23329: Holmstead: Editorial-Lynchburg News & Advance (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: John Holmstead <cyberkismet5@yahoo.com>

Haiti's devastation a result of poverty
Lynchburg News & Advance
Thursday, September 30, 2004

Hurricane Jeanne has been blamed for killing six
people in Florida, a mercifully tiny death toll
compared to that of Haiti, where the storm has claimed
more than 1,500 lives, and 1,000 people remain
missing.

Another 200,000 people were made homeless by the
storm.

Four hurricanes have killed 76 people in Florida since
mid-August, but one single storm may have killed as
many as 2,500 Haitians.

Why the disparity? For one thing, it’s harder for
folks on an island nation to evacuate to safer ground.
But in Haiti, and places like it, poverty and
political instability are the underlying problems.

The nation suffers from horrendous erosion because of
clear cutting and poor irrigation practices that send
water gushing downhill.

People live in everything from shacks to nice homes on
these mudslides-in-waiting. There’s no safe place to
seek shelter when the torrential rains come.

Poverty has forced Haitians to chop down their forests
to make charcoal, crucial for cooking, and sometimes
one of the few sources of income available. Fewer than
100,000 acres of forest are left in Haiti, only about
1.5 percent of the country’s tree coverage before
Columbus discovered the Western hemisphere.

Since Jeanne came ashore two weeks ago, doctors have
been performing amputations without electricity or
running water, while waste from damaged sewage systems
spews everywhere, infecting wounds and spreading
disease.

The unstable political situation has created further
nightmares. The failure of Haiti’s U.S.-backed
government to disarm the gangs that helped oust
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has allowed thugs to
run roughshod over cities like Gonaives.

The instability makes the delivery of food by
international rescue workers nearly impossible.

One New York City doctor who returned to his native
Haiti told The Associated Press he has treated 30
people for gunshot wounds received in fights over
scarce food. One patient was a child whose finger was
chopped off with a machete, possibly over food.

If the United States is going to tinker in a country’s
politics, it needs to be willing to put some money in
creating real change. Forests need to be restored and
people need a way to earn a living that doesn’t
destroy the land they count on for survival.


Haiti is not some distant island, but a neighbor, and
arguably the poorest country in the world. While many
religious and humanitarian groups attempt to help the
struggling nation, the United States has not done
enough to effect real change.

The United Nations, which has had a small peacekeeping
force in Haiti since Aristide’s imposed exile in
February, has been overwhelmed by the effects of
Jeanne. With 750 international troops and police in
Gonaives, there is still not enough security to
distribute food safely.

Sadly, most Americans are not aware of the situation
or don’t care. They’re more concerned about their
ruined condos and luxury homes than the lives of
thousands of neighbors to the south. While Americans
continue to count hurricane damage in billions of
dollars to things that can be replaced, citizens of
the third world count the damage in bodies.

Until Americans see how their lifestyles and their
government’s international policies cripple the lives
of others, that bleak scenario won’t change.

This story can be found at:
http://www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=LNA%2FMGArticle%2FLNA_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031778247895&path=!news!opinion




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