Water
During earthquakes, like the one that rocked the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, water systems, with their extensive network of pipes and pumps, often collapse. Repairs can take time—time that people who depend on that water to stay alive don’t have.
Without water, people can’t last much beyond three days. That’s why Oxfam focuses much of its emergency response on rushing to provide survivors with a safe supply.
With years of experience responding to emergencies around the world, Oxfam’s water engineers know how to build temporary systems with speed and efficiency so that people can get the water they need. Oxfam trucks water into remote regions, drills for it through desert floors regions, erects massive storage tanks, hauls in generators, repairs pumps, lays temporary water lines, and hands out plastic buckets so people can tote water back to their homes.
And there’s an internationally accepted standard of delivery Oxfam strives to maintain in every crisis. It calls for providing survivors with about four gallons of water per person per day—an amount intended to cover just essential needs.
Here are some of the critical components of an effective emergency water system:
Sanitation
Ensuring that disaster survivors living in camp conditions have safe ways to dispose of waste is crucial to helping them live in a healthy and dignified environment, so creating latrines is a key element of Oxfam’s humanitarian programming.
As quickly as possible after an emergency, we begin constructing simple latrines consisting of holes or trenches in the ground surrounded by light structures of poles and plastic sheeting to provide privacy. As soon as we have the time and resources to do it, we add concrete slabs to stand on to make the latrines cleaner and easier to use.
Oxfam also builds bathing facilities that are designed to be safe and private.
Oxfam makes sure that the displaced communities themselves are involved in the construction and maintenance of their sanitation structures, and in order to help ensure that women and girls feel safe using these communal facilities, we take care that women in particular are involved in decision-making about their location, design, and construction.
]]>Whenever an earthquake or hurricane hits, it is the poorest people who face the greatest risks. They often have no choice but to live in substandard housing that is not built to withstand the intensity of a high-magnitude quake or flood. This means poor and marginalized people are often more vulnerable to injury and death. To make matters worse, often those who do survive have the fewest material resources to recover from disasters. While earthquakes and hurricanes cannot be prevented, the fact that poor communities are disproportionately affected is not a natural condition. It is a human-made problem that results from cultural, socio-economic, political, and institutional factors.
Haiti has a painful history of political instability and humanitarian disasters. The country is still recovering from four serious storms that hit within a few weeks of each other in 2008. Hurricanes and earthquakes exacerbate extreme poverty: they damage neglected infrastructure like roads and drinking water systems, and further degrade the environment. The effects of the January 2010 earthquake will be felt long after the initial recovery period. Survivors—making do with limited resources—face years of hard work to recover. However, disaster losses in the short and long term can be substantially reduced by taking measures to decrease peoples’ vulnerability and build their resilience in the face of hazardous events, whether it is improving immediate living conditions or addressing all the underlying causes of poverty that contribute to increased suffering at the time of emergencies.
Oxfam has been working in Haiti to create sustainable means of earning a living, help Haitians reduce their vulnerability to disasters, and strengthen and support people’s ability to hold their government accountable. These long-term efforts meant that, when the earthquake hit, we already had staff on the ground ready to work with local organizations to respond to the humanitarian crisis.
No country can fully withstand the impact of an earthquake like the one that has rocked Haiti, especially a nation saddled with deep poverty and minimal infrastructure. We know that the communities we work with are strong and determined and will respond to this disaster as they have others. We have a shared responsibility to ensure that Haitians have the resources they need to avoid unnecessary suffering, both now and in the long run.
Help now by donating to our Haiti Earthquake Response Fund.
]]>I eventually made it to Mirogane, the main city in the department, which had also been severely affected by both Gustav and Hanna. Here things got interesting. As I made my way along Route Nationale #2, I began noticing trucks full of produce lined up on the side of the road. They were carrying avocados, bananas, and other fresh produce from the South and Grand Anse to be sold in the markets of Port-au-Prince. However, they would not make it to those markets because the bridge on the highway was 1.5 meters?or nearly five feet?under water. The women who had purchased the merchandise in order to resell it, were clearly distraught as the fruits and vegetables had already begun to rot.
As I neared the bridge, or where the bridge should have been, Haitian police officers were posted to prevent vehicles from attempting to cross. A few days earlier, the Haitian government formally closed the highway.
