During the last week of June several Haitian social organizations called on the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) to pay reparations to the victims of a cholera epidemic that appeared to originate at the international occupation force's base near Mirebalais in the Central Plateau. Representatives of Haitian Women's Solidarity (SOFA), the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA) and other groups said MINUSTAH should pay out to the Haitian people 25% to 30% of its annual operating budget of $853 million. SOFA made similar demands in January. The epidemic, which started in October, has killed some 5,500 people to date and sickened about 300,000. (AlterPresse, Haiti, July 1)

The distribution of international aid after the devastating January 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti has been slow and in some ways counterproductive, according to a United Nations (UN) report released in June of this year. "Has Aid Changed? Channeling assistance to Haiti before and after the earthquake" was prepared by the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Haiti; the office was set up in May 2009 "to assist the Haitian government and people in carrying out their priorities with the help of the international community," according to a UN press release.

Thousands of Haitian peasants marched in the city of Hinche in the Central Plateau region on June 21 to demand that the government promote food sovereignty, the restoration of the environment and the development of an agriculture "adapted to the reality of our country." "There needs to be a real agricultural policy," protesters said, in distinction to current policies that encourage the importation of food, seeds and other agricultural commodities.

A group of Haitians left homeless by a January 2010 earthquake demonstrated in Port-au-Prince on June 10 to demand action on the housing situation and an end to forced evictions from the displaced persons camps. "We've had enough of living in tents, we want decent housing" was one of the slogans. The protest followed violent evictions from camps in the Delmas section of Port-au-Prince carried out on May 23 and May 25 by Delmas municipal authorities and agents of the National Police of Haiti (PNH).

Leaked US diplomatic cables show that "[t]he US embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory owners contracted by Levi's, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom to aggressively block a paltry minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers" in 2009, according to an article in the New York and Haiti-based weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté. The article, published jointly with the US weekly magazine The Nation, is based on some of the 1,918 previously unpublished cables concerning Haiti that the WikiLeaks group has released to Haïti Liberté.

The WikiLeaks group is releasing a total of 1,918 previously unpublished US diplomatic cables concerning Haiti to the weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté, which is published in New York and Port-au-Prince. The cables cover a period of seven years, from April 17, 2003 to Feb. 28, 2010, shortly after the January 2010 earthquake that shattered much of southern Haiti. The newspaper is planning a series of articles based on the cables. The first article, which appeared in the May 25-30 edition, details US diplomats' unsuccessful efforts to keep former president René Préval (2006-2011) from having Haiti join PetroCaribe, a program through which Venezuela supplies oil to Caribbean Basin countries on favorable terms. Later articles are to show how the US government backed assembly plant owners fighting an increase in the minimum wage and how the US militarized the distribution of aid after the earthquake. (Haïti Liberté, May 25-May 30; AlterPresse, Haiti, May 31)

The US Department of Homeland Security announced the week of May 16 that it was extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians for another 18 months, until Jan. 22, 2013. TPS is a program that allows undocumented immigrants to stay in the US because of temporary conditions in their homelands that would prevent them from returning safely, such as a natural catastrophe. TPS was first granted to Haitians living in the US without documents in January 2010 following an earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti. (Haïti Libre, Haiti, May 17; Homeland Security announcement, May 19)

Armed with machetes and knives, Haitian national police and local officials destroyed some 200 tents in a homeless camp on a public space in the Delmas 3 neighborhood northeast of downtown Port-au-Prince the morning of May 23. Camp residents, who were living there because they lost their homes in a devastating earthquake in January 2010, ran for cover or protested the action while their temporary shelters were demolished. Wilson Jeudy, the mayor of Delmas, a subsection of the capital, claimed that the operation's target was not the earthquake victims but criminal gangs he said had been using the camp.