“The people united will never be defeated!” was heard in several languages as the approval of the Declaration of the World Assembly of Inhabitants was welcomed, cementing the convergence of struggles of the inhabitants of towns and rural areas for systemic changes, which are essential to overcome the global crisis. This is a call to sign!

Al Jazeera: Inside Story Americas
16 May, 2013

Michel Martelly, Haiti’s president, says that under his two-year leadership, the country is attracting foreign investment and seeing job growth, but more than 40 percent of Haitians are without work, and labour activists say the number is much higher.

“If people find jobs they are just temporary jobs, or jobs that are not paying well, they are not decent, they are not sustainable,” Yanick Etienne, a Haitian labour activist, told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile 300,000 Haitians are still living in tent camps. Thousands of families have left, but often as a result of being forcibly evicted from public and private properties, and most have nowhere else to go.

By Trenton Daniel

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Attorney Reynold Georges showed up with a judge and a police officer on a recent afternoon at Camp Acra, a cluster of tents and plywood shelters scattered across rocky hills dotted with trees in the heart of the Haitian capital.

The lawyer told the camp of some 30,000 people that they were squatting on his land and had to leave, witnesses said. If they didn’t vacate, he said he’d have the place burned down and leveled by bulldozers. Camp leader Elie Joseph Jean-Louis said other angry residents, who had lost their homes in a catastrophic 2010 earthquake, fought back by lobbing rocks at Georges and the people he had come with.

Today grassroots groups including The Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA), Defenders of the Oppressed (DOP), Heads Together for Change (TEKOCH) and Chanje M Leson organized a march with hundreds of people from displacement camps across Port-au-Prince. Protestors called for their right to housing to be respected and denounced the brutal police murder of Civil Mètis, who lived in Camp Acra Adoken.

Download DOP’s report detailing the Camp Acra Adoken incident HERE.

While it is a positive step for the Martelly administration to acknowledge forced evictions publicly for the first time, the claims made in the government’s press release contradicts information gathered by our grassroots allies, testimonies of camp residents’ themselves, and Amnesty International. You can read the full press release from the Prime Minister’s office below.

A closer look at the government’s claims….

1) “We believe that people’s human rights are being protected and guaranteed by the very process of transitioning them to safer dwellings.”

• 25% of Haitians living in displacement camps are at risk for forced evictions.

Re-posted from Live Wire-Amnesty’s global human rights blog

By Conner Fortune

Chiara Liguori and James Burke of Amnesty International’s Caribbean team are currently in Haiti to launch the report ‘Nowhere to go’: Forced evictions in Haiti’s displacement camps.

“Be prepared, we will burn down your shelters, shoot you and throw you all out.”

“We’ll burn all the camp down and kill your children.”

“I will get you out of here by any means necessary.”

Families in Haiti’s Gaston Magwon camp have been living in fear of being forced into the street since 150 families were forcibly evicted on 15 February © Amnesty Internationa

Video from Al Jazeera

“More than three years after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, tens of thousands of people are facing a new crisis. Amnesty International says already displaced residents are being forced from the capital’s tent cities. The Rights Group says the evictions are a violation of human rights and that the government is doing little to stop them. Caroline Malone reports.”

Re-posted from Amnesty International

IDP camp Grace Village, Carrefour municipality, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, May 2012. ©Amnesty International

Amnesty International’s latest report on the right to housing movement in Haiti, is focused on the human rights violations occurring in displacement camps. Amnesty International is  appealing for government involvement to end forced evictions, ensure equal access to public services, and promote the active participation of people living in informal settlements and slums in decisions and processes that impact their lives.

“To make the right to adequate housing a reality for all, the government of Haiti must put human rights at the heart of the reconstruction effort and its national policy on housing.”

To read the report click HERE