30852: Durban (comment): re. 30828 on UN Peacekeepers (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Lance Durban <lpdurban@yahoo.com> offers the following comment on
Corbett #30828 which included the following quote:

     Mulet said the U.N. mission eventually hopes to use more
     civilian police than soldiers but is hampered by a world
     shortage of trained, French-speaking officers.

Hello?  Isn't this shortage something that Haiti could be working to
remedy?  Haiti... which has plenty of young, unemployed men, perfectly
suitable for being trained as international policemen for OTHER world
trouble spots?

This is a perfect USAID or UNDP-financed "jobs" project:
  1.  It could draw on a core of existing Haitian PNH officers
(recently-trained of course, but with some on the job experience in
Haiti already) who would be able to pass a battery of aptitude tests
for foreign service.
  2.  It would create a international peace-keeper academy, alongside
the present training facility for the PNH.  An expansion on the
existing effort which, of course, is for domestic (Haitian) purposes.

As a project, it would cost big money, but it is an investment that
would be very well spent.  It would:
  1.  Create employment for a segment of the Haitian population that is
particularly difficult to employ (young urban males).
  2.  Create a corps of relatively low-cost, French-speaking U.N.
peace-keepers, the world shortage of which Mulet is lamenting.
  3.  Raise Haitian pride.  Haitians would get the feeling that they
were CONTRIBUTING to U.N. peace-keeping efforts, not merely a recipient
nation.

In terms of job creation, if one's only criteria is the number of
people on a payroll, hiring street sweepers may involve more people
faster, but thinking longer term, an international police academy would
be making a better long term investment in human capital.
Unfortunately, distributing money to street sweepers is a stop gap
measure that fails utterly to create any human capital.

Lance Durban