The 2nd Thread For 7/12/10: The Slowest Aid Ever

Photo from Gallo and Getty

You wouldn't be happy too if the aid was so slow to come like it has:

It has been six months since a seven magnitude earthquake struck Haiti.

As many as a quarter of a million people died and 1.5 million more were rendered homeless.

Despite a major reconstruction effort many Haitians fear, not enough is being done to rebuild the devastated island nation.

Mother of four Carmen Hypolite said: “We were expecting a change in our situation because they were speaking only about reconstruction, but the way things are going, we could be waiting five or 10 years, even for the rest of our lives and see nothing happen.”

So slow, and so little :

The technical obstacles to reconstruction are immense. But the political roadblocks are larger.

Immediately after the quake $10bn in international aid was pledged. As of June 30, only 10 per cent of the $2.5bn promised for 2010 had been delivered. A lot of it has been held up in political wrangling.

The international community led by the US, France and Canada demanded that the Haitian parliament pass an 18-month-long state of emergency law that effectively gave up government control over the reconstruction.

Holding up the money was a pressure tactic designed to ensure international control of the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti, which is authorised to spend billions. These maneuvers were met by protest and widespread hostility in Haiti, which forced the international community to back off a little.

Initially, a majority of seats on the commission were to represent foreign governments and international financial institutions. That has been reduced to half of the 26-member committee, but the money is still to be managed by the World Bank and other international institutions.

And the continued irrational denial of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to his own country is the icing on the cake on why America and a few others are doing more harm to Haiti than really helping.

Since that time Aristide has been in forced exile in South Africa and his Fanmi Lavalas party has been barred from participating in elections. They are again being blocked from participating in elections taking place on November 28.

All of this has created a situation in which there is no institution in Haiti with the credibility or capacity to undertake reconstruction.

And let's not even speculate on how many contractors are all over the place.

It's what the rich do to the poor when they don't truly care for them.