22280: christianav: NYTimes.com Article: The Long Haul in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: christianav@juno.com


The Long Haul in Haiti

July 23, 2004





In Washington this week, international donors pledged a
little over $1 billion to the rebuilding of Haiti over the
next two years. But Haiti's people, two-thirds of whom
struggle to live on less than $1 a day, have little reason
to believe that this will do any more good than the $2.6
billion donated after the last intervention in Haiti a
decade ago.

The world has never shown much appetite for tackling
Haiti's fundamental problems: stunted political and
economic development. Other nations act only when crises
threaten to unleash waves of unwanted refugees. Then they
typically content themselves with writing checks and
changing a few faces at the top. This time, Washington,
which encouraged the violent overthrow of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February, has a special
responsibility to see through a far-reaching rebuilding
effort.

In its 200 years of independence, Haiti has been one of the
Western Hemisphere's worst-governed countries, and one of
its least-governed. A parade of dictatorial presidents has
enforced one-man rule through private armies of thugs.
National institutions like the legislature, the courts and
the military have been corrupted, co-opted or neutered.

Honest, independent, locally run institutions must be built
from the ground up. Politically uncompromised judges should
be trained to try the political prisoners, both pro- and
anti-Aristide, now sitting in Haiti's jails. The drug
smugglers who have corrupted politicians and police
officers must be put out of business. Professional,
uncorrupted police forces have to be established, both
locally and nationally. Clean water must be made accessible
to the roughly one-half of the population that now lacks
it, and education brought to the illiterate majority.
Deforested slopes, prone to catastrophic flooding, have to
be replanted and better roads built so farmers and small
businesses can get goods to market.

No amount of aid can solve Haiti's problems unless the
appointed interim government of technocrats, led by Prime
Minister Gérard Latortue, does its part competently and
fairly, seeing to it that the impoverished slum dwellers
who followed Mr. Aristide are not again ignored. Until the
latest rebuilding effort demonstrates a will to take on
these challenges, Haiti's poor are entitled to remain
skeptical.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/23/opinion/23fri2.html?ex=1091677877&ei=1&en=47724949ef70b640


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