ALBA Opens Additional Camp for Earthquake Victims in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feruary 2.— A second camp to take in the victims of the 7.2 earthquake that hit Haiti last month was opened by ALBA member countries in Leogane. Education and Entertainment will be offered for the children at the camp facilities.

According to Telesur, some 28 tents were erected, allowing to provisionally accommodate 700 people. There is also a tent to teach basic literacy to children which will begin to work on Wednesday, a project developed with the support of Cuba.

Entertainment for children, who were profoundly affected by the disaster, is also part of the aid project, as well as the distribution of humanitarian aid with food and medicines provided by all ALBA members.

More than half a million people are estimated to have abandoned the devastated city of Port-au-Prince and moved to rural areas.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive told the Senate that the number of confirmed casualties has already reached 200,000, and this figure only includes the bodies found. This does not include the bodies that are still under the rubbles or those that were buried by their own relatives, reported Telesur.

On Tuesday, the provisional Electoral Council officially confirmed the postponement, until further notice, of legislative elections, scheduled for the end of February and the beginning of March.

The electoral organization announced that due to the January 12 earthquake, the buildings that house the electoral body were severely damaged and, in addition, eight members of the Council died during the disaster.

Haitian President René Preval had already spoken last week about the possibility of not holding the elections on their scheduled date.

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) is an international cooperation mechanism based upon the idea of social, political, and economic integration between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The ALBA was launched in Havana, Cuba in 2005 within the framework of the Hemispheric Social Alliance. ALBA challenges the hegemony of neoliberal integration and provides an alternative to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), focusing on the market as the source of efficiency and economic growth and prosperity. ALBA is a form of integration to achieve development build on the cornerstone of the fight against poverty and exclusion, through social reform.