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A long-term commitment
Disaster experts predict it will take ten years to get Haiti onto a
stable footing
By Patricia Zengerle
President Barack Obama
jumped in to help Haiti after its disastrous earthquake, but with experts
saying it will take 10 years and billions of dollars to fix the shattered
country, the United States faces another long-term commitment in a foreign
country. Haiti was the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state even before last
month’s quake, with 80 per cent of its people surviving on under $2 per day
and a long history of instability and corruption. The Jan. 12 disaster
killed more than 200,000 of Haiti’s 9 million people, injured another
300,000, destroyed much of its capital and institutions, and left 1 million
homeless.
Obama sent millions of dollars in aid and a massive influx of resources,
including 13,000 US military personnel. He also boosted an appeal for
Americans to donate for Haiti, which has yielded hundreds of millions of
dollars, by naming two former presidents, Republican George W Bush and
Democrat Bill Clinton, to lead the drive and keep it above party politics.
“The president handled this quite well,” said Robert Pastor, who was former
president Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser for Latin America and an
adviser on Haiti for the Clinton administration.
“He reacted faster than everyone else. It wasn’t just a political gesture.
It was sincere and he got the entire government to move as quickly as it
could.” But a month later, the recovery is still largely in emergency
response mode. With the rainy season about to start, planning for shelters
and new homes is not far along. There are now nearly 500 spontaneous tent
encampments around the capital Port-au-Prince where most live under plastic
tarps or cloth bedsheets. “We are still in a very difficult situation,”
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said in an interview last week. “We still
don’t have a clear vision of certain problems — how we are going to relocate
all those people.”
Tough recovery
Disaster experts predict it will take 10 years to get Haiti onto a
stable footing, with housing, an effective government, security, poverty
reduction and development expanded to areas outside of Port-au-Prince. “What
you are shooting for is something that Haiti has never really had before,”
said Peter DeShazo, director of the Americas programme at the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The problem is
complicated by Haiti’s history of corruption — $5 billion in aid was pumped
into the country, which has an annual GDP of just $7 billion, in the past 20
years. But there has been little to show for it, and many Haitians doubt
things will be different now.
“There are two questions. One is the money that’s needed, and the other is
their ability to absorb it,” said Elizabeth Ferris, an international
development scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Ferris was
sceptical that the international community would make the kind of commitment
needed. “I’m quite pessimistic. I think it will be hard to sustain the
momentum. The past history isn’t very good,” she said. “There’s a 20 per
cent chance that there’s a long-term financial commitment and that Haiti
would end up better. All the odds are stacked against it,” she said. |
