Thoughts on the US response to Haiti

This weekend, President Obama asked former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to coordinate the American relief effort to Haiti. The irony of this duo's selection troubles me deeply. First, though it was George H. W. Bush who was in office when Aristide was first overthrown by a US sponsored coup in 1991, Clinton delayed Aristide's return, and then only authorized it once an agreement was reached on economic policy reforms - e.g. capital and trade liberalization - which led to the proliferation of sweatshops in Haiti. Secondly, George W. Bush was President when the US overthrew Aristide for the second time in 2004 and forced him into exile, where he remains today.

Aside from their personal histories of authorizing breaches of Haiti's sovereignty, both Clinton and Bush have notable blemishes on their development and relief records. Again, I'll start with Clinton. In an interview with Foreign Policy this past December, Clinton said one of the "smartest, most penetrating thinkers" he knows is David Brooks, a NYT op-ed columnist who this week has written about Haiti's "progress-resistant cultural influences", advocating a development strategy predicated on "locally led paternalism". For me, that Brooks's writings, full of hubris and racism, are guiding Clinton is more than a bit disconcerting.

And George W. Bush an expert on relief efforts? There's one word that I cannot get out of my mind: KATRINA

If you are personally moved to help, I commend you. But please do not do so without a basic assessment of the agencies through which you are attempting to do so. Being an informed donor is absolutely critical. For some direction, this guide is terrific.

Less covered questions on Haiti

By now, I imagine you have read about the devastating earthquake in Haiti this past Tuesday. Since Tuesday, much of the media focus has been on Port au Prince - the country's capital - where poorly constructed homes, schools, churches, hotels, the main political buildings including the Presidential palace, and even the prison were demolished. In the intervening days, most of the city's surviving inhabitants have lived on the streets and in open areas, a space they share with thousands of corpses. Unknown numbers of people remain buried in the wreckage, and it has been reported that, emanating from underneath, the sound of screaming is constant. Since Tuesday, mainstream media outlets have repeatedly charged Haiti's history of political instability and (urban-centered) poverty as local factors severely exacerbating the quake. Undoubtedly, the situation before Tuesday's disaster was tragic and rightfully commands attention. (For a visual illustration, this video is sufficient.) However, the questions that have been less attended to are those concerned with the sources of the country's political instability and penury. That is, as one analyst asked, "Why were 60 percent of the buildings in Port-au Prince shoddily constructed and unsafe in normal circumstances, according to the city's mayor? Why are there no building regulations in a city that sits on a fault line? Why has Port-au-Prince swelled from a small town of 50,000 in the 1950s to a population of 2 million desperately poor people today? Why was the state completely overwhelmed by the disaster?" Thus, to understand fully the roots of Tuesday's catastrophe, Haiti's social and political history requires consideration.

Once France's most productive colony, Haiti won its independence from the French in 1804 after a bloody 12 year war, and in doing so, became the only country in history to be born of a slave revolt. However, facing military threats and refusal of diplomatic recognition, Haiti agreed to compensate France for its 'lost property' in 1825. The amount adjusted to current dollars: $21 billion. This debt took its toll. Haiti did not pay off the debt until 1947, and in many years was forced to direct over 80% of government revenues to servicing it. (This would be akin to the British demanding payment from the newly-independent American colonies following the Revolutionary war.) When considering the country's destitution, remembering that it took Haiti until only 60 years ago to pay off this 'independence debt' is important.

Insofar as debilitating foreign interventions are concerned, the 20th century was equally unpropitious for Haiti. The anti-communism logic of the Cold War moved US foreign policy makers from 1957 to 1986 to support the successive Duvalier dictatorships. Despite absolutely brutal rule, a Caribbean counterweight to Castro was more important to the US than Haiti's state sponsored terror. During the 1970s and 1980s, Haiti complied with US-led, IMF and World Bank free market economic reforms, which, due to the required removal of agricultural subsidies, transformed Haiti from a net exporter of sugar, rum, coffee and rice to a country entirely dependent on imports and foreign aid. Unable to compete with US subsidized industrial agriculture, rural farmers were forced to move to urban centers in search of industrial jobs. Hence the urban population explosion and emergence of megaslums.

