Haiti: An NGO Republic - Research Paper Example

Haiti: An NGO Republic? Introduction For many, more so in the relatively opulent west, the Haiti is the embodiment of abject poverty and impoverishment, the country engenders all there is to the definition of a third world failed state and then some more. While the present circumstances certainly give some level of credence to such assumptions, 0a historical preview reveals that there is more than meets the eye and Haiti despite being one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere actually has a great deal of historical significance. Haiti has a remarkable history indeed; it is a country whose population was created through kidnapping and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Africans by the Spanish and French in the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, the descendants of these slaves are the present inhabitants of Haiti, and due to the misery and poverty that have ravaged the nation for decades, there has been little or no voluntary emigration there for the better part of the century. Today, Haiti has become what many refer to as a nation of NGO after it was ravaged by numerous natural disasters such which have debilitated its political social and economic infrastructure; this paper examines the background of the island nation and discusses how international NGOs that appear to established a parallel government and how this is negatively affecting recovery efforts. Before it was “discovered” by the Spanish in 1492 (Trouillot 3), it was initiated by various groups native to the Caribbean, it later became the Dominican Republic and the native population was completely annihilated through warfare and the introduction of western diseases for which they had no immunity. The island of Hispaniola as it came to be known was a splendid rain forest that required thousands of slaves to till which explains the rampant slavery in retrospect. Surprisingly despite the fact that Haiti is today synonymous with poverty and disaster, it is actually one of the most historically influential nations to the current status quo in the US and Europe. For one, being the first black independent country in the western hemisphere is no mean achieving and it contributed a great deal to the end of slavery in many other parts of the world where the victims were inspired by Haiti. The perception of Haiti by the international community has for years been based on a negative ideology of poverty and misery, granted these constitute a big part of the nation’s situation for the last few decades the view is nevertheless misguided. Most online content of the country shows disaster workers trying to clear out debris after earthquakes and natural disasters, one will more easily find news of political scandals and controversies. There is hardly anything about the culture and the rich history of a people who emerged as the first independent black republic in the western hemisphere, and inspired numerous slave rebellions across the globe proving that black people were just as capable of self-governance and independence as any other race. If anything whenever this positive history is quoted it is often to juxtapose how far and hard the country has fallen in reference to whatever disaster it may be facing at the time. In addition, had Haiti not beaten Napoleon Bonaparte , he would not have needed to consummate the buying of Louisiana with Thomas Jefferson and the US would not have acquired the land west of Mississippi at 14 cents per acre (Robert). Therefore, the western expansion of the US, which was a major contributing factor to its present superpower status, would never have occurred. Secondly, had not Simone Bolivar been assisted by the Haiti republic to liberate south America from the Spanish, the Bolivian revolution that enabled south American nations to gain independence and the Monroe doctrine would never have come be (Robert). The first Haiti elites were comprised of mixed race descendants of the French and African slaves, through the revolutionary zeal of the French that motivated them to award these elites rights to property equality several resistance movements were formed. They finally culminated into the question of Haitian independence in 1804 making it the firms’ independent nation in the western hemisphere. However the transition was not easy as the western power that had crippled the nation under slavery now wanted repatriation for lost land and slaves, it was faced with new threats of invasions and had to contend with embargos from the French British and American states. It was forced to pay the “debts” by borrowing even more form these same exploitative power and it was not until 1947 did that if pay it off leaving it to star it “free” existence under the damaging weight of debts and further embargoes (Edmonds 2). In the span of less than a century, it went from being one of the most successful and wealth Caribbean states to the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. Its isolation was compounded by the fact that the US and European powers kept exploiting it and destabilizing its economy, this resulted to instability in the internal politics as the nation’s elite became corrupt opportunistic. The exploitation forced the people to look for alternative ways of survival and such included cutting trees to acquire the only fuel they could afford. This was highly detrimental to the environment stability and ultimately Haiti gradually turned into a nearly barren land without forest cover and its populace living in abject poverty most of them concentrated around cities which were poor planned and constructed, insecure and without sufficient amenities owing to the economic challenges and underlying government corruption. One of the consequences of this situation is