Haiti earthquake one year on

On Jan. 12, 2010, a massive earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, leveling much of the city and forcing those Haitians who survived to flee.

In the days and weeks following the 7.0-magnitude quake, which killed about 230,000 people, the world reacted with an outpouring of sympathy and pledges of money and physical help. A recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank estimates the total cost of the disaster could be between $7.2 billion and $13.2 billion.

However, as Jonathan M. Katz of The Associated Press wrote this week, the promise of a better Haiti appears to remain just that.

Bodies are still being found in rubble, less than 5 percent of which has has been cleared; about a million people remain homeless; a cholera epidemic erupted outside the earthquake zone that has so far killed more than 3,600 people; and an electoral crisis threatens to break an increasingly fragile political stability.

Meanwhile, two reports released last week indicated two separate and disturbing developments: that incidents of rape and sexual assault were on the rise, affecting mainly women and girls living in makeshift camps in the capital; and that less than 45 percent of the $2.1 billion pledged for Haiti's reconstruction during 2010 at an international donor conference in New York in March had been disbursed. 

GlobalPost has tracked the progress — or lack of — in rebuilding from the quake.

Ioan Grillo launched our coverage on the ground in Haiti in the days following the quake, with his story, published Jan. 15, 2010, on the quake's immediate aftermath, melding the imagery of bodies rotting in the streets with the heroism of emergency crews who continued operating despite the lack of a functioning government.

David Case, author of the weekly GlobalPost column, The Decoder, argued the case for people sending "money, not stuff" to help the victims, arguing that misguided donations actually worsen the suffering.

Ezra Fieser reported on the ingenuity of Haitian telecoms and banks, which late last year had begun signing up residents for mobile banking plans through which payments are made electronically from mobile phone to mobile phone. 

Stephan Faris, who writes on climate change and the environment for GlobalPost, wrote about the potential environmental impact of the earthquake and how people's suffering was exacerbated not only by the quake itself, but by the island's inherent ecological ills.  

And this week GlobalPost published a series of images by freelance photojournalist Renaud Philippe — who visited Haiti in the quake's immediate aftermath and again 10 months later — that capture the sense of fear that still grips the nation.

For a different take on the Haiti quake and aftermath, watch this video from ABC, in which survivors tell their stories: