Foreign Aid in Haiti
Undeniably, the West is more than willing to send aid to regions facing disaster. In the case of Haiti, however, the seeds of catastrophe were planted in 1804, one year after the world’s first black republic declared itself an independent state. Haiti established itself as a strikingly independent and isolated country, severing itself from the rest of the Western world when its revolutionary leaders eradicated the island’s white French minority. Arguably, this could be considered a justifiable backlash after living in slavery for so many years. Regardless of justification, this genocide set the precedent for Haitian foreign relations for centuries to come. France, the Dominican Republic, the United States, and more recently the United Nations have all occupied or owned Haiti. The slave mindset is not gone from Haiti, and to an extent rightfully so. Haiti has served as a political pawn for leaders from Napoleon to the Clintons. After an earthquake in 2010 that turned the world’s attention once more to the small Caribbean nation, Haiti was primed for a new beginning. What followed was anything but.
The United Nations has a checkered history in Haiti. In February of 2004, when Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide fled the country, The UN placed a Multinational Interim Force in Haiti as a placeholder for a new Haitian government. Later in June, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) came into existence after a UN Security Council resolution passed. Three years into the “peacekeeping” operation, problems began to arise. During 2010, Cité Soleil, the Western Hemisphere’s largest slum, saw the death of three children as UN peacekeepers entered the neighborhood to gain territory from the armed gangs. Two of the dead children’s mother said that she saw peacekeeper tanks’ headlights outside of her home, explaining that the bullets came from their direction. Unfortunately for this mother and the other 400,000 residents of Cité Soleil, collateral damage like this is a harsh reality as the peacekeepers attempt to regain control from the gangs in the slum. In Jordan’s report, a UN official put it best:
“No one would stay here if they had the money to get out.”
Later that year, after the earthquake, cholera spread through Haiti. A potentially lethal disease that causes severe diarrhea and vomiting, cholera killed 7,000 Haitians, and infected more than 500,000.
The CDC identified the strain. It was nearly identical to a strain found in Southeast Asia. Investigations traced a potential source of the outbreak to a peacekeeper base north of Port-au-Prince, home to a peacekeeping unit from Nepal. The United Nations released their own report, claiming that tests on the sanitation systems in the base revealed that there wasn’t enough information to conclusively pinpoint one source. The UN allocated millions of dollars to fight this epidemic, without ever claiming responsibility for the introduction of the disease. This is a pattern typical of blue helmet involvement in poor countries: The UN is quick to solve problems that it creates, boosting public image without admitting fault in the issue at hand.
Inadvertently causing crises that provide avenues for measurable progress, the United Nations worsens the state of impoverished countries like Haiti while maintaining a superficial goal of peaceful aid and support.
Despite the public relations opportunity presented via cholera, the UN still failed to adequately fight the outbreak. Instea, they claimed political immunity and remain an externally controlled and internally manipulative force in Haiti. The United Nations failed in their mandate to “restore a secure and stable environment,” as described on their website.
While the cholera outbreak was an accident, peacekeepers have also committed far more intentional human rights violations. United Nations peacekeepers have exploited Haitians since they began working in Haiti. In a Washington Post article, Justin Moyer explains how “women traded sex for basic needs, including food and medication.” Sri Lankan peacekeepers enticed women with basic items such as cell phones and food in exchange for sex; they promoted prostitution. The United Nations, instead of providing services without cost, manipulated and endangered Haitian women. The UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson Michele Montas said, “The United Nations and the Sri Lankan government deeply regret any sexual exploitation and abuse that has occurred, despite their efforts to ensure the highest standards of conduct and discipline.” Jenna Stern from the Stimson Center points out that the initial investigations pertaining to this case took place a decade ago and,
“Even with the implementation of stronger sexual exploitation and abuse policies and procedures, holding perpetrators accountable remains a challenge.”
Peacekeepers are violating yet another part of their mandate “to promote and to protect human rights,” with few to no measurable steps of corrective action being taken. The bureaucratic and politically immune machine that the United Nations has created follows no law but its own.
Surprisingly, the Red Cross also has had issues in Haiti. After the earthquake in 2010, the American Red Cross received over half of a billion dollars in donations to help rebuild Haiti. A recent NPR report by Laura Sullivan examined the bureaucracy in the Red Cross’s administrative methods. Shockingly, NPR reports that only six permanent homes have been built since the earthquake. The Red Cross designated tens of millions of dollars to housing development. This is a prime example of fund mismanagement by a bloated foreign group attempting to control Haitian development. While the intentions of those involved are benevolent-minded, the results are often not. The Red Cross provided education programs for building temporary residences, with minimal focus on permanent development. Notably, a commonality between the United Nations and the Red Cross is a tendency to not involve Haitians in their work. Both organizations hire foreigners who speak neither French nor Creole, and then expect positive results.
If the Haitian people are not empowered and involved in their own development — if they don’t own it, then Haiti will always be the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.
The overarching pattern is this: Operating under their own laws, the UN will instigate a problem in an already destabilized country, and then claim political immunity in order to avoid the consequences of their actions. The Red Cross will receive millions in funds and then burn it all away in ineffective and mismanaged programs. The cholera outbreak is a prime example, as Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley points out in a CNN editorial: “There is a humanitarian crisis happening in our own hemisphere… [The crisis] was inadvertently caused by a critically important international organization, which has not yet taken full responsibility for its actions.” One could point out that Haiti’s infrastructure was working against these organizations, which is true; but if these organizations were effective, billions of dollars of funding would have provided better infrastructure development than what is taking place. The United Nations sees itself as too important and too big to be held responsible for the actions of its members. Ignoring the global political process, the UN has not promoted Haiti’s own national political process, instead setting another example in which an outside power intervenes in Haitian affairs, disregarding Haitian sovereignty while controlling every aspect of Haiti’s development. If this pattern continues, Haiti will never develop into a truly independent country, and the slave mindset will never leave them.
So what do we do?
We work more closely with smaller, community-based, non-government organizations (NGOs). We give the funding to local groups who have worked to develop relationships with the Haitian people. We give them the support to work on projects in their immediate areas. National Geographic’s Alexandra Fuller stated:
“Of the more than six billion dollars in international aid donated to the country for humanitarian and recovery work following the disaster, only 9.1 percent was channeled directly to the government and less than 0.6 percent went directly to Haitian NGOs and businesses.”
If we continue to funnel all of the money through corrupt and bloated international groups, then nothing will get done. We need to seriously look at where the foreign aid is going. It is far more effective to work with these grassroots organizations; the NGOs understand something that the big groups don’t: Aid only works for a while. Empowerment is what changes people. I’m not saying stop sending money to Haiti, I’m just wondering…
Where has the $13 billion gone?
Fund the NGOs.
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