Training Report 1: New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina

Introduction and Allegations

On a Monday morning in late August 2005, category-four Hurricane Katrina touched down in the city of New Orleans. The botched relief efforts that followed played out for an international viewing audience, graphically exposing racial and class tensions. As if the causalities and property damage weren’t enough, the hurricane also forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands and created a displaced, disenfranchised migration unseen since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Two years later the city is still trying to recover from the devastation.

Walter Kälin, the Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), submitted his report of the human rights concerns of those displaced by the 2004 tsunamis almost five months before Katrina hit New Orleans. Using the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, Representative Kälin identified several IDP protection issues that arose in the aftermath of the Asian tsunamis. It is interesting to note that many of those same issues arose almost exactly one year later within the world's richest and most powerful modern democracy. These comparable issues include:

• Access to Humanitarian Aid and Discrimination: There is already strong evidence to support the allegation that the city's evacuation plan fundamentally discriminated against poor African-Americans who did not own their own cars. There are also allegations that the slow government response and stalled relief efforts were due to racism. But an under-reported issue remains the discrimination faced by the mentally disabled.

• Camp Security and Protection of Women and Children: Nine months after the hurricane, sexual assualts against women within Louisiana's temporary housing camps had skyrocketted.

• Access to Education: The Children's Defense Fund reports these statistics illustrating the shocking lack of access:
  

  Before Katrina, New Orleans’ 5,043 teachers served 50,000 children in 129 schools; 80 percent of New Orleans children were below grade level in reading and math; and 61 percent of New Orleans schools were under receivership by the state. After Katrina, as of February 2006, according to the Acting New Orleans Super- intendent, Ora Lee Watson, “Only 9 public schools, 4 recovery district schools, and 4 independent charters were open with approxi- mately 650 teachers serving approximately 8,300 students.” She estimated that 2,000 school-age children were out of school in New Orleans for lack of available public school space.

• Loss of Documentation: The chaos that became the New Orleans prison system was a painful example of the cost of lost records. According to the ACLU report on the matter, some who were imprisoned before Katrina for minor infractions remained in jail for periods of time longer than they would have ever have been sentenced.

• Voluntary Return and Resettlement and Property Issues: Termed by the interviewed "Katrina Specialist" as "the Disnification of New Orleans", there are allegations that an orchestrated land-grab is occurring to radically change what New Orleans will look like. Of the interviews conducted, Kawana Jasper’s words about what she believes will become of the St. Bernard Housing Development were particularly revealing:
  

In July 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a Consideration of Reports submitted by the U.S. pertaining to its adherence to international covenant on civil and political rights. These were its assessments regarding Hurricane Katrina:

26. The Committee, while taking note of the various rules and regulations prohibiting discrimination in the provision of disaster relief and emergency assistance, remains concerned about information that the poor, and in particular African-Americans, were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans implemented when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States,and continue to be disadvantaged under the reconstruction plans. (articles 6 and 26)

The State party should review its practices and policies to ensure the full implementation of its obligation to protect life and of the prohibition of discrimination, whether direct or indirect, as well as of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, in matters related to disaster prevention and preparedness, emergency assistance and relief measures. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the State party should increase its efforts to ensure that the rights of the poor, and in particular African-Americans, are fully taken into consideration in the reconstruction plans with regard to access to housing, education and healthcare. The Committee wishes to be informed about the results of the inquiries into the alleged failure to evacuate prisoners at the Parish prison, as well as the allegations that New Orleans residents were not permitted by law enforcement officials to cross the Greater New Orleans Bridge to Gretna, Louisiana.

Conclusions and Recommendations
Regardless of whether the United States recognizes the efforts of the United Nations Human Rights Committee or whether it even recognizes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, displaced survivors of Hurricane Katrina fit within the criteria of one of its own agencies: the Agency for International Development (USAID) which authored the Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons Policy. The following judgments come by the standards USAID published in October 2004.

It is my recommendation that we support the efforts to have “Katrina survivors” (or “Katrina refugees”) classified as Internally Displaced Peoples. As the Honorable Cynthia Diane Stephens of the Third Circuit Court in Detroit says in the Fall 2006 issue of Human Rights magazine:

Despite $109 billion in allocations from the federal government, much of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast remain physically uninhabitable and uninhabited. The population is scattered throughout the United States in a new diaspora. Litigation continues on many issues ranging from insurance policies to the length of temporary housing payments to the bulldozing of real property in New Orleans. Just as there was no social precedent for the crisis, no legal precedent exists to resolve its aftermath. The results of the litigation are unacceptably unpredictable.

Many have suggested that ascribing the status of IDPs and legislatively ascribing IDP principles could help to resolve the issues efficaciously.

The litigation mentioned pertains to fundamental human rights violations. It is also my recommendation that the UJD join organizations such as the United States Human Rights Network and the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition in championing this reclassification to foster more international support to the plight of these IDPs.

The final word of my report will go to activist/artist Mos Def and his hip-hop response to the government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. It should be noted that Mos Def was arrested for performing this song outside the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards.