Quake survivors begging for help

CORAIL-CESSELESSE, Haiti, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Eight months after Haiti's earthquake, 1.3 million people are living in makeshift tent camps without adequate food or water, a watchdog human rights group said.

A report made public Monday by the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti decried conditions and called for more international assistance.

"We Have Been Forgotten: Conditions in Haiti's Displacement Camps Eight Months After the Earthquake," documents the desperation in Haiti's camps and recommended a "rights-based approach to relief and reconstruction."

Conditions in some of the camps is declining, an attorney for IJDH said. A New York Times report said thousands of refugees are writing emotional pleas begging for assistance.

"The basic needs of residents must be prioritized immediately," IJDH attorney Nicole Phillips said of the report she co-wrote.

The International Organization for Migration placed suggestion boxes in the camps, and letters placed in them put a human face on the suffering, a spokesman said in the New York Times report.

"Please -- do something!" one woman wrote from her address at Tent J2, Block 7, Sector 3. "We don't want to die of hunger and also we want to send our children to school. I give glory to God that I am still alive -- but I would like to stay that way!"

The IJDH report's other author, Sarah Mi Ra Dougherty, said some camps aren't receiving any help.

"Our data show that aid to the camps has slowed and even stopped in some places, making life far worse for displaced families," Dougherty said. "Their basic human rights are being systematically violated."

The report was previously presented at the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference.

More than 200,000 people died in the Jan. 12 earthquake.