DESPERATION: Thirsty boys reach for bottles of water handed out by U.S. troops
In a weekend visit to the capital to survey the damage and repatriate the bodies of some of the more than 45 UN staffers who died in the quake (around 300 were still missing or unaccounted for), Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a plea for not just aid, but the troops to secure it. He called on member nations to second more police and soldiers to the multinational force. Canada was among those that responded, as did U.S. President Barack Obama, who backed up a promise of “unwavering support” with the swift—according to some critics, too swift—deployment of 12,000 military personnel.
Even as the flow of aid intensified, it was becoming clear that far more needed to be done. A full week after the quake, the UN and the various militaries were only distributing 250,000 food rations a day, a far cry from the two million meals a day that were said to be needed. Hard-hit communities outside of Port-au-Prince had hardly received any assistance. Léogâne was flattened during the earthquake, and then ignored. Virtually every house or building collapsed, and thousands were left homeless. But most aid sent to Haiti in the days after the quake went to Port-au-Prince. Léogâne did finally receive its first aid delivery, 5,000 food rations, four days after the disaster—and event that went unnoticed by many. “Nobody has come,” said Rigal Joseph, a 48-year-old businessman and voodoo priest. “People in Port-au-Prince think they are better than us in the backcountry. We’ve all had to bury all the bodies ourselves. But nobody cries for the dead anymore—even if it’s your own mother. And there aren’t any funerals. Parents wrap their children in blankets and put them in the ground.” Jacmel was similarly cut off, despite being only 35 km from Port-au-Prince.
Haitians crowd a ship near Port-au-Prince’s port, which was heavily damaged
The halting response has raised questions about what the world community could have done differently to mitigate Haiti’s suffering. But the answer seems to be: depressingly little. “When a disaster strikes, aid groups normally count on something to attach themselves to—a stable government, infrastructure, local organizations. But none of those hooks are there in Haiti,” says Ben Ramalingam, head of research and development for ALNAP, a U.K.-based group that evaluates the effectiveness of international aid efforts. The intense poverty, poor construction standards, a lack of infrastructure, and social chaos that plagued Haiti before the quake make dealing with its aftermath even more difficult. “It’s an incredibly challenging environment.”
And emergency aid is never really sufficient to deal with the long-term economic and social consequences of a disaster, says Ramalingam. Haiti will require a new level of international commitment to the unglamorous and painstaking work of recovery if the poorest country in the Western hemisphere is to be improved, rather than simply rebuilt. “It will take at least five years, if we’re going to do this and not just recreate all the vulnerabilities,” he says.
The depth of that international will should be on display in Montreal next week, as Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon hosts a meeting of his counterparts to lay the groundwork for an international conference on rebuilding the shattered island state. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, France’s Kouchner, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, high-level UN diplomats, and representatives of many Latin American states will be in attendance.
One of the many tent cities that have sprung up in the capital’s parks
What form will rebuilding take? While the effort to help Haiti is global in scope, that debate is particularly acute in the United States. This is, of course, not the first time that Haiti has figured prominently in the American discourse. In 1915, 124 years after the beginning of the slave revolt in this former French colony that eventually ushered in Haitian independence, the U.S. occupied Haiti. As a republic, the country had enjoyed a chequered existence, with leader after leader killed in office. And so Washington established a “protectorate,” under circumstances described in eerily similar language to today’s. “People are starving in the streets of Port-au-Prince because they cannot secure the supplies of food which abound in the country. Things have been going from bad to worse, and something must be done,” reported the New York Times on Aug. 25, 1915, under the headline “Plan Protectorate to Control Haiti: American Forces to Stay Until Finances are Established and Order Obtained.”
That occupation lasted until 1934; after Washington pulled out, Haiti was again thrown into a vortex of uprisings, instability and dictatorship that conspired to keep it the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. From 1957 to 1971, the country was under the bloody and corrupt rule of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his murderous secret police; he then passed power to a kleptocracy run by his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who left office in 1986 under pressure from the Reagan administration. A succession of governments and instability again followed, leading to the establishment of a UN peacekeeping force in 2004. It was not until May 2006, when President Préval took office—for the second time—that Haiti, still desperately poor, overpopulated, deforested, began to experience relative stability, a growing economy, and the beginnings of foreign investment.
And now, disaster—and new promises from Washington. President Barack Obama has said the U.S. is committed for the long haul. The US$100 million in humanitarian assistance, pledged as a starting point, “will grow over the coming year as we embark on the long-term recovery from this unimaginable tragedy,” he said on Jan. 14, adding later that U.S. help “will be measured in months and even years.” Former president Bill Clinton, who was last year appointed a UN special envoy to Haiti, told Haitians this week, “I will grow old and still work with you.”
