Help Haiti
14 01 2010According to the latest estimates, the earthquake could have caused 100,000 deaths in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.
The home of the world’s first and only successful slave revolt and the Western hemisphere’s first post-colonial black nation, Haiti was still struggling to recover from the four hurricanes that hit it in 2008 when around 1,000 people died and 800,000 were left homeless. Reports state that most of those who have escaped with their lives have spent their first night without any shelter, some even sleeping amongst dead bodies and this is likely to continue, whilst hundreds or possibly thousands are buried alive underneath the devastation.
This disaster is not only shocking in scale but especially shocking because of the inability of Haiti to help itself. Haitians have been struggling with chronic unemployment affecting 75% of the population, 70% without adequate access to sanitation; 78% of the population live on a meagre $2 a day (the so-called absolute poverty threshold). All this plus coups and civil wars have brought intermittent political stability since 1990.
Though Obama and many leaders in the international community have pledged emergency rescue assistance, and as I write NGOs and charities descend to deliver most-needed emergency relief. It will take more than this to help Haiti into a stronger nation, but international aid and interference in the past has moved Haiti away from policies that would have delivered a higher minimum wage and agricultural strength to provide food self-sufficiency to the policies of further impoverishment to stimulate “foreign investment”.
These problems however must be tackled another day, for now do we should do all we can to help Haiti.
Hi Justin – thanks for your article.
Poor Haitians are dying. Why? Not because tanks can’t move their arse out of Port au Prince airport. Any tank however bad the roads can move. Not because of zero government infrastructure. Haiti’s elite, who helped the US and France depose Aristide in 2004, have continued the good life.
Many Haitians in the last two years, while eating mud for dinner – really – have been flooding the streets with their demands for food and democratic government. Aristide said today he’s willing to return from exile in South Africa to help the people.
Africa and Haiti look pretty similar. Free yourself from slavery, 1804 (Haiti) or 1957 (Ghana) or 1994 (South Africa), and you’ll be punished. Not by God or natural forces, but by The Man and his mates in your own country.
Thanks for the financial appeal.
Judith
Hi Judith,
Thanks for the comments, you are right that this is more of a man-made disaster than a natural one.
There are more grassroot-organised appeals that I’ll be posting up here soon.