duvalier, in his first televised interview since being detained by police in Haiti in mid-January, told UniVision television Wednesday 2 February that the CHF6.8 million blocked by the Swiss government belongs to a foundation created by his family to help Haiti.
He himself never had accounts frozen in Switzerland, he said, and he would like to see the money used to help Haiti recover from the destruction wrought by the January 2010 earthquake.
About the same time on Wednesday the Swiss Federal Council said in a statement that it has asked the Federal Department of Finance (FDF) to begin the “forfeiture” process with the Swiss administrative high court. The FDF must do so within a year. As part of the process “representatives of the Duvalier family will have the opportunity to demonstrate the legal origin of the frozen funds in the framework of the forfeiture procedure now under way.”
Background, GenevaLunch
Swiss lawmakers and the government pushed through new law to be able to return Haiti's money
“It’s a step in the right direction” says assets recovery lawyer, calling Swiss law “pioneering”
Update 20:00 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Some CHF6 ($5.8) million in assets that were placed in Switzerland by Haiti’s ruling Duvalier family before they fell from power in 1986 have now been blocked under a new Swiss law, the Federal Act on the Restitution of Assets of Politically Exposed Persons obtained by Unlawful Means (RIAA).
The law was designed to enable funds such as the Duvalier money to be returned to a country that is unable to obtain them through normal international agreements, notably mutual assistance treaties. A government may be too weak in the wake of a dictator, or may not feel it can afford a lengthy court battle.
Switzerland was legally obliged to unfreeze the assets of the Mobutu clan from the Democratic Republic of Congo in July 2009 after 12 years of court efforts to avoid this.
It came close to being forced for similar reasons to return money to Duvalier in early 2010 despite the government’s determination to avoid this, and a decision by the Federal Criminal Court that the assets were illegally obtained by the Duvaliers.
“Asset recovery is not working as well as it should” worldwide, notes London-based Steven Philippsohn, senior partner of PCB Litigation, who specializes in corporate fraud and asset recovery. He is chairman of the UK Commercial Fraud Lawyers Association. “The major problem is getting criminal proceedings brought in the first place. A country that is trying to get its act together after a dictator will have other priorities.”
He calls the new Swiss law “pioneering” because it allows what are known as “failed countries” to ask for help without pressing criminal charges first, but he cautions that countries with mutual assistance treaties will not be able to take advantage of this.
It is not clear if this covers Tunisia and Cote d’Ivoire, two countries where political leaders’ potential assets have been blocked by the Swiss in 2011. Such treaties could bode well, if criminal charges are brought for stolen funds. “There’s a very effective system in Switzerland, where once a criminal case is launched the investigator has access to banking records. I don’t despair, as a litigator,” says Philippsohn, one of 60 lawyers involved in Fraudnet, an international group that works for very large corporations and sometimes governments to recover assets. ”
Philippsohn and James Nason of the Swiss Bankers Association, who was interviewed by swissinfo, agree that despots who steal not only cover their trails well but they use speed to stay ahead of efforts to bring criminal charges against them. “It doesn’t take rocket science to see that all the people in control of this money need to do is to move it to another country, add another layer to the money laundering. A lot of countries would happily take this money without asking any questions,” says Philippsohn.
Assets frozen for 25 years, but legal battle could soon end
The Duvalier assets have been frozen for the past 25 years but they have been at the centre of a legal tug of war that may now be coming to an end.
The Swiss government has said it wants to see the money, gained illicitly, returned to the people of Haiti. The next step, under the new law, will be for the Swiss Federal Council, the cabinet, to ask the Federal Finance Department to open “a confiscation action” with the Federal Administrative Tribunal, a Swiss high court.
The FDFA (Federal Foreign Affairs Department) notes in a statement 1 February that “the Confederation will take legal action before the Federal Administrative Court to enable frozen assets to be forfeited. Once confiscated, the assets will be returned to Haiti in order to improve the living conditions of the Haitian people. The RIAA illustrates the policy that Switzerland has pursued for the last 20 years in order to avoid being used as a safe haven for stolen assets by PEPs (politically exposed persons).”
