We may well ask, Can anything good come out of Haiti? That is not to say that we ought to do all we can to help the emergency aid efforts on the ground, now--as soon as possible. But Haiti was in a terrible situation before the earthquake--which will have only made things so much worse.
The terrible earthquake--as is true of all natural disasters--was amplified many times over in terms of its devastation because of the abject poverty and degradation of the inhabitants of that island. The bald reality is that applied civil engineering protects people when natural disasters strike. Haiti has virtually none. The magnitude of the social and human problems existing before the earthquake struck was such that no government, top down, imposed solution is ever going to make things better. Consider the following litany:
First, Haiti has been virtually ungovernable.There was no functioning Parliament or judiciary system, no political compromise or consensus, and extreme violence perpetrated by paramilitaries, gangs, and criminal organizations. Corruption and drug trafficking ran rampant. No government enjoyed much legitimacy.
Second, U.S. administrations suspended, reduced, or delayed foreign aid to pressure Aristide and the opposition [in the nineties] to stop the conflict, contributing to extreme poverty and economic and political stability.
Third, the 1991-1993 international economic blockade further impoverished Haiti’s people and economy.
Fourth, Haiti remains the object of an ever changing U.S. foreign policy, that on occasion has made problems there worse, making Haiti a U.S. responsibility.
Since 2001, the US has poured over $1billion into Haiti in the form of various aid projects. The rest of the international community has contributed roughly the same. And the result has been nada. If ever there was an example to prove that showering money and aid from the top down upon a society does not work, it is Haiti. The problems in Haiti are nursed within the national soul, and until that is changed, very little can be achieved. Here is a brief profile of Haiti's troubles:
The facts of Haitian poverty are startling. The UN Human Development Index (HDI) ranks Haiti as 153rd least developed among the world’s 177 countries. About three-fourths of the population is impoverished—living on less than $2/day. Half of the population has no access to potable water. One-third have no sanitary facilities. Only 10% have electrical service.
Ninety-five percent of employment in Haiti is in the underground economy; while 80% of businesses in urban areas are “off the books.” Official unemployment rates range from 50% to 70%, but no one really knows. Haiti’s private sector is comprised mostly of subsistence farmers and micro-businesses.
A small elite organized in family groupings controls all exports and imports, tourism, construction and manufacturing.About 4% of the population owns 66% of the country’s wealth. Some 10% own nothing. About 5% to 8% of the population has HIV/AIDS, and that percentage is rising. Haiti is the most severely affected by HIV/AIDS outside Sub-Saharan Africa. Only an estimated 5% to 10% of those with HIV/AIDS receive treatment. HIV/AIDS is reducing life expectancy in Haiti by
10 years. In addition, tuberculosis, and recently polio, have emerged as epidemics.
Non- governmental organizations (NGOs) deliver four-fifths of public services.
As many as 250,000 children work as unpaid servants in homes placed there by their
biological parents.Around 2,000 children annually are victims of human trafficking primarily to the Dominican Republic. Two-thirds of women have been violently abused.
Haiti ranks among the worse countries environmentally: 141st out of 155 on Yale University’s Environmental Sustainability Index. Because Haitians are forced to use wood for fuel—70% of energy use is from this source—and because of excessive wood harvesting by private companies, Haiti is now 97% deforested, an irony for a tropical island. Deforestation causes chronic, catastrophic flooding with extensive loss of life. In 2004, tropical storm Jeanne caused property damages at 3.5% GDP.
According to a recent poll, 67% of Haitians would emigrate if they could. Many already have: 2 million Haitians live in the United States, of whom 60% are now American-born. Four-fifths of Haiti’s college-educated citizens live outside of the country.
One well-meaning, but failed, initiative by the West was to get Haiti to adopt a Western style constitution. The 1987 constitution is based upon an amalgam of the French and US constitutions. But such edifices have no foundation upon which they can be supported when law and law keeping is not part of the cultural fabric. There are so many checks and balances in the constitution that the only way any decisions can be made is by the application of graft and bribery. Consequently, Haiti is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
The Canadian International Development Agency has been very active in Haiti. Its summary of the situation is bleak:
• A society profoundly divided between a traditional culture and an elite, ex-military and petit bourgeois class, each seeking or clinging to power;
• An unstable government and a weak public institutional capacity;
• Seriously deteriorated economic and social infrastructures;
• An absence of capacity for law and order, allowing continued violent insurgencies
and rioting, perpetrated by paramilitaries and gangs;
• An uncontrollable flux of migrants from rural areas into slums of Port-au-Prince;
• Concentration of wealth in the hands of a few traditional families and new mafia-
like groups; and
• An inadequate and constantly deteriorating environment
We believe there is no one "key" to solving Haiti's problems. No external aid programmes, trying to apply external solutions will bear any good fruit. The unintended consequences of this approach have been disastrous to date, exacerbating many existing problems and creating massive new calamities.
Secondly, there is no short term solution: it has to be an intergenerational solution, working from the bottom up.
Third, solutions have to be familial and mirco-orientated, personal, face-to-face, focusing upon parents, children, employment, training, education. This necessarily means that the approach must be uneven in application and results. Some will benefit; others will get no opportunity. Sorry, that is the way it has to be. Otherwise, some big bwana will have to run a government or NGO programme, and a towering tsunami of corruption will sweep in.
Fourth, and most importantly, the light of the Gospel needs to dawn in the hearts of Haitians. That benighted place needs an army of Christian missionaries proclaiming and living the light and healing of the Gospel of God's mercy to Haitians in a dark, dark world. It would be good to have Haitian ex-pats making up a large proportion of these divine emissaries--people who themselves have become Christians and who yearn for their countrymen.
2 comments:
With all due respect, I think the light of the gospel is flickering there, but for those that perpetuate the broken and dysfunctional system.
The Church has been active there for many years.
What some people need is a bullet.
Ideally, the threat of a bullet might be enough if the corruption could be stamped out; if the economy could be opened up and turned around, and the people brought along with it.
There is no doubt though that whatever has been tried in the past has failed. Time to up the ante.
Hi, Zen. We certainly did not mean to imply that the Church has not been active in Haiti, but to call for more activity, far more. And, yes, we suspect, as you imply, that there is resistance on the part of the ethically derelict and utterly venal magistrates, politicos, and governors to the Gospel and its messengers.
Apart from this it is unclear what other ante can be upped. Whatever approach may be alighted upon, it will be a case of "been there, done that"--whether it be invasion or billions of dollars of aid.
The fundamental problem is that there appears to be no covenantal structures or beliefs at the micro level upon which a community or civilisation can possibly be built. (It is significant that when Haitians escape to functioning societies they largely adapt quickly and reportedly do well.)
In the nineteenth century, the "solution" would have been obvious and easy at least in the short term: conquest and colonisation. But that act itself would be an overreaching of the warrant issued by the King of kings and so may not be countenanced.
But the King has also made clear that beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of he who comes preaching the Gospel--so let us do that.
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