Children in Haiti: One Year After

UNICEF released a report on Haiti’s progress, called Children in Haiti: One Year After – The Long Road From Relief to Recovery, to document progress made since the devastating earthquake hit the island nation on January 12, 2010.

It notes what UNICEF and its national and private sector partners have accomplished despite difficult circumstances. They had focused all of this past year’s response on its Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action (CCCs) in what was “truly an unprecedented children’s emergency.” More than 220,000 lives were lost, with over 750,000 children directly affected. Progress, although measurable, has been slow because of “persistent bottlenecks to reconstruction and new challenges,” such as land ownership issues and the outbreak of cholera toward the end of the year which particularly ravaged the rural areas. The report is a somber reminder of how long the road to recovery is for Haiti, primarily due to how far behind Haiti was prior to the earthquake in terms of infrastructure, governance, capacity, and all development indicators. Children in Haiti is a call to action for sustained commitment to build a better future for all of Haiti’s children.

The UNICEF report Children in Haiti: One Year After – The Long Road from Relief to Recovery and other information is available at http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/haiti_57363.html