The United Nations headquarters in New York was closed for "an unprecedented three days straight" following the devastation caused by hurricane Sandy on the east coast of the United States, but one of the UN's first concerns as business resumed, was to draw attention to another of Sandy's casualties: Haiti.
The head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)in Haiti, Johan Peleman, said that up to a million people there now faced "food insecurity" as the the half-island nation was dealt another devastating blow from nature. As well as Sandy, the country was hit by a protracted drought this year and another fierce hurricane, Isaac, which struck last summer. All this in the backdrop of the cataclysmic earthquake which destroyed much of the country in January 2010. Sandy contributed another 20,000 or so homes to the heaps of ruins.
“Already, the drought and the previous storm had hit the northern part of the country very badly and we had seen the levels of food insecurity rise there... With the south being hit now, we are going to face, in the next couple of months, very serious problems of malnutrition and food insecurity.”
Equally worrying is the spectre of a rapid spread of water-borne diseases and a in particular Cholera.
Nature has not been the only power that has reaped havoc in Haiti. Foreign colonial powers have exploited Haiti and contributed to making it the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. See post dated July 20, 20112: We all owe Haiti a debt.
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