The Clintons and Sean Penn are throwing a party here in Haiti and I wasn't invited. US politicians and celebrities are gathering today in Northern Haiti to celebrate the opening of an industrial complex built with $124 million of relief money. The complex is controversial among local Haitians, many feeling that the US is helping other countries to take advantage of relatively cheap Haitian labor (minimum wage is $5 per day).
A link to a detailed NY Times article
HERE
So what are we really celebrating? This money was supposed to help the country recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake, yet the facility is located 100 miles north of the damaged capital, Port-au-Prince. Life is hard in Haiti, and it is very hard in the poor North. Small villages cling to steep mountains. People have to walk miles for clean water, most use mountain streams to bath, wash clothes, and drink.
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| A typical hut in Northern Haiti |
The US's answer to the poverty in Haiti is to build a giant industrial building in a place where Haitians are trying to conserve some of their mostly stripped vegetation, then to allow foreign companies to come do business in Haiti. A South Korean clothing giant rents the majority of the space in the complex.
There are at least 5 better ways to spend money helping Haiti.
1.
Make education free. Use the earthquake relief money to pay teacher's salaries, to set up additional schools, and to provide books for the children. Educating every child in Haiti would do more for the country than any project or grand building. Many Haitian parents cannot afford to pay the school fees, or to buy uniforms and books. Their children are uneducated, without a chance at a job even if jobs were available. Our next door neighbor makes his living as a motorcycle taxi driver, he does not make enough money to send his kids to school. His four children literally play in the dirt all day long. They have no running water, no electricity, no books. The destructive cycle of poverty and ignorance must be broken, and free education is crucial.
2.
Build and staff a teaching hospital. Medical care is severely lacking in Haiti. A friend of mine recently needed gallbladder surgery. She went to a local hospital, but ended up having to remove her own IV and fly to the States. You can read her story:
HERE. The US and other countries regularly send medical teams to the Haiti. These kind doctors and nurses have to bring their own medicine and often travel to remote places providing the only medical care that many Haitians will ever receive. As a step toward independence, these groups could be organized to teach their medical knowledge to locals at a teaching hospital so that the local "intern doctors" could then set up clinics to provide long term care across the country.
3.
Provide better training and salaries to the local police, craft laws to protect Haitian citizens, as well as build up a small, well trained military. The UN's presence takes a toll on the country's sense of self. UN convoys destroy already poorly maintained roads, and their militaristic presence is a constant reminder that the country is unable to police itself. Under the UN watch, human and child trafficking, violent demonstrations, kidnappings, and armed robberies are all part of daily life in Haiti. With training and support, Haitians could do more to make their country a peaceful place then the UN could ever achieve.
4.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. The US's solution to the staggering unemployment in Haiti is flawed. Building an industrial complex that foreign companies rent opens Haitians up to exploitation. Instead, the money should have been spent establishing Haitian businesses, run by a joint Haitian/foreign board, with clear parameters for managing profits. I picture Bill and Hillary sitting down with the CEOs of major construction companies, asking them to partner with Haitians to create Haitian construction companies. The businessmen would be partners that would provide training in business and in the trades lacking, but once the Haitian companies became successful, the foreigners need to step away and let the companies be purely Haitian run. If a company did not work then it would fold and be started again with different people and business plans. Within a few years, enough of the companies would survive so that Haitians would be bringing their economy up with their own hard work, not dependent on the South Korean clothing business.
5.
Power, factories, and fields. Ah, industrialization. Haiti desperately needs reliable power instead of the fitful and sporadic electricity that it currently receives. The relief money donated could have been used to provide Haiti with a reliable source of power, and provide training and safety materials to Haitian electrical workers. With reliable power, factories could be built to process Haitian crops: the coffee beans, the sugar cane, the avocados and mangos should all be exported and sold, the money used to modernize Haitian farming and expand current crop yields.
Any one of these issues would improve life for all Haitians. As a teacher and perpetual student myself, I believe that
without free education for all children, a country will not be able to advance itself.
Haitians do need help from their richer and more powerful neighbors, but Haitians do not need to be patronized.
They need the tools and training to pull themselves, their families, and their country out of poverty, then they need the rest of the world to step back and let them succeed.
