Found Opportunity
"We must create jobs, re-house disaster victims, open schools and higher education institutions in preparation for the new school year, provide access to health care, prepare for the hurricane season, bridge the gap in state tax revenues, restart the administration and boost economic channels." Haiti's Action Plan for National Recovery and DevelopmentThe Haitian government, under its President Rene Preval is proud to unveil a $3.9-billion proposal "to rebuild the country on new foundations", in the wake of the earthquake that killed over 300,000 people. The Haitian people have most certainly suffered horrendously in the aftermath of that catastrophic earthquake and the tsunami that followed. Of course the Haitian people suffered previous to that natural disaster. Under this very same government, and its long string of previous governments.
"We will rebuild Haiti by turning the disaster on 12 January 2010 into an opportunity to make it an emerging country by 2030." Action Plan
The international community has always responded to Haitians' needs, investing huge amounts of money into the country's future. Somehow those investments never seemed to bear the fruit they were intended to. Perhaps something about the stewardship of the country? Ill choices, funding slipping mysteriously away. Humanitarian aid somehow missing the great mass of the indigent people urgently requiring it?
Strangely enough, that has continued, even while over 1.2 million Haitians are living in temporary emergency squatter camps.The government is still incapable of delivering the urgent aid its people requires. Mind, the markets are full of food and non-perishable items. There, for that segment of the population who are prosperous, above and beyond the impoverished plenty.
This is a government of a devastated country that relied entirely on the auspices of the international community and humanitarian groups to rescue it from disaster. It was incapable of responding in any meaningful way to the needs of its population. Haitians, weary and dispirited, trying to survive, some fed up with having received no aid, with having to face convoys of foreign reporters, are irritated and gloomy.
Their dignity sapped, they resent being objects of international pity. Two months after that earthquake, frustration reigns as crime is on the rise, rapes and sexual assaults are occurring in displacement camps, and while those billions in international air have poured into Haiti, there remain millions of Haitians "still desperate for food, water, shelter and protection from abuse and exploitation", according a report by Refugees International.
The big, really big question is why is this country so abysmally destitute? Even before this fresh catastrophe the country had the distinction of having the highest per capita number of NGOs in the world. A tsunami of international NGOs have set up shop in Haiti, over 10,000 of them. NGOs control just about every sector of agricultural and economic areas in the country.
What need is there of a functioning government when it is not required to govern and becomes non-functioning other than in name?
The new reconstruction plan to be presented to international donors at a specially convened UN conference in New York, insists on a dramatic transformation of the country, proposing to move economic development from the capital to a number of economic development zones. And the required linkage of roads, airports and port facilities to augment those zones' effectiveness. "This is a rendezvous with history that Haiti cannot miss."
The report which was prepared by President Rene Preval along with a team of international advisers represents an ambitious program that Haiti's government anticipates will funnel over $11-billion in international aid into the country over the coming decade. The plan has targets for 1.3-million homeless to be housed, rebuilding 1,300 schools, 50 hospitals, rebuilding the airport, relocating the main port, and the vigorous promotion of trade and tourism.
"The situation the country is facing is difficult but not desperate", according to the action plan. "In many ways it is an opportunity to unite Haitians of all classes and origins in a shared project to rebuild the country on new foundations." Now doesn't that sound utterly Utopian. Plan to transform a failed state into a new Utopia; simply invest $11-billion, no strings attached.
Oh, there are strings attached? The World Bank will oversee the investment? Hmmm.
Just as well, perhaps, given that aid agencies in Haiti are experiencing long delays in having food and necessary durables released from warehouses to give to desperate Haitians, because their government insists that first, duty must be paid to the government, on the internationally donated food supplies.
Labels: Economy, Human Rights, Political Realities, Societal Failures
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, March 31, 2010
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