Earthquake In Haiti

Haiti today is a creation of the world, its failures often purposefully molded by outsiders, though almost always in collusion with the Haitian elite, who stand to profit from these failures. In this, it is not dissimilar to other corrupt countries with a history of colonial exploitation.

Poor Infrastructure Haiti was dealt with a catastrophic blow in January 2010 when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck 10 miles southwest of the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince. It was the region's worst earthquake in 200 years. The earthquake leveled many sections of the city, destroying government buildings, foreign aid offices, and countless houses. Assessing the scope of the devastation, Prime Minister Préval said, "Parliament has collapsed. The tax office

The penalty for rape is a minimum of 10 years of forced labor, increasing to a mandatory 15 years if the survivor was less than 16 years old or if the rapist was a person of authority. In the case of gang rape, the maximum penalty is lifelong forced labor. High rates of sexual violence existed before the earthquake, but the precarious safety and economic situation after the earthquake has left some women and girls even more vulnerable to such abuse. Many women lost their homes and livelihoods during the earthquake and now live in informal settlements or rely on host families for shelter.

Some women and girls in post-earthquake Haiti lack access to family planning and prenatal and obstetric care. Pregnancy rates are three times higher than urban rates of pregnancy were before the earthquake. Human Rights Watch found that many women and girls do not know where to get birth control or prenatal care even though these services exist. Many have given birth in tents or some on the street in route to the hospital because of transportation

Education is given a very small amount of financial support. They use outdated curriculum, while others administer the reformed curriculum of the 1997 National Plan of Education and Training (NPET). Due to the economic hardships, linguistic barriers and high repetition rate there is a high dropout and low enrollment rate. The quality of education also suffers because of a dearth of materials, expertise, proper management, and organization. All these deficiencies have been exacerbated by the earthquake. With the state’s lack of institutional strength and capacity to provide basic services to the Haitian masses, education has become increasingly privatized. According to the 2002–03 education census cited by the World Bank, “only 8 percent of Haitian schools were public, while approximately 92 percent were privately owned and financed”, meaning they were tuition-based in most cases. Because of Haiti’s extreme poverty, most schools were unaffordable and therefore inaccessible to the majority of families. In fact, only 55 percent of children aged six to twelve were enrolled in school, and less than one-third of those enrolled reached the fifth