After a mass movement in the late 80s successfully removed the second Duvalier dictator from power, populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president in free and fair elections. However, his land reform and market regulation efforts made him unpopular with the US, and in 1991, an American backed coup removed him from the presidency. Three years later, amid growing international discontent with the reigning military government, Aristide was reinstated by a US led international effort. In return however, Aristide agreed to an economic agenda predicated on the privatization of state-run electricity and phone enterprises, as well as further cuts in tariffs. As it became clear that Aristide would not fully implement the economic agenda which Haitians refer to as the "plan of death," he again lost popularity with US policymakers, and again was overthrown by a US sponsored coup. The succeeding presidents have been far more agreeable to free market economic reforms, which has resulted in such deep deregulation as to render the government effectually obsolete. As a result, the country is governed in large part by UN peacekeepers and NGOs which act only in a band-aid-esque manner, unable to address the structural roots of poverty and instability.

In an article published in 1997, Hazard geographer and Wilfrid Laurier University Professor Kenneth Hewitt coined the term "classquake" to characterize the highly uneven distribution of seismic risk in most cities. Discussing the 1978 earthquake in Guatemala City, Hewitt confirms nearly all of the "59,000 destroyed homes were in urban slums built in ravines, above and below steep, unstable bluffs, or on poorly consolidated young fluvio-volcanic sediments. Losses to the rest of the city, and among more expensive homes, were negligible, since they occupied much more stable sites." Given the extraordinary vulnerability of slums and resource-poor cities in the face of natural disasters, perhaps one of the best ways to prevent crises like the one facing Haiti is to focus on alleviating the kind of severe poverty underlying Haiti's catastrophe. A reasonable starting point might be to cancel unsustainable external debt, stop rural immiseration, discourage rapid urbanization, and prevent the building of mega-slums. Though this may seem like a tall order, it is actually quite doable. My hope is that this brief historical outline conveys that the larger problems Haiti faces were created by misguided political and economic policies, and thus can be undone by sagacious ones. Debt cancellation should be an immediate priority. The cessation of multilateral loans conditioned on free market economic reforms should follow. Instead, development and humanitarian assistance in the form of grants and Official Development Assistance (ODA) should be given generously. With international financial assistance, the government of Haiti should re-consolidate its authority as an economic regulator, job creator, and social service provider. Land reform and mass public housing projects would probably also be helpful. In sum, given our inability to prevent earthquakes, I think it would be wise to work on preventing the kind of social and economic destitution that made this quake so overwhelmingly destructive.



For further reading on the linkages between international economic policies and the emergence of mega-slums and mass urbanization, I strongly recommend Mike Davis's 'Planet of Slums'.

Copenhagen's residual value

In 1774, British author, Member of Parliament and 4^th Earl of Oxford Horace Walpole made the irreverent observation that "Africa is, indeed, coming into fashion." It seems to me that this sentiment retains relevance today. From the proliferation of celebrities-turned-advocates to growing commercial participation in activism campaigns, American popular culture appears to have had its surface-level consciousness penetrated by the plight of the continent’s inhabitants. Disappointingly, this often materializes in a dimension deficient in accurate or adequately researched information. Modern iconoclast and NYU Professor of Economics, William Easterly has written prolifically about contemporary aid practices, especially the more overtly questionable ones. His discussion of Bono’s (RED) corporation, widely recognizable due to its extensive partner licensing to other prominent corporations like Gap, Starbucks, American Express and Apple, exemplifies both the dubious information commercial campaigns often disseminate as well as the lucrative motivations they have to engage narratives of charity. The exemplary case of Starbucks shows how companies capitalize both on Africa’s current cachet as well as the highly consumptive American culture. It’s now conceivable to ‘save’ Africa simply by continuing, or perhaps even amplifying one’s excessive consumption. This is delightfully convenient (who doesn’t love to shop?) and simultaneously elides the complex historical context, not to mention culpability, in which the crises at hand are embedded. Such an inanely sanguine approach to poverty reduction is reminiscent of former President Bush’s 2006 stimulus package promotion imploring us to fulfill our duty as economic stimulants by getting out to “go shopping more”. That worked well…

