I’m trying to understand how a country rebuilds itself when the actors that claim to be contributing to the reconstruction of homes and infrastructure, provision of health and éducation, security, social and business enterprise, and production of domestic products and livelihoods, only invest and purchase goods and services from private, often élite and foreign businesses ? A country with (some estimâtes) 70% unemployment (which may include the massive informal economy – e.g. odd jobs, shoe repair, selling street food, sex work, contraband) may have diffculties finding public revenue to put back into its own recovery. Instead, many professional jobs are to foreign workers (like a reverse Dubai labour migration flow) who don’t always pay taxes due to the nature of the « volunteerism » sector. It’s well known that UN technicrats get paid bloated « stipends » or perdiems that can be extended in contracts for months, if not years. But even the modest expat NGO worker can receive as much as the highest paid Haitian staff in an organization. Although not a handsome rémunération, it can still pay the bills, so that you do not have to starve to survive, that your food budget isn’t put all towards housing or utilities. And whatever surplus exists is easily used for entertainment or travel.
If there is a Haitian working class, it’s not as if there are huge left-overs to put back into the country’s development, through such mechanisms as luxury taxes. The répétition of digging one’s own grave, amounts to little hope in long-term solutions and folks want escapism in any way possible. Liquor, for instance, is subsidized, so that it is affordable to a wider majority ; whereas food prices are ridiculously high. No wonder the major advertisements are for whisky, mobile phone service, and beach parties, as opposed to Home Depot.
We know Haiti’s one of the poorest countries in the world, with an annual income of about $11 billion -- this may not reflect the downfall in the economy after the earthquake. (This clearly cannot compare to US Senate’s récent passing of a $600+ billion price tag for 2011-2012 military budget.) Haiti can only continue to be dépendent on other countries: mostly US for its free market wheeling-and-dealing, Canada for its large humanitarian spending, (2nd after Afghanistan), and Chinese and Korean télécommunications investment. But again, the conditions that créate this dependency need to be eradicated, with revitalized efforts to emphasise its domestic development.
Perhaps protect its agriculture and livestock for one, so that people can fucking eat. What’s the point of growing your own shit if US eggs, Costa Rican pineapple, Israeli pickles and nuts, MONSANTO seeds and fertilizer, flood the market and cost half of what’s yours ? And how can Haiti afford to pay for $5-6/gallon of petrol when there is no public transportation and the roads are jammed with NGO cars or tap-taps ? Transportation of everything through the shoddy road system into the inner parts of the country, make it difficult to meet delivery times or get to domestic markets.
At least its remittances account for almost 20% of the GDP and twice the earnings from exports (CIA 2011). But this hardly goes into widespread infrastructure development, --rather only to keep family members afloat.
And we can look to how the international finance vultures, the IMF and World Bank, have used the devastating disasters as an opportunity to shore up more debts on Haiti. Before the earthquake, Haiti received debt forgiveness for over $1 billion through Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative, and another $400 million was cancelled by donor countries in 2010 – levelling its balance. So it’s revolting that the new Mickey Mouse President is in discussion and already agreeing to new loans, when maybe the issue is how is its annual budget (largely from foreign aid) being spent ?
Right, so I’m not convinced of the renewal of the mandate for the CIRH to rebuild Haiti, (http://haitianpost.com/2011/07/23/haiti-la-commission-de-reconstruction-prolongee). Which essentially, continues the flow of (and governance by) NGOs, albeit through a convoluted registry system, despite having virtually no solid needs analysis for the kinds of NGOs/experts/workers for which to appeal. Nor is it just to sit, arms crossed, while an inept head of state listens to the same business and International Finance Institution cronies, without any real forums for Haitian civil society to stake their claims. Instead, where is the leveraging and solidifying of Haitian or quartier-par-quartier community organizations, non-profits and coopératives to refresh the antiquated notions of réhabilitation and reconstruction ? How can I place myself in a system where I am not perpetuating the immense inequalities and injustices, bending over for the donors’ dollar, and not putting it back into the same malevolent private industries that have ravaged the country for the past few centuries?
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