Duvalier’s move, to appeal or not appeal, will determine speed at which money is returned
Much thus depends on whether or not Jean-Claude Duvalier decides to appeal a new high court decision. He has not given any indication of what he will do, and his surprise return to Haiti and subsequent detention by authorities in mid-January, leaves this an open question.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s new law covering potentate funds, dictator’s assets frozen in Swiss banks, goes into effect 1 February 2011. The first beneficiary of what is called the Restitution of Illicit Assets Act is likely to be Haiti, which is scheduled to receive CHF6 million that have been frozen since Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as Baby Doc, fled the country in 1986.
Baby Doc’s surprising return to Haiti 17 January has provoked questions about why he would risk prosecution, and one of the suggestions put forward is that he hopes to keep the Swiss from returning money his family stashed in Swiss banks. The Duvaliers fought long and hard to force Switzerland to unfreeze their assets, saying these were legally gained. Baby Doc’s notoriously expensive lifestyle and divorce in France have sparked rumours that he is short of money.
Switzerland has struggled to keep the funds out of the Duvalier clan‘s hands for several years, cobbled by its own laws that said funds could be returned only if a country asks for judicial assistance once the dictator is gone. Haiti’s plight, a country too poor and disorganized to ask for help, underlined the shortcomings of the law.
The new law, passed in October 2010 (text), will, under certain circumstances, make it possible to return funds to a country that has not been able to follow the normal international legal path to demand their return.
Duvalier, whose motives for returning to Haiti remain a mystery, now faces charges of fraud and embezzlement.
Links to other sites: BBC, France24/AFP, New York Times
Duvalier leaves hotel with police escort
Update: Baby Doc Duvalier, as Haii’s former dictator is popularly known, was escorted by police from his hotel in Port-au-Prince Tuesday evening 18 January, Swiss time, after meeting with some of the country’s top judicial officials. Several hours of questioning later, charges were pressed against him. They include financial corruption and possibly human rights charges, CNN says, citing its own sources.
Human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had been urging Haitian authorities to detain and charge Jean-Claude Duvalier, who unexpectedly arrived in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince 17 January claiming he wanted to help Haiti one year after the earthquake that devastated the country. Haitians still do not know who is to be their next president after last year’s contested elections.
Duvalier’s arrival has taken the US and French governments by surprise, with the USA denouncing his return and French officials saying they had no prior knowledge of his trip. The French ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret was quoted in the Miami Herald as saying: “He’s a simple French citizen, he’s allowed to do what he wants to do.”
French foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie has come under fire for France’s timid reaction to the riots that toppled long-time French ally, former Tunisian President Ben Ali.
Duvalier was president-for-life from 1971 to 1986, when he was ousted in a popular uprising against the excess of corruption and severe repression of his government. He has since lived in exile in France.
Switzerland has kept frozen some CHF6 million in assets claimed by the Duvalier clan since Baby Doc fled the island, despite several legal challenges over the years. Several court decisions in 2010 will result in the money being returned to Haiti to improve its infrastructure, at some point in 2011.
Jean-Claude Duvalier has returned to Haiti after a 25-year absence, prompting the United Nations to restrict the movements of its sizable workforce there for fear of outbreaks of violence, reports CNN. Duvalier, popularly known as Baby Doc during and after the 15 year dictatorship he led, in the footsteps of his father Papa Doc’s 14-year tenure, is said by an assistant to have returned because he is homesick and he wants to commemorate the first anniversary of the earthquake that tore apart the island nation in January 2010.
United Nations agencies are coming under pressure to leave Haiti, as crowds protesting their presence spread to the capital, Port-au-Prince, Thursday 19 November. The rock-throwing, tire-burning crowds also appear to be protesting what they see as government inaction. Cholera has now killed some 1,100 people and spread throughout most of the country. Rumours have also spread, that a UN team from Nepal brought the disease, which the UN denies. More than 18,000 people have been hospitalized with the disease and, according to CNN, the 4 percent hospital death rate is far higher than is expected in developed countries. The true numbers are likely far higher, but better data collection is needed to determine the extent of the outbreak, Nigel Fisher, the United Nations co-ordinator of humanitarian affairs in Haiti, told Canada’s CBC.
