An Urban Area - Canaan, Haiti

More than 2 million people were left homeless after the earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010.

By 2014 there were still 123 camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) remain open in Haiti, housing 85,432 people.

Conditions in many IDP camps are dire. A third of all those living in camps do not have access to a latrine. On average 82 people share one toilet.

Several infrastructure projects are being undertaken as part of the post-earthquake reconstruction. However, hundreds of families have been forcibly evicted from downtown Port-au-Prince in May 2014 in order to clear the area for the construction of public administration buildings.

Forced evictions from camps are a serious and ongoing problem. More than 60,000 people were forcibly evicted from their shelters in makeshift camps since 2010. About a quarter of those remaining in camps are at risk of forced evictions. Amnesty International has documented six cases of forced evictions from IDP camps and informal settlements hosting IDPs since April 2013 alone. More than 1,000 families were affected.

Around 37,000 houses are known to have been repaired, rebuilt or built. However, less than 20% of the housing solutions provided as a response to the disaster could be seen as long-term, or sustainable. Instead most programmes have simply provided temporary measures, such as the construction of temporary shelters and the allocation of rental subsidies.

Canaan, a large area in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, has seen its population grow exponentially since the area was declared for public use in March 2010. It is now estimated to be home to around 200,000 people. Many of the residents are people made homeless by the earthquake. In the absence of state interventions in the area, people are building their houses as best as they can and have created their own, often inadequate ways to cope with access to water, waste management and security. Many people in Canaan live under threat of being forcibly evicted.