In 1998, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) awarded USD 54 million (EUR 34 million) in loans to the Haitian government to improve the country’s public-water system. However, according to a new report [1] from Partners In Health and three other groups the IDB failed to distribute these loans and consequently, ten years later, this desperately needed money has not produced any improvement to Haiti’s water supply and thus denies people this basic human right.

The report reveals that the United States government gave priority to political considerations over this basic human right of the Haitians. By acting this way ’the IDB violated its own charter, which strictly prohibits the bank from letting politics influence its decisions’. In 2002, a water-poverty index released by the British-based Centre for Ecology and Hydrology ranked Haiti dead last out of 147 countries surveyed.

[1] Wòch nan Soley: the denial of the right to water in Haiti, report released on 23 June 2008 in New York City, United States.

Web site: Progress in Haiti projects, IDB web site, 18 Jul 2008

Contact: Partners In Health, info@pih.org; Peter Bate, IDB, peterb@iadb.org

Source: Tom Spoth, Partners In Health, 17 Jul 2008

Tags: financing, latin america & caribbean, transparency