Development and Peace’s housing project in Haiti would not be possible without the residents of Ti-Boucan, the workers and craftsmen in the factory that was set up to create the materials, and the Institut de technologie et d’animation communautaire (ITECA). And after several months of non-stop work, the first houses are springing up from the ground!
Mr. Franklin Montina is the Justice of the Peace responsible for the commune of Gressier. In the Haitian judicial system, the justice of the peace is responsible for a variety of issues having to do with civil, criminal, commercial and correctional or criminal law. Thus, he receives the deliberations of family councils and accusations of misdemeanours or crimes within his jurisdiction, but he is also responsible for ascertaining that families are actually the owners of the land on which they build their houses.
Madame Yvonne Delcamize Simon is a 62-year-old widow who has lived her entire life in Ti-Boucan. Her father left his house to her and she lived in it until the earthquake of January 12, 2010.
Micheline and her husband Jean-Philippe, AKA Frantzé, are going to live with their 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son in their brand new house. They will receive the keys to their new house next Tuesday at the project's official inauguration.
These days, things are booming in the mining town of Huanuni, Bolivia. Tin prices are at nearly $10 a pound, compared to $2 in the eighties. The tin extracted from the mine is processed in local foundries, and then sent by boat to Asia, where it ends up in cell phones, laptops, iPods and other electrical goods. Miners are earning unprecedented salaries, which has spawned a tin rush that has men literally fighting for jobs at the COMIBOL state run mine, and young women fighting over the wage-earning miners.
These women have come a long way - both literally and metaphorically! Nineteen- year old Diana Garcia, member of the executive board of the National Federation of Domestic workers (FENATRAHOB), came from a life of domestic servitude that started when she was only 12 years old in Pando, one of the remotest reaches of Bolivia. Today, Diana is studying law at the University of Bolivia.
The road from Lima to Huancayo, in the central Highlands of Peru, is a dusty and graffiti-streaked highway that climbs, at first slowly, out of a grey, mist-shrouded Lima. It is flanked by settlements of poor neighbourhoods, where pastel-coloured ramshackle houses are precariously perched on the mountainside, looking down on to a four-lane highway.
Yesterday, I flew to South America to attend a workshop that is being organized by CIDSE, and the Canadian Network for Corporate Accountability (CNCA), along with a number of Latin American civil society organizations, on how transnational corporations can be more vigilant with respect to human rights – i.e. take steps to ensure that their operations do not lead to human rights violations and damage to local communities.
On my last day in Mali, I went to visit a centre in Bamako that is hosting 16 displaced families (98 people) who have fled the North of the country due to conflict there. Rebel groups have taken over several cities and have declared independence of this northern region, which stretches out towards the desert. In addition, some of the rebel groups are transforming the territory into an Islamic fundamentalist state by imposing sharia law. They have desecrated churches and even destroyed ancient mosques that they view as idolatrous.
