Helping Haiti
Daniel Korski 12:05pm
As the world has geared up to help a devastated Haiti, new challenges came into view. Destroyed ports, a crumbling airport and the lack of a local counterpart are hampering the international effort to help people still trapped under the rubble. Survivors, many of whom have no place to sleep, may have lost friends and family, and are now left to scavenge for food. President Obama has pledged $100 million and is dispatching 5,000 soldiers, as well as a hospital ship. Britain, China, France, Belgium and even debt-saddled Iceland have followed suit. But the scale of the disaster is frightening. When it becomes clearer how best to help, I will donate money; you should too.
Even the most civilised society would struggle in those current conditions. In a country like Haiti, with its history of gangs, conflict and repression, a dog-eat-dog Hobbesian reality is all the more likely. Aid workers have already flagged the need for their make-shift distribution centres to be afforded greater protection.
What makes Haiti’s predicament all the more sad is that the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation has actually had a few hopeful years. In early 2007 I was asked to go to Haiti to work on a US-funded programme, which sought to transform the gang-ridden slum of Cite Soleil. Three year before, the enclave rivalled Grozny and Kandahar as one of the world’s most dangerous and lawless places. Gangs had driven out the state, and used the region as a base from which to launch crime. The slum’s 300,000 inhabitants were trapped in a cycle of violence.
I never went, but I read-up on the country and its aid programmes and I remember thinking that Haiti’s dysfunction and lawlessness seemed almost immune to international assistance. Fortunately, I was wrong. Since 2007, Cite Soleil has improved. Its economy picked up, the state moved in, supported by the Brazilian-run UN mission and one of the most integrated, cross-government programmes the US has ever run. Poverty, weak institutions and crime remained, but friends and officials reports concur: things changed for the better. When food riots rocked Haiti in 2008, Cite Soleil stayed calm.
In the wake of the earthquake, the media is – quite rightly – focused on Haiti’s immediate problems and the country’s historical and geological misfortunate; but it is worth recalling the Haitians’ record of picking themselves up from the depths of despair. It is the kind of force that makes development work – when outside assistance is married to local will. And it is what will help this benighted country overcome its current predicament.
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chris as usual
January 15th, 2010 12:34pm Report this commentSuggest you donate on
www.dec.org.uk
telephone 0370 6060 900
or go to the British Red Cross website which links to DEC
Flemingcrag
January 15th, 2010 12:34pm Report this commentYou know aid from NGOs can be very debilitating for the internal growth and independence of a Country. The longer these organisations do what a Country should be doing for itself and its people the more that Country fails to establish self-reliance. The decades of aid to Haiti has produced an impotent Country happy to float along on a benefit culture that destroys almost all ambition and hope.
I am moved to say this because despite viewing newsreels many times per day from the devastated City of Port au Prince I have yet to see a Haitian policeman or military presonnel involved in anything resembling search and rescue, truth is I have not seen anyone who could reasonably be recognisable as a government official.
Seems to me a Country that has lost sight of; God helps those who help themselves, has given up on itself completely.
DavidDP
January 15th, 2010 1:43pm Report this comment"I have yet to see a Haitian policeman or military presonnel involved in anything resembling search and rescue, truth is I have not seen anyone who could reasonably be recognisable as a government official."
You are aware, aren't you, that the entire country has been utterly devastated? Most of the people you wish to see are trying to find their own loved ones, or help the imeediate people around them. The earthquakes hasn't just shattered buildings, it's shattered what was left of Haitian civil society.
That's why they need help.
logdon
January 15th, 2010 3:19pm Report this comment“DavidDP
January 15th, 2010 1:43pm Report this comment
You are aware, aren't you, that the entire country has been utterly devastated?"
Not quite true but symptomatic of how these matters are now regularly described. Entire country? Utterly devastated?
It is bad, of that there is no doubt but the bad is not helped by inane embroidering of the facts in a holier than thou, finger wagging tone.
As for “Most of the people you wish to see are trying to find their own loved ones, or help the immediate people around them.”
Including the looters? And where’s the Haitian president and his substantial military entourage during all of this?
This is the one thing we puny humans cannot control. Nature will always trump. However shrieking hyperbole does not help. Danny Glover is now blaming it on climate change which, being the stupidest thing I’ve heard, indicates the downward level any discussion will now take. Including the one I’m responding to.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2ft5JkNWJA&feature=player_embedded#
Following the tsunami, the west donated by far the lions share of the charity money. This is one grateful response from a prominent Canadian muslim
ezralevant.com/2008/02/how-syed-soharwardy-fights.html
“While Christians from around the world were emptying their wallets to help the victims of this natural disaster, Muslim leaders were blaming the disaster on immoral Christian tourists in their countries.
