UNICEF Haiti - Two years after earthquake

Francoise Gruloos-Ackermans, UNICEF Representative in Haiti:

"So, Unicef is launching its two-year report today, and in the report, what we are reporting is, slowly, improvements. We are reporting progress in some areas: in education, in health, in nutrition, in water and sanitation, child protection.

In education, for instance, we have been able to support 750,000 children to go back to school in 2011. Among them, an estimated 80,000 children have been able to go back to new schools, mixed schools, because we have been building 193 schools in the affected areas, and in some areas where we had children displaced after the earthquake.

In the area of nutrition, for instance, we have been able to provide support -- life-saving intervention -- to more than 50,000 children in 365 feeding centers throughout the country.

We report, in our document, that 95 communities have launched new initiatives to improve sanitation, also in the rural area in particular.

Today, in the report, we are able to inform that, for the first time, we have a directory of the residential care centers in the country. We were able to get together with the government and assess some 360 residential care centers in the country, and we have been registering, already, more than 13,000 children, in these centers, that are now registered, are more protected, in a way. Out of the estimation of 50,000 children that we have in all these centers. These centers are supposed to protect children. But we know in some cases they do, but in others, they didn't and they do not, so this is a big progress for us and the state and the partners.

Now, all of these interventions and these progresses -- and we call them "little victories"! -- in fact, are in the context of extreme poverty, structural poverty, chronic poverty, and underdevelopment. We always have to remember that before the earthquake, the situation was not a good situation for children, so this is the context in which we are working in.

Our feeling, today, in UNICEF, here in Haiti: there is hope. And we are receiving very strong messages from the government that we have to support them to move forward. And I think, for us, very important. We know by experience in UNICEF that we can work a lot. We can work very hard. But if we don't have the political commitment and the political will, it's very complicated. I think here, today, we are working with a government that is putting the children first in the agenda, and is really supportive to working on children's issues. So I think for us, this is very positive."

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