In the next couple of weeks some of the IDP camps around Port-au-Prince will begin to close down. Many of the camps are on private land and the owners need their land back to remain self-supporting. So, now that the Government's 3 month ban on evacuating camps is finished INGOs are trying to work out how we relocate hundreds of thousands of families.
But like many things in this humanitarian disaster world not everything is plain and uncomplicated. For example, we know that there are people that have moved out of our camp because they have a home to which they have returned, and so they do at night. But then in the morning they return to their shelter in the camp - just in case there's a distribution. Some of them need the support still, but others, (like the 'gamblers' I mentioned yesterday are abusing the system).
Surveys have been done on most camp inhabitants and people's houses have been labelled: Green - they could go back; Orange- they could go back with some support to repair damage; Red - their house is destroyed.
So, now has come the time when the NGO Community and the Government together have agreed that it is time to ask the 'Green' people to go home; assessments are being carried out to determine a viable means of helping the 'Orange' people repair their houses and move out of the camps. It leaves the problem of the 'Reds' but together with others we're working on that.
The issues that we are dealing with here are obviously numerous, but perhaps most sensitive amongst them is the issue of dependency. If the NGO community continues to distribute supplies and develop temporary camps then we make them permanent. And for many the temporary is already better than the places they were in before. In fact many families have moved into IDP camps from the country areas because they heard there was free food and water etc.
In our camp, not on private land, there are about 4,000 families - many from one of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods - we cannot, and the government will not, let the camp continue indefinitely, but how do we make sure they get to live life with dignity and yet not be the means by which a completely dependent and unsustainable community is established on a soccer field?
