Gonaives following the 2008 floods. Photo courtesy of Matthew Marek/American Red Cross.The air support was provided by Mission Aviation Fellowship.
In an interview with NPR, Wyclef Jean said: " Because think about it, you've had NGOs in Haiti for over 30 years and you still have no real infrastructure." I've heard similar comments from lots of different people since the earthquake. The problem is that there has never been enough money to fix the damage caused by any of the numerous disasters that have hit Haiti nor to help it rebuild its infrastructure. The situation in the Haitian town of Gonaives is a great example of how foreign assistance fails. Gonaives was badly flooded in 2004 by Tropical Storm Jeanne. Thousands of people died. Immediately after the disaster, a lot of money was poured in to feed the disaster victims. Later some money was put into rebuilding houses and cleaning the city. However, there wasn't enough to fix the damages, much less to make the city safer.
In 2008, Gonaives was flooded again. Some people complained about how inefficient the aid must have been to have left Gonaives vulnerable to repeated flooding. The truth is, there was never enough money. Imagine New Orleans if the dikes had never been repaired. That is Gonaives today. As Jeffrey Sachs put it so well in The End of Poverty, there is never enough money to really end poverty. However, money is only half the problem.
The international community cannot take charge of a country. Haiti is a sovereign country with an elected president. Neither the United Nations nor the United States (nor any non governmental organization) can replace a sitting government. We can help and advice, but the host government has to lead. International development assistance is very effective at protecting vulnerable populations, but it cannot make a country develop itself.
Sorry Wyvlef. The international community can't take responsibility for Haiti's future. Yes, we've made mistakes and yes, all countries act with their own interests in mind. However, Haiti's leadership is responsible for Haiti's future. You know that you would not want it any other way.
Comments
One response to “Can NGOs or the international community build a country?”
from Philip Aaronson:
Thanks for this report. It raises some very critical and troublesome issues. I’ve just finished reading Paul Farmer’s PATHOLOGIES OF POWER and my head is spinning. I think in response to the statement that there just isn’t enough money to fix Haiti, he would point to the unequal distribution of wealth globally. The world is awash in money, but it’s mostly in the hands of a few. To illustrate: By 1995, the total wealth of the top 358 “global billionaires” equaled the combined income of the world’s 2.3 billion poorest people. In 1998, the UN Development Programme estimated that the fifteen richest individuals on earth controlled more assets than the combined annual gross domestic product of all of sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, the wealth of the three richest people in the world exceeded the total annual GDP of the forty-eight least developed countries (UNDP 1999).
There may in fact be enough money to fix not only Haiti but many other basket cases around the world. What percentage of aid pledges for the Haiti earthquake from donor nations have actually been paid up? 25%? That’s about par for the course. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before. In response to the disaster du jour, the IC pledges X dollars but after the dust settles, the pot is light. Half-baked solutions are the result. Farmer would also point out that ‘The rich countries have collectively never come close to meeting the target set in 1970 of devoting 0.7 percent of their annual GNP to official aid.’ Estimates are that development aid from rich countries falls short $100 billion USD per year. Since 1970, the shortfall is about $4 trillion USD. Some would argue that the U.S. gives more in dollars than any other country. However, as a percentage of GNP, the U.S. gives less than other donor nations. For more on this topic see:
http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance
Another statement I have to take issue with is:
“The international community cannot take charge of a country. Haiti is a sovereign country with an elected president. Neither the United Nations nor the United States (nor any non governmental organization) can replace a sitting government.”
The missing operative word in this statement is “legally”. The U.S. has replaced sitting governments many times. They did it to Aristide twice and in the process withheld badly needed aid for three years…aid that could have gone a long way to stabilizing the government and positioning it to start a rebuilding process. You know this story better than I because you lived through it.
I completely understand and share your level of frustration. Simplistic pronouncements about the failure of outside forces to fix things in a country like Haiti display a naive ignorance of historical forces that have shaped Haiti’s fate. They are completely self-serving.
So far my comments so far haven’t even touched on the monumental environmental issues at stake. Rhode Island, my home state, just experienced the worst rainfall and flooding in it’s recorded history. Homes that have been flooded in past 50-year storms were devastated in this storm that exceeded historical measurement. The owners can’t sell these homes. They can’t get insurance. They are stuck with the choice of either rebuilding yet again and waiting for the next flood or walking away to start over somewhere else. Most people don’t have the resources to do that….to say nothing about the cultural dynamics that tie people to places.
My point here is that there may not be a monetary “fix” to this problem, which comes frighteningly close to saying there is no hope. The Narragansett Indians would never have set up their homes in the river flood plains, swamps and shifting barrier beaches of SE New England, just like the Tainos would never have built their homes in the environmentally vulnerable areas of Quisqueya. They had more respect for nature than we do. We all have to live with the choices we’ve made, or in the case of Haitians, with the choices that have been made for them. If anyone has the right to say “it’s not my fault”, it would be the Haitians.
Phil