Here's what his Jan. 23, 2005, news release actually said: "ISCC . . . strongly condemns the exploitation of tsunami victims by the Christian missionaries. There have been several reports that the Christian missionaries are kidnapping Muslim children in Indonesia. . . . It is now proven that the Christian missionaries do not help people on humanitarian grounds. They help people in order to exploit their needs and convert them to Christianity."
So it looks like the good ol’ West can’t get it right. Accused of imperialism and exploitation if we help. Damned if we don't.
Keith D
January 15th, 2010 3:28pm Report this commentchris as usual@12:34
Thanks for the dec number.
The vast majority of Haitians,trapped in overwhelming poverty were powerless in the face of the Tonton Macout.
It behoves us as civilised human beings to give full voice to our humanity by doing what we can.Even if the collapsed infrastructure disallows full implementation of the aid it should still be given.
Paudits to all involved ,particularly the US for their prompt and humane response.
Liz Brown
January 15th, 2010 5:47pm Report this commentYup, I know that this is (yet another) appalling disaster but I for one shall keep my money in my pocket. Aid agencies recieve shedloads of the stuff but I question whether it is wisely spent. I do, after all, contribute willy nilly thro the tax system so why should I donate twice?
THX1138
January 15th, 2010 6:38pm Report this commentAnd The Coffee House commentor race to the bottom has started!
TomTom
January 15th, 2010 6:42pm Report this commentI would be interested to hear Mohammed Al-Fayed on Haiti
DavidDP
January 15th, 2010 9:46pm Report this commentTHX1138
It's been reached by logdon.
T5.
January 15th, 2010 11:15pm Report this commentThe negative press comments floating round the massive relief efforts in Haiti are demeaning to all those who have dropped everything else in their efforts to help. How to encourage the media to treat the whole world as newsworthy, not just one dreadful event??
Tron
January 15th, 2010 11:29pm Report this commentOn BBC 5live someone from an aid agency said the country was very poor and run down before the earthquake. When asked why he said it was all the fault of the USA and France. The BBC man accepted this.
echo34
January 16th, 2010 12:34am Report this commentAnd people have been eating mud in haiti for ages but they've had an earthquake.
Haiti earthquake bus rolls along and the global media jumps on.
This place has been a war zone for years!
Us aid = £64000000
UK aid = £6000000
Why's that guys?
No FOB in florida instead of everyone trying to get there rescue squads in first. Couldn't be thefavourable int'l hedalines for each nation, could it?
DavidDP, good luck with the fluffy kittens.
Flemingcrag
January 16th, 2010 12:15pm Report this commentDavidDP THX1138 January 15th @ 9.46pm
Before you criticise others for their genuinely held opinions much more, I recommend the following book for reading;
DEAD AID by Dambisa Moyo
It tells of 50 years of aid to Africa and surprises none on us by hinting how much of it ends up in the hands of corrupt politicians. It also explains how well intentioned NGOs in their race to outdo esch other for the greater glory for their organisation actually make things so much tougher for the very people they are meant to be helping.
I trust you find the book informative and widens your perception that good intentions do not always deliver good outcomes, the unintended consequence often wins out.
Paul B
January 16th, 2010 6:01pm Report this commentFlemingcrag and others. You may well ne right in your criticism of NGOs, Obama and other, I don`t know. But there is a time and a place. Seeing as the NGO & the US- via President Obama are the only shows in town who can bring aid to those desperate people in Haiti, I would recommend that right now you keep you gunpowder dry and you do something positive rather than knocking.
Liz Brown, its one thing not giving anything, which is your right, but its quite another coming on here boasting about it. I hope you are proud of yourself.
ldaxon
January 18th, 2010 7:33pm Report this commentFollowing the logic of some comments made so far, it seems the people of Haiti should be grateful for the chance to bite the dust in copious numbers (thanks for that information echo34) as this will discipline them in the sober virtues of self-reliance.
Quite how thrift, independence and a positive balance of trade can prevent mass death at the hands of tectonics is something of a moot point, as it didn't prevent the population of Kobe being reduced by the odd thousand a few years ago. However, do commentators really believe that the entire Haitan population - men, women and children - is composed of machete-wielding, drug-addled maniacs who ought to be consigned to oblivion? No? Perhaps the self-appointed arbiters of life and death can give us their thoughts on who should live and, how can I put this, who should chew rubble? Perhaps the infants being hauled out of the morass ought to be stuffed back in there for the good of generations to come in order to curb the potential criminal population? Just a thought.
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