SAKS office after the earthquake 12 January. Photo: Robert Shaw/IMS

Almost six months after the earthquake, with rubble still clogging the streets of the capital, amidst some 1.5 million Haitians still homeless and hundreds of thousands of displaced people, the local media are beginning to play their “watchdog role” 

By Robert Shaw/IMS, Port Aux Prince

For months, Haitians received food and shelter but were isolated from actively reconstructing their own country; now the moving image, mobile radio centres and investigative journalism teams have joined the humanitarian response.

All over the rattled capital city of Port-au-Prince, outdoor screens are popping up, as a handful of organizations race to produce programming that entertains and informs the hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in camps.

At two such camps in Leogane, some 30 kms west of the capital and the epicenter of the January 12^th earthquake, the community radio network, SAKS (Sosyete Animasyon ak Kominikasyon Sosyal), is preparing to set up “radio-in-a-box” units with solar panels to train young journalists about reporting on social and humanitarian issues.

- This is an innovative project supported by IMS and UNESCO that is vital to give more visibility to local communities still cut off from the capital,” says Sony Esteus, the Director of SAKS. “ There is a desperate need to start plugging the provincial media into the wider socio-political debate, he added.

However, the concern remains as to how much the national media in Haiti are really engaged in delving deeper into the topics of mismanagement of funds, internal displacement, and child trafficking. More to the point, it is critical that Haitians have credible sources of communications at a time when elections and a possible rewriting of the constitution may be in the offing.

- While President Preval was talking about drugs at the recent G8 meeting in Montreal, he should be talking about the lack of progress in the reconstruction of our country, explains Jacques Desrosiers, the Secretary General of the Haitian Journalists Association.

- The Haitian media should be at heels of Preval tracking the $10 billion, earmarked for reconstruction at the UN headquarters in March, he explained to IMS and continued: - The role of IMS in this process is key as it provides a real platform for dialogue amongst journalists.

As the trail heats up towards expected Presidential elections on 28 November, it is just this dialogue that IMS aims to support through trainings on electoral and humanitarian reporting in both the capital and 3 provincial departments plagued by high levels of displaced people.

- Before the election subsumes the process, journalists and the media alike must take a stronger roll in engaging the public into a debate about the murky side of the reconstruction road, added Desrosiers:

- Questions have to be asked about how the money is being spent and what the next steps are to reconstruct Haiti into 2011 and beyond, he said.