Activists are blaming the U.S. for the lack of progress in a clean drinking water initiative in Haiti. The Inter-American Development Bank, where the U.S. is a major shareholder, approved the loans for the project in 1998 but it has yet to disburse any of the funding. Following the return to power of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2001, then-U.S. ambassador to Haiti Dean Curran said “there now are a certain number of loans of the Inter-American Development Bank that are not yet disbursed with the objective of trying to request of the protagonists of the current situation, in the current political crisis, to reach a compromise.” Report authors – including the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law, Partners in Health, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights and Zanmi Lasante – believed the situation was “largely the result of aggressive attempts by the U.S. government to block the disbursement of these loans.” They hope to get a court order that would authorize them to see internal correspondence clarifying Washington’s refusal to release the money.
Source: U.S. criticized over funds for Haiti (International Herald Tribune)