The 1.3 million people displaced by January’s massive earthquake in Haiti are bracing for the arrival of tropical storm Tomas, which is heading for the Caribbean island and is gathering strength. People living in tents since their houses were destroyed by the earthquake are hoping that the storm will give the capital Port-au-Prince a miss, but weather experts are saying the deforested half-island is prone to flooding and mudslides.
Health experts worry that the country’s poor sanitation system, also largely destroyed by the earthquake, will exacerbate water-borne diseases, especially the cholera outbreak that has killed more than 440 people, 105 in the past 6 days. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed earlier that the cholera strain afflicting Haiti was of South Asian origin, fuelling rumours that the source was a Nepalese army base in Haiti.
Links to other sites: Miami Herald, NewsTime, SF Gate, Washington Post
Source: Al-Jazeera
Health authorities in Haiti 24 October confirmed five new cases of cholera in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, bringing to more than 3,000 the number of infected people. More than 250 people have died of the disease since it was first recorded one week ago. The five new cases were infected in the Artibonite region north of the capital, where the outbreak was first registered.
Health authorities are racing to set up treatment centres in order to stem the epidemic, and 12 centres have been set up in Port-au-Prince. “We have registered a diminishing in numbers of deaths and of hospitalized people in the most critical areas,” Gabriel Thimote, director-general of Haiti’s Public Health Ministry, told a news conference 24 October. “The tendency is that it is stabilizing, without being able to say that we have reached a peak.”
Links to other sites: Guardian, Reuters, PanAmerican Health Organization
At least 138 people have died and more than 1,500 are seriously ill following an outbreak of what Haitian health officials say may be cholera, according to reports 22 October. The victims are all from the Artibonite region north of the capital Port-au-Prince, and died of acute diarrhea and dehydration, symptoms of cholera. Medical investigators from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the source of the outbreak. The government is trucking in clean water to the area.
Cholera is a bacterial disease spread by contaminated water that can cause death by dehydration in as few as four hours. It is entirely treatable by intravenous or oral rehydration.
Links to other sites: CBS4, Miami Herald, RelieWeb site
Two prisoners have been shot dead and one trampled to death during a riot preceded by an escape attempt at Port-au-Prince’s main prison. One prisoner disarmed a guard 18 October and began to release other prisoners, who then briefly took seven foreigners hostage. The Haitian National Police called for reinforcements from the UN peacekeeping mission, which took up position around the prison’s perimeter.
The prison was destroyed by Haiti’s earthquake in January. Built for 400 prisoners, almost 5,000 escaped after the earthquake. Many of those imprisoned have not been sentenced or tried, according to a BBC report in March
Links to other sites: Al-Jazeera, AP, BBC
Lucerne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Julien Kénord, 27, who worked for Caritas, Switzerland in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was killed Friday 8 October, the group announced Tuesday. He had just cashed a Caritas check for $2,000 at a bank in the city and was seated in his car when he was beaten by an unknown assailant. Shortly after, he died in hospital, from injuries sustained in the attack.
Police in Haiti have opened an investigation into the attack and death. Caritas, while deploring his death, says it will carry on the work it began in Haiti 12 years ago. The group provides basic survival assistance to families in distress, and it recently undertook the reconstruction of 1,700 homes in the area ravaged by the January earthquake, in Gressier, west of Port-au-Prince.
Geneva-based WMO says new weather bulletins to help Haitian public but also NGOs
More warnings in the future with new Met system for Haiti should help alert NGOs (photo: Marco Dormino, UNDP)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Haiti’s weather service was badly damaged by the hurricane that tore through the country 12 January, but the hobbled National Meteorological Centre of Haiti has been able to use the disaster to rebuild a stronger service in close cooperation with other national weather services. The new NMC of Haiti web site is in place in time for the hurricane system, June to December, and will serve as a critical source of information for the population but also NGO’s (non-governmental organizations).
Haiti’s ability to produce and disseminate weather information and warnings has been re-established with the support of a coalition of World Meteorological Organization members, says the Geneva-based organization. They include Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Haiti is particularly prone to natural disasters that requires international assistance, according to the WMO.
