The December issue of Foreign Policy has an article by Paul Farmer, of Partners in Health, entitled “5 Lessons From Haiti’s Disaster
What the earthquake taught us about foreign aid“. It begins:
1. Jobs are everything. All humans need money — they need it to buy food and water every day. And no matter how hard the government or the aid industry tries, people will want for all three things until they are employed…
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2. Don’t starve the government. The international community doesn’t know best. Local people do. NGOs like the one that I am lucky to work with cannot replace the state — nor can the United Nations or anyone else. We don’t have the expertise, and we won’t stay forever. We don’t have the same stake in building a community that the locals themselves have… On this, almost everyone agrees.
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Some donors argue that the Haitian government is rife with corruption and mismanagement — and that infusing it with money will only make matters worse. But we need to strengthen the public sector, not weaken it. And that will take a working budget….
I swear, this reminds me of a massive political disaster currently afflicting some other country, one which used to be proud of its “global pre-eminence”.
jo6pac
I swear, this reminds me of a massive political disaster currently afflicting some other country, one which used to be proud of its “global pre-eminence”
Please tell us were this is so we can move there!!!!!!
WereBear
Those who live by Teh Greed, die by Teh Greed.
I’ve said it for years; how can we be a consumer society when no one has the doremi to friggin’ consume?
Starving the masses means less for those at the top, capiche?
Linda Featheringill
Feeding local governmental entities is extremely important in maintaining stability, if that is a concern for either political or economic reasons. Local governments deliver most of the public services. They facilitate commercial activity. They keep people alive and active.
I’m not sure that our new Republican overlords are very concerned about local governmental functions.
Elizabelle
Terrific catch, Annie Laurie. Thank you for posting.
Brick Oven Bill
Haiti used to be the richest of all the colonies. They won their independence from France around the same time that the United States won its independence from England.
The lesson is that radical societal upheavals and quality building codes to better withstand the trials of earthquakes are best guided by the Values and Principles as set forth by the Federalist Papers, and not by a High Priest of Voodoo.
Drouse
For the right this is a feature not a bug. Somehow I get the impression that the teaparty lemmings haven’t really thought through the implications of their beliefs. Even if they have, I’m sure that they will be the first to greet our new corporate overlords.
eemom
hey AL — since it’s Sunday and I can’t stand this shit anymore and I have wondered this for a while — does your name refer to the old Irish song that they talk about in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn?
kind of inside baseball, but I figgered you’re from New Yawk, so maybe you wouldn’t mind. : )
Dennis SGMM
@Linda Featheringill:
Republicans are largely unconcerned about federal governmental functions (Except where they enable the concentration of wealth). Local governmental functions: drown ’em in a kitchen sink, no new taxes, harrumph, etc.
xian
I notice B.O.B. leaves out the crippling reparations Haiti was forced to pay France.
Brachiator
Right now, Haiti’s problems are exacerbated by a cholera outbreak:
Please help. Two worthy organizations which try to attack the problem directly, and which make sure that the highest proportion of donations go directly to operations are Doctors Without Borders and Catholic Relief Services.
I also like an organization associated with the family of local Los Angeles AM 640 KFI radio newsman Gary Hoffman. They have educated kids and saved lives. It’s called Three Angels Haiti.
Michael
@Brick Oven Bill:
They won their independence, and promptly had to pay monstrous reparations to France for over a century, for while the Haitians could fight off French rule, they could not keep the French from interfering with and devastating their country over and over again.
Imagine the Haitian infrastructure if the wealth were restored?
Leah
@Brick Oven Bill: I’m not sure what point you are making, but it’s not voodoo that has created crushing poverty for the great majority of Haitians, nor is it their child-rearing practices, as David Brooks tried to argue at the time of this last earthquake in a column that Matt Taibbi rightly called “a masterpiece of cultural signaling.” Oh Brooks gives a quick nod to Haiti’s history of oppression, slavery colonialism, invasions, ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions, but that doesn’t explain anything because, gee, other island nations in the Caribbean have suffered similar agonies and lived to prosper, like, say Barbados. The only conclusion Brooks can think of is that Haitian culture is “progress-resistant.” No mention at all of America’s unique role in the devastation of the lives of the vast majority of Haitians.
