Canada sponsors new efforts to relocate refugees
Half a million Haitians are still living in makeshift camps, two years after a devastating earthquake reduced much of the country to rubble in 2010. “This year is a year when we will really start rebuilding physically but also rebuilding the hope and the future of the Haitian people,” Haitian president Michel Martelly said during a national day of mourning, which included ceremonies at mass graves, Reuters reports. Martelly visited one such grave with former U.S. president Bill Clinton. He also announced a relocation effort–to which Canada is contributing $20 million–for some 20,000 tent-dwellers. The 7.0 magnitude quake struck on Jan. 12, 2010 and left roughly 300,000 people dead and another 1.5 million homeless in one of the worst natural disasters in the twenty-first century.