Over 90 percent of disasters in the country are linked to or aggravated by frequently occurring meteorological, hydrological and climate-related hazards: tropical cyclones and related storm surges, rivers and flash floods, drought, thunderstorms or lightning, landslides or mudslides, which have been further exacerbated by massive deforestation and environmental changes. Haiti annually experiences two rainy seasons, from April to June and from October to November, as well as a hurricane season from early June until the end of November. It suffered significant losses in 2008 from four major hurricanes, Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike. In 2004 tropical storm Jeanne’s heavy rains caused massive flooding and landslides; 1998 experienced Hurricane George; 1994, Hurricane Gordon and 1963, Hurricane Flora.
A relatively small 4.4 earthquake shook Port-au-Prince in Haiti during the night of 3-4 May, sending some panic-stricken residents into the street, but no serious damage was reported. The situation on the island has improved enough for international mail service to be resumed this week, reports Le Nouvelliste in Haiti.
A US senator from Idaho, home to most of the missionaries who were accused of trying to kidnap a group of children in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, says the charges against nine of them have been dropped. A tenth member of the group remains jailed with charges pending. No explanation has been given.
Canadian graduate student Julia Gaffield, 26, has uncovered the only known existing copy of Haiti’s declaration of independence from 1804, found while wading through documents in the British Museum. The paper has been the object of decades of research by historians, in part because Haiti was the first slave colony to declare independence, from France. The Globe & Mail notes that “Her discovery, which comes more than 200 years after the document was signed and ends decades of historical sleuthing intent on its recovery, could not come at a more poignant moment for the nation of Haiti, still reeling from the latest blow to its national identity,” a reference to the January 2010 earthquake.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss government has pledged CHF35.9 million to rebuild Haiti, to which private donations of CHF55 million have been added, for a total Swiss contribution of CHF90m. The money was pledged in New York Wednesday 31 March at the international donors conference. The Swiss contribution is in addition to humanitarian aid and will be distributed under guidelines set by the United Nations. A key aspect of the reconstruction will be to spread the money around Haiti, rather than rebuilding mainly in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
Switzerland has maintained an office in Haiti since 2005.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland could soon have a law that would help avoid fiascos like the Duvalier funds legal case, where the Swiss have spent 23 years unsuccessfully trying to return to the people of Haiti money that was pocketed by the Duvalier family dictators. Switzerland has, in the past 15 years, returned more than CHF1.7 billion in such stolen dictators’ funds to other countries – the only country to do so.
If Parliament passes the law soon after the consultation period ends, it could be used to return some CHF6 million to Haiti. The assets have been frozen since 1986.
The Swiss Federal Council Wednesday 24 February opened for consultation a proposed law on “the restitution of illicit assets”, to ensure that Switzerland’s hands are not tied if a state is unable to conduct national criminal procedures against its own former leaders. The consultation, open to cantons, political, legal and business groups who have an interest in the change of law, closes 16 April 2010.
Problems in the cases of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and former leader Mobutu as well as Haiti and the Duvalier assets, prompted the government to decide in early 2009 that Swiss law would need to change, a process that has taken nearly a year.
Three US women are being allowed to leave Haiti with children they have adopted, from an orphanage in Haiti that has provided children for adoption in the past, after the women were stopped at the border Saturday 20 February. US officials have backed the women, saying the paperwork was done correctly, after angry Haitians questioned the validity of their documents. The incident follows tensions over children leaving the country after members of a US religious group were arrested in January for trying to leave the country with a group of children.
Links to other sites: CNN, Fergus Falls Daily Journal,Minnesota, USA
Haiti held an official day of mourning Friday 12 February, one month after the 36-second earthquake that killed over 200,000 people and devastated the nation.
Links to other sites: CBC, CNN, Jamaica Observer
The prosecutor and judge in the child abduction case in Haiti have said that they will decide early next week whether to proceed with the case or drop charges. The case involves 10 US citizens accused of trying to take several young children out of the country without the proper documentation.
The judge in the case, Bernard Saint-vil, has said he may release the Americans but require them to stay in Haiti to be tried, or allow them to leave but require them to return. The Americans say they were taking the children to safety in neighbouring Dominican Republic. Several of the children’s parents have testified that they gave up their children willingly, in order to assure them of a better life.
Links to other sites: CNN, Wall Street Journal
It will take Haiti a decade to rebuild, says engineers testing buildings in the country badly damaged by a 12 January earthquake. The UN has estimated that 20 percent of the buildings collapsed and 80 percent of those remaining are damaged. Volunteer engineers who are checking the buildings one by one say that many are too safe to be left standing, reports NPR.
