Advancement Project

January 21, 2010

The Abysmal Effort to Aid Our Haitian Brothers and Sisters

The fact that people are dying for lack of water and food and basic medical supplies—more than a week after Haiti suffered a catastrophic earthquake is shocking beyond words. But that’s the reality the nation’s residents are facing.

Throughout last weekend, the scene of Haitians trying to make due with nothing but faith, digging for survivors with their bare hands, or waiting for nonexistent medical care, played out over and over again on television stations throughout the world. Haitians could only pray for relief and few seemed able to get it. Meanwhile, Haiti’s airport was reportedly overflowing with food, water and medical supplies but the efforts to get the supplies to people has been terribly lacking.

Some attribute the crisis in relief and recovery efforts to Haiti’s poverty, Haiti’s lack of infrastructure, the nation’s lack of emergency capability or police forces. But it’s not surprising that a country that is the poorest in this hemisphere where 80 percent live off $1 a day do not have search-and-rescue teams at the ready, or stockpiles of water and canned goods that could be tapped. After all, the destruction wrought by the 7.0 earthquake has been likened to Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped there.

What is shocking and unacceptable is that the richest nations in the world—especially the United States–with their capable armies, navies and reserves of food, water and medicine are not doing a more effective job of getting the people of Haiti enough of it to sustain themselves.

How long will journalists interview Haitians, attempting to pull loved ones from the rubble with their bare hands? Or lying on the ground outside an ill-equipped hospital where rusty hacksaws are being used for amputations and rum and vodka supplied to sterilize medical supplies? How many times will reporters ask officials from U.S. AID, or the United Nations and the U.S. Army why help is taking so long to get to the people when an unacceptable answer comes back? You’ve probably heard it: It takes time to assess damage; there’s a need for more security before food could be distributed; there’s a lack of clarity about the chain of command; there’s help on the way, etc.

Whatever the excuses, it’s simply unbelievable that the wealthiest nation on the planet cannot do a far more efficient job of helping our Caribbean brothers and sisters.

Ironically, the United States is perfectly capable of deploying hundreds of thousands of troops to other countries and killing tens of thousands quickly but somehow this nation cannot feed people, who need nothing more than a few cans of food and a couple of bottles of water each day.

What must be asked is why this is happening after people died before our eyes or were unable to be rescued four years ago after Hurricane Katrina. Surprisingly, the federal response seems as poor now as it was then. And because the devastation wrought by the earthquake is so much worse with estimates that 200,000 could be dead and 1.5 million homeless, the lack of responsiveness is apparent in a more massive way.

Dr. Evans Lyon, of Partners in Health, which runs 10 clinics in Haiti, said Wednesday that Haitians are dying “minute-to-minute” because doctors there lack anesthesia, pain medicine, oxygen, water and electricity. Lyon was interviewed by Democracy Now host Amy Goodman at the country’s primary hospital. Although Haitian-American doctors were able to get to Port-au-Prince from Brooklyn, N.Y to assist patients, and American soldiers with automatic weapons arrived—despite the lack of a security problem—people were dying because of the lack of basic medical supplies. Lyon said 1000 patients were triaged and ready for surgery but there were only seven operating rooms, which didn’t have the doctors or supplies sufficient to perform surgeries in time to save a lot of people’s lives.

There may well be a race issue here involved in the U.S. response. Lyon said the U.S. military which has been promising to bring machinery and supplies to the hospital for days wasn’t doing so because of a supposed security issue. Lyon who is staying in a home near the hospital said there have been no safety issues there and he believes such claims are simply “racist.” In the vicinity of the hospital, said Lyon, there are only people in need.

Some might assume that it’s not America’s role to be the primary provider of aid to a foreign nation. But such an argument would be ludicrous. America has intervened in Haiti in destructive ways for centuries. Now, there’s an opportunity to do something constructive. From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. military occupied Haiti out of fear that political turmoil and the popularity of an anti-American rebel leader could threaten U.S. business interests. In 2004, under the Bush administration, when a band of rebels were approaching Haiti’s capital to kill or drive President Bertrand Aristide from power, U.S. soldiers and former Secretary of State Colin Powell turned their backs on Aristide.

Instead of defending the first democratically elected president of Haiti, our government told him he would not be protected from the rebels by the U.S. government.

America’s meddling into Haitian political and economic affairs dates to 1806, two years after the slaves of Haiti liberated themselves from their French enslavers and became the first independent Black nation in the Western Hemisphere and the first country to free itself from colonialism in Latin America or the Caribbean.

Thomas Jefferson, like the leaders of Great Britain, France and Spain sought to isolate the country economically and politically because the idea that former slaves had freed themselves and were living independently was anathema to countries that still depended heavily on slavery.

In 1806, the U.S. severed economic ties with Haiti.

The fact that former slaves of Haiti—which produced more wealth than any other island in the Caribbean—could wrest the island from their enslavers, defeat Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, occupy the Dominican Republic and free slaves there is a matter of immense pride to Haitians and many descendants of enslaved Africans everywhere.

Haiti has paid a steep political price for that victory, including a near century of political and economic isolation and having to pay the equivalent of $21 billion in the 1820s to the French government to cease hostilities against them. It is said that the war in Haiti was so devastating to France that it led Napoleon Bonaparte to sell Louisiana to the U.S.

Recounting this history is necessary because it’s essential in understanding the poverty and lack of government infrastructure in Haiti, to know that some of the devastation is not an act of nature but an act of man.

The devastation in Haiti presents an opportunity for the United States and other Western nations to do something meaningful and beneficial to assist a poor country from which it has taken so much. It seems that in Round 1 of that effort, the rescue and recovery phase, that opportunity is being squandered.

This blog was written by staff at Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization that advocates for racial justice.