Already in the days following the closing of the road, a group of entrepreneurs had organized alternative transportation for foot passengers and small loads. A shuttle-ferry system had been established. For 15 Haitian gourdes—roughly 38 cents—a man carries you on his back or shoulders and puts you in a "chario," a small wooden boat. Once full, two or three men push the boat across the 229-foot stretch of water to the other side, where for another 15 gourdes, another man takes you on his shoulders to dry land. Here I was able to get on public transport into Port-au-Prince.
Despite this alternative transportation, the road closure combined with the extensive damage caused by the storms will have a great impact on the area. The inability of aid groups to use the road means that help will be slow to reach the isolated areas most affected by the storms. There are great public health risks and food security issues that will need to be addressed in the coming days, weeks, and months and access to the area is critical.
]]>Almost one week after Tropical Storm Hanna descended on Haiti, getting food and supplies to Gonaïves has been virtually impossible. The main road from Port-au-Prince was cut when a bridge collapsed just outside of St. Marc, and the road is cut off from the north, as the bridge in the neighboring town of Ennery was washed away. The alternative route through the Central Plateau proved difficult for large trucks carrying supplies, and rough waters have delayed planned shipments of humanitarian aid via boat.
According to UN estimates, 60,000 people are said to be in temporary shelters. "The conditions of those in shelters are horrific," says Rowley. "There is no food, water, cooking materials, basic toiletries or medical supplies, sleeping mats, or latrines. People are in desperate need of anything and everything. Many people have injuries to their feet, he adds, because they are having to wade through the water without shoes.
People are fleeing the town by the hundreds—on foot, in cars, whatever way they can. Some are moving up to the small plateau to the north of Gonaïves, others are going south.
Ogè Léandre, a 45-year-old father of six, explains how he and his family barely managed to get to the shelters in time. "The waters from Tropical Storm Jeanne [2004] did not reach us, so we did not think that we needed to evacuate this time. We packed up everything off the ground and stacked it on top of tables and beds. But then the water started to rise, and it did not stop. So we decided to go to the shelter. But the water was already so high and strong that I could not hold onto one of my children, and the water swept her away. Luckily someone was there to grab her. We got to the roof of the shelter, and about an hour later watched as our entire house was washed away."
In the meantime, Hurricane Ike grazed the northern coast of Haiti early Sunday morning, bringing more rain to Gonaïves and other towns in the Valley. The rain washed out the bridge in Mirebalais, and massive flooding and deaths are being reported in the town of Cabaret, just north of Port-au-Prince.
"We cannot wait for the roads and bridges to be repaired," says Oxfam's Humanitarian Coordinator Kone Amara. "We must get supplies into Gonaïves now. We are in contact with the United Nations' peacekeeping mission here to see how we can begin delivering aid with helicopters. The World Food Program is also preparing shipments by boat once the seas have calmed."
While Oxfam continues to evaluate the damage caused by Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna in other parts of the country, the agency is scaling up its first-response efforts to Gonaïves, where it has a shipment of drinking water and relief materials ready for distribution.
]]>Oxfam is simultaneously assessing the needs and distributing essential supplies in the department of Nippes, and we are coordinating with local authorities to provide support for six emergency shelters in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. In the hard-hit city of Gonaïves, where lack of access initially thwarted relief efforts, the agency is now supplying families with basic household items and five-gallon containers of clean water.
]]>Breakfast is no longer part of her children's morning routine. Alexandre can't afford it. Most of what she earns as a street vendor in the Carrefour-Feuilles district of Port-au-Prince she was already spending on food for her family. But the steep rise in the cost of rice, a Haitian staple, is pricing Alexandre and her family out of regular meals.
Less than 20 years ago, the country was nearly self-sufficient when it came to rice production. But in 1995, when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund pressured Haiti to cut import tariffs on rice from 50 percent to 3 percent, cheap subsidized rice from the US began to flood into the country. Urban consumers benefited for a while from the low-cost imports, but they caused national rice production to plummet. Today, Haiti is now importing 80 percent of the rice it consumes—just as world prices have doubled.
More than half the country's population is malnourished, and more than 80 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty line. Rising prices provoked riots in several Haitian cities earlier this spring and forced the resignation of the country's prime minister.
"If people are hungry, they have no stake in stability," said Hedi Annabi, the UN special representative in Haiti. "They will be ready for anything--for anarchy--because they have nothing to safeguard or to fight for."
While the entire country is affected, cities--where 40 percent of the populations lives--are especially hard hit.
Agriculture, which employs more than 60 percent of the Haitian workforce, is one of the areas most affected by trade liberalization policies. An estimated 830,000 jobs in Haiti have been lost in recent years, primarily in agriculture.
