|
World
Black Economics |
Shop |
Home
|
Events
|
Campaign
to raise money for
The
ACE Fund
Finance
to Support, provide connections and fund black businesses
~
0 ~
Monthly
- EEGroup Meetings
Economic
Empowerment Group Meeting are held Monthly.
Where we Share, Debate, Plan & Take Action. Share
and Implement new strategies. Real Networking with like-minded
people.
Email
to Register
|
|
|
Haiti's
Uncertain Future, 2 Years Later
Little progress
and a lot of self-doubt remain in the first black republic after
the earthquake.
Two years ago,
at 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2010, the earth shrugged and added another
chapter to the sequence of tragedies that define Haiti's history.
The 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed tens of thousands of people,
destroyed 80 percent of the capital city of Port-au-Prince and left
many Haitians homeless. Nearly all public buildings were destroyed,
and with them much of a generation of civil servants, doctors, nurses,
engineers, professors and students.
The world responded
with a generosity that left Haitians -- accustomed to being treated
as world pariahs -- truly surprised and grateful. The Obama administration
immediately pledged $100 million in support and sent 3,000 troops
to manage the airport and a hospital ship to treat the most severely
wounded. Help came from governments of France, Switzerland, Venezuela,
Cuba, Chile and Colombia and myriad private groups. Former Presidents
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush formed the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
to raise money for the reconstruction.
Even the Dominican
Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti in an
uneasy and sometimes contentious relationship, rose to the occasion.
President Leonel Fernández promised to help rebuild the world's
first black republic. At a meeting of some 90 countries and international
organizations at the United Nations in May of 2010, donors pledged
$5.3 billion. Haiti's recovery seemed well under way.
Two years later,
the outlook for Haiti's future is a lot less clear. The media spotlight
has moved away from Haiti. The cameras are gone, as are most of
the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that rushed to provide
emergency care. The big international entities with histories in
Haiti, like the U.N. and the United Nations Development Program,
remain, but much of the promised aid money was never delivered.
The consensus, in Haiti and abroad, is that little progress has
been made, and a sense of pessimism has enveloped the country and
its million-strong overseas community.
But beyond disappointment
at the slow progress of reconstruction, many Haitians and Haitian
Americans have begun to lose faith. We have begun to wonder if the
sharp divisions of class and color in Haiti are an unavoidable obstacle
to progress, and realize that they must be overcome for the poor
Caribbean nation of 10 million to move forward.
Following
the Money
In a review
of progress since the earthquake, Le Nouvelliste, Haiti's establishment
newspaper, enumerates the piles of debris that still block large
parts of the capital city, the hundreds of thousands of homeless
still living in camps, the unfulfilled promise of thousands of new
housing units and the fact that not a single public building has
been rebuilt. "Slow or illusionary, the reconstruction seems
to have lead in its wings," the paper declared.
One reason may
be that so little of the money spent so far has actually reached
Haiti. An analysis by the alternative news site Counterpunch found
that donors gave Haiti $1.6 billion in relief aid and more than
$2 billion in recovery aid over the last two years.
"It turns
out that almost none of the money that the general public thought
was going to Haiti actually went directly to Haiti," the publication
reported. "The international community chose to bypass the
Haitian people, Haitian nongovernmental organizations and the government
of Haiti. Funds were instead diverted to other governments, international
NGOs and private companies. Despite this near total lack of control
of the money by Haitians, if history is an indication, it is quite
likely that the failures will ultimately be blamed on the Haitians
themselves in a 'blame the victim' reaction."
Foreign aid
donors often bypass Haiti's government and its private companies
because of historical widespread corruption. But another reason
is that the Haitian government has been slow to put forward proposals
for reconstruction or show any ability to carry out its own objectives.
Divided by
Race and Class
Foreign reporters
often ignore Haiti's black elite and middle class. In a country
where 95 percent of the population is dark-skinned, they are not
as visible to foreigners -- and rarely as wealthy -- as the light-skinned
entrepreneurs who dominate business. Haiti's light-skinned elite
has long dominated the country's economics and manipulated its politics.
According to the French newspaper Le Monde, 3 percent of the population
controls 80 percent of the economy - (which is true of most countries
anyway - but the gap is stark)
Doctors, engineers,
lawyers, musicians, scholars and politicians often come from this
group, which was nurtured by mid-20th-century President François
Duvalier -- and then brutally repressed. That black middle class
has been the biggest source of talent lost by Haiti. One study by
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates
that 80 percent of Haitians with more than a secondary education
have left the country. A struggling economy means that even more
will make plane tickets their ballots -- and seek opportunities
with which they can succeed.
But the most
visible positive economic force in Haiti in the last two years has
been Denis O'Brien, an Irish billionaire and telecom mogul who owns
Digicel, Haiti's largest mobile phone network. His company is Haiti's
largest investor, biggest taxpayer and biggest employer. O'Brien's
aggressive moves, including putting up $16.5 million of his own
money to rebuild the landmark Iron Market in Port-au-Prince, are
a rebuff to the timidity of Haiti's upper class.
Bearing the
Weight of History
The failure
of the reconstruction effort has triggered some rigorous self-examination
among Haitians. René Depestre, a respected Haitian poet and
Duvalier opponent who spent decades in exile in Cuba and Europe,
asks if Haiti, created through a bloody revolution that required
fighting off France, England and Spain, missed a step in building
a nation.
By: Joel Dreyfuss
January 9, 2012
The Root
|
FB
Page
Join
our Mailing List to the
Black Economics website
Special
Offers
|
1)
Free website for your business- Email
for details |
|
Email
us your offers to promote your business or event. |
|