One of the last century’s most notorious despots, Jean-Claude Duvalier, has returned to Haiti after 25 years in exile. The most effective way for the United States and the MINUSTAH-contributing countries of Latin America to help Haiti would be to provide the support it needs to hold accountable those who flagrantly and violently abuse power at the great expense of the Haitian population.
Across the political spectrum, education holds a central place in Haiti’s reconstruction and development plans. The education of children is rightfully their primary concern. But in a nation where 55 percent of adults cannot read or write, according to the United Nations Educational Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the potential value of a large-scale effort to increase their literacy rate is worth considering as well.
An epidemic of forced evictions that began shortly after the earthquake is making life even harder for the countless Haitians that remain in displacement camps. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 233,941 Haitians have been evicted from camps, and that 166,000 of the 680,000 people remaining in camps face an ongoing threat of eviction. They say that the “rapid pace of eviction” is causing people to leave the camps even though they have nowhere else to go. Of the more than 180,000 residential buildings destroyed in the earthquake, only 4,100 have been repaired. Only a fraction of the needed temporary shelters have been built.
Contradictions and complexities abound within the aid industry, causing it to struggle to make headway in a sputtering reconstruction process. The good news is that, unlike a few years ago, there is near unanimity on the need for a strong Haitian state to direct the aid flows. The bad news is that state capacity is wanting — and no one is quite sure how to build it. How do aid agencies act responsibly in the interim with few functional public institutions to coordinate the aid?
The United States’ long history of intervening in Haitian politics is alive and well: President Obama’s administration is attempting to derail the lawful return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide before Sunday’s controversial run-off elections.
International cartels use their control over the global food supply to make huge profits. There are six major corporations that control the purchase and sale of agricultural products: Cargill, Kraft, Bunge & Born, ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), Nestlé and General Mills. Food prices are set at exchanges in Chicago, New York and London.
When George W. Bush left the White House, the rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief. The National Security Doctrine of unilateral attacks, the invasion of Iraq under the false pretext of weapons of mass destruction, and the abandonment of multilateral forums had opened up a new phase of U.S. aggression. Despite the focus on the Middle East, the increased threat of U.S. military intervention cast a long shadow over many parts of the world.
Two years later, that sense of relief has given way to deep concern. After hopes of a something closer to FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy of (relative) non-intervention, we find ourselves facing a new wave of militarization in Latin America–supported and promoted by the Obama administration.