In the capital, Port-au-Prince and the town of Jacmel in the southeast, Oxfam is helping families hardest hit by the rising food prices. Working through local partners, Oxfam is supporting subsidized community restaurants, school canteens, and helping parents pay off debts to schools. Cash-for-work community clean up activities are also planned for several neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince.
In rural areas in the north of the country, Oxfam is organizing a cash-for-work canal cleaning project, improving and diversifying crops and vegetables, and improving market links for small farmers.
It is through the community restaurant that Alexandre has found some relief from her hardship.
"I am the sole provider for my children," she said. "Their father dies a year ago and now I am alone. If he was here, it would be much easier to manage."
For just 13 cents, Alexandre and her children can now buy a daily subsidized hot meal at one of eight community restaurants supported by Oxfam.
"It's unthinkable that I would be able to buy a meal for my kids for 5 gourdes (13 cents)," says Alexandre, smiling. "It means that every day I have been able to save a little bit of money for other things. Now not all of my money must go on buying food."
Run by a local organization, the restaurants provide immediate relief to those families hit hardest by rising food prices. They are open from 10 a.m. to noon four days a week, and serve up to 200 meals a day, ranging from cornmeal and fish to bouillion, a hearty Haitian vegetable stew.
]]>From flooding in Haiti to drought in Ethiopia, water has long been central to Oxfam's work. Our emergency water systems are a hallmark of our agency. And our efforts to help communities access water for farming and fishing enable people to realize security.
But in recent decades, some extraordinary water pressures have emerged, as water resources are being swallowed up by dams, mining, and other commercial projects. The result is that, for the villages along the rivers, in the watersheds, and on the floodplains of East Asia being swamped or dried up by dams…for the indigenous people and farmers of South America whose rivers, lakes, and wells have been destroyed by mining…water is quickly becoming a major issue—and a major issue for Oxfam.
]]>In any society, developing or not, women are likely to be poorer, less educated, and less empowered than men. Oxfam recognizes women should be valued equally and enabled to reach their potential. What’s more, research has shown that when women earn income, they are more likely than men to spend it on family welfare. And when women are educated, they make decisions that benefit their families and influence their communities.
In the pages that follow, you'll read about how Oxfam is targeting the laws in Mozambique and the gender violence in El Salvador that severely disadvantage women. You'll also learn how Oxfam is equipping women to mediate peace in West Africa and to grow the income of their families. In every case, when it comes to empowering women, men are an equal part of the equation. Oxfam is striving to shape societies that not only permit women to be contributors, but societies that recognize that if they don't seize upon what women can offer, they are failing to leverage one of their most valuable assets.
]]>The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that some 650,000 people nation-wide have been affected by the storm.
More than 61 people are reported to have died, the majority in the town of Gona�ves, where more than 11,000 people have sought refuge in temporary shelters. Shelters are also filling up in the town of Ennery just north of Gonaives. Food, water, and basic supplies are scarce, and health and sanitation conditions are extremely worrisome as human waste is being disposed in the stagnant waters, already contaminated with carcasses of dead animals.
?The town of Gonaives has been completely devastated. The streets are lined with groups of people walking through the streets trying to find higher ground,? described Mr. Parnell A. Denis Oxfam?s contact on the ground in Gonaives. Food supplies and water are scarce and the price for what food is left is rising. The moral of people staying in the shelters is so very low; I am afraid to tell them that another storm is on its way?. Ike, a category 4 hurricane, is forecasted to pass to the north of Haiti early Sunday morning.
Until today, water levels at the South entrance of the town had cut off access to humanitarian convoys from Port-au-Prince; entrance from the north remains inaccessible. Oxfam International Haiti is preparing an evaluation team to travel to Gona�ves to conduct an in depth assessment of the situation. Additional distributions of kits and water to Gonaives are planned for the coming days and joint interventions are being coordinated with other NGOs.
In the west department, Oxfam is coordinating with local authorities in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area to provide support for 6 shelters currently housing more than 1,100 people.
In the North, Oxfam teams have been conducting evaluations with local authorities and other NGOs to assess the extent of the damage and are ready to distribute non-food item kits in the north.
In the Nippes department, Oxfam is following up its first response to Hurricane Gustav with the deployment of an in depth evaluation team. Last weekend, Oxfam distributed non-food item kits to 110 families, in addition to 700 5-gallon bottles of drinking water.
All actions are being carried out in collaboration with local authorities in each area.
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