November 5, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Canada is built on generations of multifarious foreigners. But its treatment of those without the imprimatur – or protection – of citizenship remains troubling.
Anna Mehler Paperny and Patrick Cain – Global News
Syria’s protracted conflict reached a dubious milestone Tuesday: The number of Syrians who’ve fled the country thanks to 30 months of violence has passed the 2-million mark.
Monday, February 1, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
PORT-AU-PRINCE — At least 10 of the 33 Haitian children a group of American Baptists tried to take across the border into the Dominican Republic have parents, says the group taking care of them while the Haitian government investigates an alleged case of child trafficking.
Ten Americans are in custody and set to appear in Port-au-Prince court this morning, accused by the Haitian government of trying to take the children out of the country without proper documentation.
Aid groups have warned against hasty adoptions or transfers of vulnerable children in the wake of the earthquake that devastated Haiti’s infrastructure.
The church organizing the transfer of the children says the group had only the best of intentions, that it wanted to put the children in a Dominican Republic orphanage and that it was sure all the children were parentless.
Anna Mehler Paperny
Globe and Mail Update
Saturday, January 30, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE
New distribution program prioritizes women with families in effort to stop chaotic stampedes over food convoys
Port-au-Prince — The United Nations is revamping its aid mission in Haiti after two weeks of chaotic stampedes to reach disorganized food convoys.
The new system, which starts this weekend, will set up 16 fixed aid sites across Port-au-Prince, each of which aims to give rice to 10,000 people a day – about 1.1 million people a week in a metropolitan area of about 4 million.
“[At first] we had to do everything we could, to put as much food out to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible,“ said World Food Program spokesman Marcus Prior.
“But instead of using mobile, quick-and-dirty methods, we need a more organized response.”
It’s aid agencies’ attempt to come to terms with what Mr. Prior described as “the most complex situation we’ve ever faced” – a staggering need in a dense urban area whose infrastructure has been wiped out entirely. Humanitarian workers are used to providing aid to less dense, more rural spaces. In the crush of a devastated, tightly packed city, the logistics are entirely different.
“As part of the operation, we need to have more stable and robust distribution methods in place.”
Anna Mehler Paperny
Saturday, January 30, 2010 – Globe and Mail
PORT-AU-PRINCE
As more decisions need to be made about how to rebuild country, it’s becoming clear just how crippled and dependent Haiti’s government has become
Port-au-Prince — Improvised stages under mango trees on the outskirts of a ruined capital are never the most dignified of locations, as far as post-disaster government press conferences go.
But a disagreement over tents and a couple of awkward moments at the Haitian government’s daily press briefings last week highlighted what’s going to become, increasingly, a bone of contention as recovery efforts continue in the wake of the biggest quake to hit Haiti in centuries.
Tents, President René Préval told the assembled crowd, are the single thing the country needs most now – 200,000 of them, to be exact. And quickly.
But the man who spoke directly after him wasn’t so sure.
Saturday, January 30, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
PORT-AU-PRINCE — In a folding chair among the mattresses and laundry lines outside the wreckage of his family’s house, Olivier Jean-Rénauld is writing his résumé.
The 33-year-old computer science graduate and his friend Chéry Luckson are applying for jobs with Médecins Sans Frontières, which has put out calls for logistics workers to help with the NGO’s massive aid effort. The jobs are part-time, Mr. Luckson acknowledges. But when no one has a job and the country’s already faltering economy has effectively ceased to exist, it’s better than nothing.
a business of misfits 