Madam, – Homeless Haitians awakening to the damp of the first rains of the season have got a glimpse of a silver lining from behind the dark clouds of despair with the recent $9.9 billion pledged by the international community to rebuild the shattered country (Breaking News, April 1st).
The amount is a potent signal of intent in alleviating the suffering of the poor, but given the problems that the earthquake survivors are now facing, our assistance must not end there. The sum surpassed expectations and showed, in the most meaningful way possible, that the West does care about the poor. The contribution of €9 million from our own Government at a time of such financial turmoil is also to be welcomed.
It is difficult if not impossible to imagine the misery on the ground in Port-au-Prince a world away from the UN donors’ conference in New York, where this package was agreed. What this money means is that a blueprint can now be put in place to put the pieces of this broken country back together.
This is a long-term reconstruction project and it is vital that it be managed. Ideally what I would like to see is that donors take responsibility for different sections of the rebuilding. Were donor countries to adopt specific areas such as roads, health, sanitation, schools, etc, accountability and value for money could be policed.
Welcome as this package is, the world has turned its back on Haitians for long enough. The descendants of former black slaves who overthrew French colonial rule to create the world’s first independent black republic in 1804 have been abandoned to their cruel fate practically ever since. So there is a moral imperative now that there is a meaningful chance of progress, for the global community to rise to the challenge.
Goal is currently feeding well in excess of 300,000 people in Haiti, and is in the process of building thousands of transitional shelters. But aid workers have warned that unless more adequate and secure shelter is provided quickly to more than one million left homeless by the quake, Haiti could face another humanitarian disaster from the frequent floods and landslides that strike the country during the imminent rainy season, so this package could not have come at a better time.
Aid agencies are making inroads, but what this injection of funds will do is to move beyond handouts to secure livelihoods for tomorrow. We must follow through and guarantee that this time at least we do not fail the people of the developing world. Donor countries must not renege on their pledges. In the Congo, millions have died and the world stood by and did nothing, the same shameful inaction has facilitated the butchery in Darfur and in Somalia.
Perhaps Haiti can be different; it is to be hoped that this aid package may herald a new deal for the world’s poor. – Yours, etc,