World Bank Allocates $255 million for Haiti Reconstruction

December 2, 2011 By Staff

Today in Latin America

Top Story — The World Bank announced Thursday that it has allocated $255 million to support Haiti’s reconstruction efforts after the January 2010 earthquake that devastated the country. The grant is intended to help rebuild Haiti’s education system, improve disaster response and transportation infrastructure, support Haitian agriculture, and provide more permanent housing for a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of displaced Haitians still living in tent cities. The World Bank grant follows Haitian President Michel Martelly’s announcement on Tuesday that he hopes to create 500,000 new jobs in the next three years, aided by the development of a Marriott Hotel in Port-au-Prince and an industrial park anchored by a South Korean textile firm. The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which was co-chaired by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and was intended to coordinate recovery efforts after the quake, was dissolved in October and a new panel has not yet been convened.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

Mexico’s Milenio newspaper reported that drug violence-related deaths dropped to the lowest level in two years in the month of November, with 60 percent of these deaths occurring in Mexico, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua states.
The state of Alabama will now require training for more than 16,000 police officers on aspects of the state’s controversial new immigration law.
An 85 year-old Mexican woman living legally in the U.S. was given 2 and a half years in prison for running an immigrant smuggling operation for decades.
Local, state and federal immigration officials met in Newark, New Jersey on Thursday to launch a new anti-fraud campaign intended to raise awareness of immigration scams among immigrants in the U.S.

Caribbean

Cuban authorities have relaxed restrictions on internal migration, which will allow relatives of people living in Havana to move to the capital without special permission.
Jamaican Transport and Works Minister Mike Henry announced his resignation amid accusations that he had mismanaged funds from China for a new road-building program.
19 U.S. senators have asked the Cuban government to release imprisoned U.S. contractor Allan Gross.
Cuba has reportedly created its own homegrown online social network site that looks deceptively like Facebook.

Central America

U.S. Senators Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio jointly helped pass a Senate resolution on Thursday to condemn Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s recent re-election as fraudulent.
68 Guatemalan refugee families living on the Mexican side of the Mexico-Guatemala border have called for humanitarian aid after running out of water and food while awaiting resettlement.
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee narrowly voted to allow U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Mari Carmen Aponte to continue at her post next year, due to strong Republican opposition.

Andes

33 Latin American and Caribbean nations will participate in the inaugural meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CLACS, or CELAC in Spanish) on Friday; the U.S. and Canada are not invited.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is facing growing pressure from media rights groups who say that he is cracking down on the independent media by seizing private outlets and suing opposition publications.
Members of Peru’s mining sector on Thursday warned Peruvian President Ollanta Humala that the country will lose investments if major construction projects like the Conga mine are shut down due to protests.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said his first official international trip following cancer treatment will be to Argentina to attend the inauguration ceremony of Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Chávez also presented Kirchner with a portrait he’d painted of her late husband, Néstor Kirchner.

Southern Cone

Activist, journalist and teacher Julio Castro’s remains were identified by Uruguayan authorities after his body was unearthed on a military base in October. He was disappeared and tortured to death in 1977 at the age of 69.
The wife of former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis, accused of involvement in the death of two Americans in Chile during the 1973 military coup, says her husband has Alzheimer’s disease and is living in an undisclosed U.S. nursing home. A Chilean judge is requesting his extradition.
Argentina’s congress is reportedly debating a bill to include insignias of the contested Falkland Islands on team uniforms during the 2012 London Olympics.
Rio de Janeiro commemorated World AIDS Day by lighting ten city monuments, including the Christ the Redeemer statue, in red lights.

Image: United Nations Photo @ Flickr.

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