The point here however, is not simply to critique some of the mainstream attempts to ‘help’ Africans for their condescending and ill-researched approaches. This task has been adequately attended to by others. What I want to do is highlight an important linkage which has not received much attention but might better channel the charitable energies discussed above. The desire to help Africans is indeed very decent, and it is for this reason that those who have the resources required to do so should be guided in an appropriate direction. So, for those wanting to ‘do something’ for Africans, I applaud your selflessness and believe I have some suggestions you might appreciate.

Columbia Professor of Anthropology Lila Abu-Lughod has taken up issues of international charity and humanitarianism, and is thus of assistance. When discussing ways in which socially conscious individuals living in the North can effectively help their counterparts in the South, Abu-Lughod encourages “asking how we, living in this privileged and powerful part of the world, might examine our own responsibilities for the situations in which others in distant places have found themselves…and how we might contribute to making the world a more just place.” To this I might add that to help somebody, it may be prudent to start by determining what it is exactly they want, and then to work with them to achieve or obtain that outcome. This kind of cooperation and solidarity avoids the pitfalls of unintended condescension and arrogance which so often impels critiques of charities. So, if one wants to help Africans, as many today seem to, an appropriate starting point would be an inquiry as to what Africans may want help with. Of course, a continent comprised of 53 countries and over a billion people will produce nearly as many opinions and aspirations. However, in the midst of this multiplicity, The Copenhagen Summit has offered a rare opportunity which will undoubtedly excite anyone interested in determining the priorities of many Africans. Due to the unambitious objectives set by the US and European countries regarding carbon emission cuts and allowable global temperature increases, the African negotiating bloc walked out of, and thereby suspended, negotiations both during the Copenhagen Summit, as well as at the Summit’s preceding meetings a month earlier in Barcelona. Anyone concerned with the plight of Africans is clearly troubled by the fact that the US-EU proposed limit of a 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures translates into 3-3.5 degree increase in Africa; a rise that will aggravate current droughts and water shortages already facing the continent, in turn endangering an additional 55 million people with hunger and up to 600 million with deficient water supplies. Given the US and European countries’ culpability in creating the climate crisis, the cruel irony that its effects are felt strongest in the global South should further impel empathetic individuals to seek environmental justice for poor countries.

So, while Africa has become a conspicuous focus of innumerable pop-culture campaigns, these too often ignore the outcomes Africans themselves deem important. A more collaborative approach to aid would likely engender preferable outcomes as they would be more relevant to the lives of those ostensibly being targeted. To this end, Copenhagen offers a unique opportunity. African leaders were given a platform on which they could express their development priorities, literally giving anyone wishing to help them explicit targets to work towards. The conclusions to be drawn then, are: 1.) anyone wanting to ‘help or aid’ up to half of Africa’s population should begin by reducing their own environmental impact and should then push their government to adopt more ambitious environmental conservation objectives; and 2.) even those who did not before think they had the ability to ‘help or aid’ Africans now find themselves in the position to do so simply by considering the ways in which their own lifestyle negatively impacts the environment (big cars, big houses, excessive consumption of meat, excessive consumption of material goods, etc.) and then changing those aspects of their lifestyles.

No longer will buying a T shirt or cup of coffee suffice; if you want to have a positive impact on the lives of Africa’s inhabitants, or at least not have an expressly negative one, it’s time to rethink your approach to aid. Rather than assume you or your charity of choice knows what is best for Africans, perhaps listening to what they themselves report they need is a preferable approach. Speaking in Copenhagen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said "We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale … A global goal of about 2 degrees Celsius is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development." It seems to me that interested parties will take this statement solemnly.