that it made the country extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, the construction culture and concentration of the population along areas prone to quakes posed a major threat but no one appeared to be overly concerned. This can be demonstrated by making a comparison between Haiti and Chile in the aftermath of 1970 earthquakes, both countries are faced considerable seismic risk and in 1970, Haiti’s earthquake resulted to the deaths of over 300,000 people. Barely five weeks later, a quake 500 times stronger hit Chile but in this case, only hundreds died, evidently the building code and population patterns in Chile are more effectively organized than Haiti. This justifies the claim that environmental disasters may not be after all entirely natural or unpreventable; this is because the disaster was not so much the earthquakes but the damage the caused (Katz 20). After the most recent earthquake in which hundreds of thousands lost their lives, NGOs and other organizations as well as western governments pitched camp in Haiti and for the last few years the country has been without doubt dependent on external assistance both for recovery and reconstruction efforts. However, given the current situation and the fact that the poverty and suffering still persists, one if forced to ask how much help are the people of Haiti actually getting and how can the reconstruction efforts be carried out. This is inn order to address and balance on the complex environmental, social political and economic factors that have been playing a major role in exposing the nation to disaster. One of the main challenges that have faced Haiti is political, with its economy having been left in shreds by post-colonial and imperialist exploitation, the political arena has been topsy-turvy for the last few centuries and it has been characterized by numerous coups and interference of government by the military. As a result, the military was disbanded and with the help of the UN and US a civilian force was constituted to assist with matters of security, in addition, is often forced to rely on UN peacekeeping forces to quell numerous riots that have been a part of its political challenge. It is apparent that even before the 2010, disaster, Haiti has often been forced to depend on outsiders for health , security, medical education and numerous other services that it should provide for its citizens. The life expectancy is extremely low in Haiti and on average as of 2006, men could expect to live up to 53 and women 54, the earthquake undoubtedly radically changed this and reduced it even further. The birth rate is however quite high and before it was tragically depopulated, it was the one of the most densely populated countries in the western hemisphere. However, given the resource impoverishment, this population is crowed in very small areas and the quality of life is extremely low with a high level of infant mortality and school dropouts. The literacy rate stands at around 53% for makes and 51% for females, which is way below the average for Latin America that stands at 90% (Felima 8). Although President Aristide brought about considerable improvement, the situation is still dire and private organizations, the church or foreign nations rather than the state of Haiti fund majority of the schools. Even with the presence of schools, there has been an extreme teacher shortage over the years and this is especially felt in the rural areas where most trained teacher prefers to avoid.  Today the title NGO state is frequently used in reference to Haiti, which begs the question, could Haiti really become an NGO state but if this were the case, why is the situation so dire even with so much assistance from outside.  An article from the nation.com paints a bleak picture of Haiti, it describes the former administration offices where the ministry of justice used to be which are currently lying in rubble and the intact parts mostly empty after over 16,000 employees were killed in the 2010 earthquake (Kats 104). New employees occupy the offices and some operate from tents lacking most amenities such as power computers of telephones. This is juxtaposed by the situation in the northwestern direction where the UN logistic base is located, the compound is new with massive blue and white buildings, it is dotted with golf cats and trailer as well as air-conditioned hotels and sleeping quarters (Pierre-Louis 187). For the people of Haiti to access the NGO base, they need a set of identification documents for security as well as an invitation from an insider; this is understandably a rare combination. After the Earthquake, the log base gradually became the center for an international recovery effort and most of the funds donated to the recovery were channeled towards activities initiated from here. At the apex of the activities there would be over 70 meetings held each week by global agencies and interested governments and non-state actors. Very few Haitian were in invited to in those sittings and the Log Base does not include a single local NGO. Most of the meetings are held in English rather than Creole of French, which are the native languages. In June 2010 after the quake when a steering committee for coordination of NGOs was held, over 60 international organizations cast their votes although the people they had come to assist were conspicuously unrepresented since there had been no single Haiti NGO for the vote. The NGO republic of Haiti is described thus since it appears the state has been divided into two parts, on one side there are thousands of international organizations that have come to help with recovery and with them is an aid budget from the outside world comprising of billions of dollars. On the other hand there are the representatives of the Haiti people who are frequently