Homeless Haitians, post-earthquake, have set up tents on a golf course (photo: ©2010 Marco Dormino/UN)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva Tuesday 9 February made an urgent plea for another kind of aid for Haiti: weather services. The organization points out that “the rainy season with flood risk is due in early April and the hurricane season begins in early June. In order to prevent potential disasters related to natural hazards, which the country is prone to, the capacity of Haiti to produce and disseminate weather information and warnings needs to be developed without delay.”
More than 90 percent of the disasters in Haiti “are linked to frequently occurring meteorological, hydrological and climate-related hazards,” says the WMO.
The country’s meteorological services have operated only partially since the 12 January earthquake, so other WMO member countries have been providing weather information.
Swiss high court ruling on Haitian ex-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s money will lead to new law
Talloires, France, near Geneva, where the Duvaliers fled after leaving Haiti in 1986 (photo: Talloires Tourisme)
Update (links added) 23:30 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government Wednesday morning 3 February took the unusual step of freezing funds in a bank account once held by Haiti’s former dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, based on a special cases clause in the Swiss constitution. At the same time the Swiss supreme court published its ruling on the frozen assets, saying that they cannot be returned to the Haitian people as mandated by the Swiss Office of Justice in 2009. The court decision has prompted the Swiss Federal Council to freeze the funds long enough to pass a law that will help it avoid releasing the assets “for the benefit of the Duvalier clan, which the Federal Criminal Court deems to be a criminal organization.”
A new law would allow the Swiss parliament input on how to best return the money to Haiti.
The ruling Federal Council is asking the Foreign Affairs Department to “complete by the end of the month its work on drafting a federal law that would ultimately allow such assets to be confiscated, and to submit the draft law for consultation.” A spokesperson for the Federal Foreign Affairs Office told GenevaLunch that the law is likely to be passed in 2010. It will cover similar situations of confiscated assets, several of which have come up in recent years.
Switzerland is the only country in the past 20 years to have returned stolen “potentates” funds to the countries previously ruled by the dictators: more than CHF1.6 billion has been returned to Peru, the Philippines and Nigeria among others.
The Duvalier family has been fighting to obtain access to $5.7 million sitting in Swiss bank accounts since they were frozen in 1986, when the Haitian government made a first request for assistance to obtain what it said were stolen funds. Jean-Claude Duvalier, popularly known as Baby Doc, ruled Haiti starting in 1971, when at age 19 he became the world’s then-youngest ruler. His father, known as Papa Doc, had ruled it for the previous 13 year.
A man has been pulled from underneath a house that had been repeatedly looted 14 days after the earthquake that reduced Port-au-Prince, Haiti to rubble. Rico Dibrivell was rescued by US soldiers after a crowd of looters called them for help. It was initially not clear if the man had been trapped since the original earthquake or had become stuck in a subsequent tremor. Over 100 people have been rescued since the earthquake.
The Haitian government began distribution of food by itself Tuesday, with Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive saying: “We could not wait anymore that the international community organize by their standards.” Tempers are fraying and tensions rising, say humanitarian workers, as food, water and other emergency equipment slowly make their way to the needy. Crowds of desperate people throng distribution points, and the authorities are using force to keep people back.
The country was shaken by two lesser aftershocks 26 January and the US Geological Survey said that tremors will be felt for at least another month.
Links to other sites: AFP, Fox News, Miami Herald
A 5.9 earthquake in Haiti Wednesday 20 January, the largest to date, frightened people but does not appear to have caused major damage. An earthquake of 6 would be one-tenth the strength of the one that hit the country 12 January, since the Richter scale is a base-10 logarithmic calculation. Supplies are reportedly finally moving, although still slowly, aid agencies report.
Links to other sites: CNN, Reuters AlertNet
Haitian Red Cross volunteer with child (image: IFRC on flickr)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Several Geneva-based organizations have rushed to help Haitians following the 12 January earthquake there, and they are now publishing striking images that show the scope of the disaster the work they are involved in.
Among them:
- Doctors Without Borders
- ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross)
- IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies)
- OCHA (UN disaster relief coordinating office)
