News Haiti Insurance: Why Haiti’s Horrific Earthquake Won’t Ravage Insurance Companies
The strikingly low level of insurance in Haiti means that the impact of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake on insurance companies is likely to be quite limited. The quake did hundreds of millions of damages ...
News Haiti Insurance: Haiti launches micro-finance catastrophe insurance program
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) – When Hurricane Sandy struck Haiti late last year, the home Guerda Pierre shares with her three children and mother in Cabaret, north of Port-au-Prince, was flooded â?? and so was the merchandise she sold to make a living. “The books, the food, everything was wet after Sandy,” said Pierre. The plantain […]
News Haiti Insurance: Haiti on ‘brink of civil war’, humanitarian group warns
Haiti is on the “brink of a civil war”, the humanitarian group Mercy Corps has warned, as violence between criminal gangs and civilians risks spiralling. Mercy Corps said on Monday that the ...
News Haiti Insurance: iciHaiti - Education : Union demands at their maximums
In an Open Letter to the Minister of National Education dated April 25, 2023, the coordination of the Union Action of Teachers of Haiti (ASEHA), sets out its main ...
News Haiti Insurance: Haiti’s crime rate more than doubles in a year
Haiti’s crime rate has more than doubled since last year, as the Caribbean island nation faces widespread insecurity and gang violence, new data has revealed. More than 1,600 incidents including ...
News Haiti Insurance: Fire consumes popular street market near Haiti's capital
PETIONVILLE, Haiti — A large fire tore through a street market in Haiti early Thursday, consuming thousands of dollars’ worth of goods as vendors wailed over their losses. The market ...
News Haiti Insurance: In Haiti, gangs take control as democracy withers
Cherizier, best known by his childhood nickname Barbecue, has become the most recognized name in Haiti. Internationally, he’s known as Haiti’s most powerful and feared gang leader, sanctioned by the United Nations for “serious human rights abuses,” and the man behind a fuel blockade that brought the Caribbean nation to its knees late last year. At a time when democracy has withered in Haiti and gang violence has spiraled out of control, it's armed men like Cherizier that are filling the power vacuum left by a crumbling government.
News Haiti Insurance: This Day in History: Massive Earthquake Strikes Haiti
This Day in History:, Massive Earthquake Strikes Haiti. January 12, 2010. A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck at 4:53 p.m. local time, devastating the small Caribbean island nation. It was the strongest quake to strike the region in more than 200 years. More than 200,000 people were killed. Reducing countless homes to rubble, the quake left nearly one million people homeless. Thousands of bodies were picked up by trucks and buried in mass graves. One of the poorest nations on Earth, Haiti's recovery effort relied on billions of dollars in global donations
News Haiti Insurance: Protests reach Haiti airport and Prime Minister’s residence over police killings
Protesters and some police officers protested at the official residence of Haiti's prime minister in the capital Port-au-Prince on Thursday, decrying recent killings of police, according to one of his advisors.
News Haiti Insurance: Haiti police block streets, break into airport to protest officer killings
A Reuters witness heard heavy gunfire near his home. Haiti’s National Police and the Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Police demonstrators order a ...
News Haiti Insurance: Dozens dead as bus plunges off cliff in northern Peru
STORY: Authorities said the accident took place in El Alto district of the coastal Talara province in Piura region, with a Talara public security official saying most of the deceased are from Haiti. A Piura government video captured the crash site, with bodies and people's belongings strewn all over the ground. The video later showed the bodies being transferred on trucks to a hospital. Peru's transportation supervisory agency SUTRAN confirmed the crash in a statement, without providing the number of fatalities or injuries, and said it involved a bus for the company Q'Orianka Tours Aguila Dorada. SUTRAN said early investigations showed the bus appeared to have an up-to-date safety inspection and accident insurance.