ignored unfunded and often have little or no say as to how the recovery efforts in the country should be carried out. The expatriates have seemingly built a parallel state in Haiti that is powerful and unapproachable accountable to none, but the NGO boards and donors. While not claiming that these NGOs are wrong in attempting to help the people, one must take consideration the fact that by making the recovery effort Aid instead of people oriented the donors are alienating the very people they are supposed to help (Zanotti 760). They are making the mistake of approaching the problem from an objective and disinterested point of view and trying to solve the overlying problems of poverty, infrastructure, and environmental issues that directly result from the quake. However as previously mentioned, Haiti’s problem cannot be solved from an outsider’s point of view and the subjective and emotive view of the people must be sought. The genesis of the present situation can be traced back to the post ex facto period when the French and Americans exerted their economic influence on the people of Haiti after independence and gradually ran their economy to the ground under the weight of imperialist debts. While the intentions of these NGOs may be good, they risk making the same mistake by assuming to understand the problems of Haiti and deigning to solve them without the involvement of the insiders. In providing medical care, the NGOs are unwittingly destroying the medical system of Haiti since instead of working with the establishment they have set up independent hospitals by organizations such as doctors without borders. As a result, many nurses and doctors have quit their jobs at public and even private hospitals to work for the better paying NGO ones and patient will hardly visit and Haitian hospital or clinic preferring the free NGO care. The brain drain aside, there is the question of what will happen to the sector when NGOs leave, as they must eventually? They may be doing a good job in the short term but the systems they have established are not sustainable and they are luring the people towards a false sense of security (Schuller and Pablo 106). The priorities of the NGOs appear to be on a parallel with the needs of the people on the ground a fact they may have wised up to if they had involved them from the onset. The NGOs from the start followed their own agendas and largely excluded the government, civil society, after the quake, only about 1% of the Aid was availed to bet government, and only 1.8% of the reconstruction funds from other countries were spent to support the budget for this. Even today, it is estimated that two thirds of the aid is still in the bank accounts of the NGOs that had been there before the quake as well as the UN and western building and consultancy firms. The projects that would have directly benefited the people of Haiti appear to have been neglected and although there were few cases of funds being stole or misused a great deal of the monies were spend on things that were not a priority. An example this confusion can be demonstrated in the reaction to the October 2010, cholera epidemic, although its main cause was dirty water, the money channeled by NGOs to deal with it was used mostly in sensitization of the public on the importance of good hygiene practices. Never mind that many of the displaced were relocated to areas with no access to water at all and as a result within the first year of the outbreak over half a million Haitians were infected within the first year. By august 2012, only 12 % of the IDP camps had been equipped with hand washing stations and the number of camps that had access to clean water was greatly reduced. Conclusion Evidently, there is money to spend but those entrusted with its spending are more interested in making shows of using it than actually helping the people. At the end of the day, if indeed Haiti is an NGO republic as many have claimed it is a poorly managed one and the NGOs like many modern rulers are unapproachable and completely out of touch with the realities on the ground as well as the challenges facing the common people (Zanotti 764). Although their role in bringing about a degree of positive change cannot be overstated, it is worrying that Haiti appear to be under some for or humanitarian imperialism where the people are held captive to their need for help and poverty. Moreover, NGOs use their country as ground on which to try out their various business practices and disaster management practices without giving enough attention to the very disaster that they have been called to alleviate. Works Cited Edmonds, Kevin. "The denial of self determination: Haiti and the international community." 2011. Web. 08 June 2014 Felima, Crystal Andrea. "Haitis Disproportionate Casualties after Environmental Disasters: Analyzing Human Vulnerabilities and the Impacts of Natural Hazards." Journal of Haitian Studies (2009): 6-28. Katz, Jonathan M. The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2013. Print. Robert, Pascal. “The Importance of Haiti” The Huffington post. 2008. Web. 08 June 2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pascal-robert/haitian-history_b_3239423.html Pierre-Louis, Francois. "Earthquakes, nongovernmental organizations, and governance in Haiti." Journal of black studies 42.2 (2011): 186-202. Schuller, Mark, and Pablo Morales, eds. Tectonic shifts: Haiti since the earthquake. Colorado: Kumarian Press, 2012. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. "Good day Columbus: silences, power and public history (1492–1892)." Public Culture 3.1 (1990): 1-24. Zanotti, Laura. "Cacophonies of aid, failed state building and NGOs in Haiti: setting the stage for disaster, envisioning the future." Third World Quarterly 31.5 (2010): 755-771. Read More