If you want to understand the grinding nature of Haitian poverty, the catastrophic decimation of Haitian forests, say, or the constant suppression of the most basic human rights for the great majority of the island’s population, understand that Haiti is a Libertarian wet dream. This is where right-wing libertarianism leads – to a small, all-powerful plutocracy whose will is enforced by a ruthless military. There are no public schools, no system of roads, except those private ones the rich folks pay for, for themselves. The reason there are so many NGOs in Haiti is that the government does pretty much nothing except suppress any progress for the vast majority of the population. At that they are superbly efficient, One would think that it might have come to Brooks’ attention that the far different outcomes achieved by Haitian immigrants here in America might suggest that his cultural explanation has some huge holes in it.
And then there’s America’s role as an enforcer in the suppression of the great mass of Haiti’s population.
That tale is told with concise precision and passion by Paul Farmer in his book, “The Uses of Haiti.” You may think you know this material, but I promise you, you’ll be surprised at the role our media has played. There is much material on Aristide, and the way he was brought down, and then lied about, by American media figures, exactly the way Brooks does in his column, and Christopher Caldwell deserves a special place of pride here. I worry much less about how Haitians were raised by their parents than I do about how lying assholes like Brooks and Caldwell got hatched.
I’d also recommend a wonderful documentary by Jonathan Demme, “The Agronomist.” Demme loves Haiti and visits often, and the story he tells here will help anyone understand the truth about Haiti.
Annie Laurie, bravo for making the connection between what we’re fighting over here, and what Haiti has been ground down by over there.
Separate inquiry: can anyone tell me if it is possible to preview a comment before clicking the “Submit” button, and how to do it?
Amanda
Thanks for all the links — the FP article, the Matt Taibbi takedown, etc. Good stuff.
Just wanted to chime in that I just finished reading Tracy Kidder’s book about Paul Farmer and Partners in Health — “Mountains Beyond Mountains” — and I cannot recommend it highly enough. An amazing book.
satby
Have to second what Leah says above> I got back from a 2 week volunteer gig in Haiti on Nov. 15th, and the entire time I was there I thought “this is what could happen to us if we don’t wise up fast”. No regulations, no functioning government, no industry so no jobs, and a disorganized “private sector” of over 3000 NGOs all competing for scarce resources and doing their own thing.
Oh yeah, and political parties that rely on the demonization of outsiders and the low information of voters to capture and keep power for their own profit at the expense of their country.
sturunner
Paul Farmer for President?
My niece & her boyfriend went to Haiti w/Paul after they graduated. Boyfriend had to leave to accept THE major int’l fellowship, Paul had to leave because the GB admin told the oligarchy that they shouldn’t guarantee his safety, & my niece had to leave because she was then the perfect kidnap victim.
Paul is of course now the special dep ass’t for the UN to Haiti. And the kids are doing wonderfully in med/grad school.
But if they could of stayed . . .
acallidryas
Satby, I do work in Haiti, mostly with small CBOs (community-based organizations) and with education in the southern part of the country. After my first trip down a couple of years ago, I told my husband and my mom that I would like to make libertarians spend a few months down there, or in a similar country.
I’m incredibly proud of the work the work we do down there, but it’s never going to lead to self-sufficiency without things a government provides, the things we take for granted here and apparently want to destroy. You can educate the children, but then there are no jobs for them to take. You can help build some businesses, but the rainy season washes dirt roads away and you can’t get goods to market- and people can’t come to the market to buy them. Church mission groups can go build latrines, but none of them are going to build a functioning sewage system.
For some things you need a government. I don’t know why so many people seem intent on forgetting that.