Amerikansk rapport sætter tallet på dødsofre til under 1/3 af den haitianske regerings officielle tal
Significantly fewer people died or were left homeless by last year’s earthquake in Haiti than claimed by the country’s leaders, a draft report commissioned by the US government has said, according to BBC online Wednesday.
The unpublished report puts the death toll between 46.000 and 85.000. Haiti’s government says about 316.000 died.
It also suggests many of those still living in tent cities did not lose their homes in the disaster. Haitian authorities have stood by their figures released last year.
The draft report is based on a survey commissioned by the US Agency for International Development (USAID = Amerikas Danida) and draws its numbers from door-to-door surveys carried out over 29 days in January 2011.
Analysts say the draft report could challenge the premise of a multi-billion-dollar aid and reconstruction effort.
The report estimates that about 895.000 people moved into temporary settlement camps around the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince and says that no more than 375.000 individuals are now still living in the tent communities.
Those figures conflict with the numbers provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has said 1,5 million people moved into the camps after the quake and that there are still 680.000 in settlement camps around the capital.
The report says there was significantly less rubble around the Caribian country’s capital than previously thought.
The number of those killed and displaced by the earthquake in Haiti prompted an outpouring of aid for the country, including a 5,5 billion US dollar pledge during a UN donor conference last year, BBC notes.