News Haiti Insurance: Diaspora wants a say in Haiti’s future
Still reeling under the shock of Tuesdayâs earthquake, and often without news of their families Haitians in Switzerland are already looking to the future. Many of them will be gathering in Lausanne on Saturday, to exchange news and consider the best ways to organise aid now. They will also be discussing what needs to happen in the long term, how Haitians abroad can become more involved in the countryâs affairs. Jean-Wilfrid Fils-Aimé, secretary general of the Swiss Haitian Club, thinks it makes sense in the short term to support Swiss Solidarity, the Swiss disaster aid organisation, rather than for Haitians in Switzerland to try to launch their own initiatives which would be difficult to see through. But once aid experts have tackled the immediate emergency, Haitians abroad have an important role to play, says Fils-Aimé. âWe canât let the country simply drift. The diaspora must bring its weight to bear on the direction that reconstruction follows. Thatâs my dearest wish,â Fils-Aimé told swissinfo.ch. He intends to step up his contacts with the United States and Canada, the home of most of the two million expatriate Haitians, to work out joint projects with them. Haitians living abroad, most of them from the countryâs middle class, already make a decisive contribution to the economy of Haiti, where 80 per cent of the population live on less than two dollars a day. According to the United Nations Development Programme, they remitted $1.8 billion (SFr1.83 billion) to the country in 2008 â twice as much as the international aid it receives. Helping the community âIncreased involvement of the diaspora, whose members help not only their own families back home, but also the whole of the community to which they belong, is already a topic of discussion in Haiti,â said sociologist Charles Ridoré. One of the leading figures in the roughly 1,000-strong Haitian community in Switzerland, Ridoré is a former head of the Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund charity for French-speaking Switzerland. âLast October I attended a roundtable discussion in Port-au-Prince on relations between the diaspora and the mother country. We were able to set out the role of these relations and describe the obstacles that can arise,â Ridoré told swissinfo.ch. âEdwin Paraison, who has since become minister in of the diaspora, warmly welcomed the idea of Haitians abroad getting more involved.â But this may not be entirely straightforward. âThe diaspora sees itself as something of a milk cow, whose only role is to come up with money. But any greater involvement is also seen in Haiti as unwelcome competition for some of the inhabitants. The dialogue we have started ought to enable us to get over these problems, and the earthquake should help this process.â Ridoré explains that the outgoing parliament has already lifted one obstacle to diaspora involvement, by passing a resolution allowing Haitians to hold dual nationality. This means that those who have taken the citizenship of the country where they now live will not face administrative hurdles when trying to play an active role in their country of origin. Involving the young Marie-Lourdes Desardouin, a nurse by profession, who sits on the council of the commune of Vernier in canton Geneva, is another Haitian in Switzerland who fully agrees with getting involved. âWe canât just do nothing. The diaspora has an important role to play,â she assured swissinfo.ch. âAs I see with my daughter, the younger generation is also very keen to get involved, and they already have a good network. We hope to organise an event in Vernier this weekend in solidarity with the island, with a group of our young people performing hip hop,â she said. Meanwhile she is trying to find out what has happened to members of her family still in Haiti, and the hospital and school which her association Anmwe pou Ayiti (Haitian Creole for âHelp for Haitiâ) supports in the south of the country, in a region that was also hit by the earthquake. For his part, Fils-Aimé points out that help provided by expatriate Haitians will be decisive for the survivors who have lost everything, from their house downwards. âThere is no building insurance. But very often for those who have one, their house is their only wealth, and they have put all their savings into it.â From day to day His wife, Lorvelie, pointed out that even before the disaster, people were always worried about how to survive. âMost Haitians are not able to think about the future, because their basic needs â food, health, education â are not met. Everyone lives from one day to the next,â she said. This is particularly true of Port-au-Prince, according to Charles Ridoré. âThe capital has witnessed an inflow of the very poorest Haitians from rural areas, those who are most marginalised â and morally marginalised too. The ties of solidarity have been broken.â âIâm afraid that the earthquake could serve to exacerbate that mindset and the dire straits in which these very underprivileged people were already living before Tuesday,â he warned. âBut in the countryside, the spirit of mutual support is still very much alive.â Frédéric Burnand in Geneva, swissinfo.ch (translated from French by Julia Slater) Earthquake - Haiti According to Swiss seismologists, Tuesdayâs earthquake was the worst tremor to strike Haiti since 1870. Stefan Wiemer told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper that Haiti sits on the boundary of two tectonic plates - the Caribbean plate and the North American plate - creating a fault system across the country. âWe knew that there would eventually be a release of this great tension, and that has now happened,â he said. Wiemer added that the fault line crossed directly under densely populated areas. Tuesdayâs earthquake has been described as a âshallowâ tremor, meaning it caused a lot of shaking since it occurred not far under the surface. Swiss Aid The Swiss Red Cross has released SFr1 million towards emergency aid for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. Swiss Solidarity, a charity led by swissinfo.ch's parent body, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, is asking for donations for the victims of the earthquake. The charity said it would work alongside Swiss relief agencies in the coming months to aid victims and support reconstruction efforts. Donations can be made through a special postal account: 10-15000-6. Swiss Solidarity and its partner organisations have freed up SFr2.5 million for the relief efforts.
News Haiti Insurance: Ten thousand deaths due to natural disasters in one year
In 2021, ten thousand people died from natural disasters, revealed the United Nations University and the Institute for Environment and Human Security. These 10 disasters are the heat wave in British ...
News Haiti Insurance: iciHaiti - ONA-Polis : Distribution of a first batch of loan checks to 76 police officers
This week during a ceremony, the distribution of a first batch of checks took place to the police officers registered in the ONA-Polis program and who, being eligible, had applied for a ...
News Haiti Insurance: World - Better land use and insurance to mitigate natural disasters
The costs of natural disasters have risen dramatically over the last decades. Besides the escalating climate crisis, this rise in costs is largely explained by urbanisation in exposed, often flood-prone, areas. This column examines how land-use and insurance policies can limit urbanisation and explains how insurance policies shape real estate prices.
News Haiti Insurance: Montrealer who died in Haiti plane crash lost son in Christmas Ferris wheel accident
A Montrealer is among the five victims of a deadly plane crash in Haiti, according to Quebec Liberal MNA Paule Robitaille.
News Haiti Insurance: What was the most frequently occurring natural peril in 2021?
Global economic losses from natural catastrophes (nat cat) in 2021 reached $270 billion, of which around $111 billion (40%) was covered by insurance, according to the latest Swiss Re Institute sigma.
News Haiti Insurance: Fewer Missourians with quake coverage in high-risk New Madrid zone
DCI officials said Monday insurance coverage in Missouri's highest risk location ... The 150-mile-long seismic zone includes an area southward from Cairo, Illinois, and through Haiti, Caruthersville, ...
