From Mail Online:
From the air they form a neat patchwork of grey and blue, nestling between rundown factories and crumbling slums.
But on the ground these sprawling tent cities are a fetid mass of humanity where cholera and crime run rife.
A year since a cataclysmic earthquake levelled much of Haiti, little has changed for the 1.2million residents still scraping an existence in these squalid refugee camps.
Survivors have been further blighted by an outbreak of the deadly water-borne disease cholera. The illness has struck 155,000 since October, killing 3,651…
Crime is rampant and while charitable organizations labor with incredible dedication, things simply aren’t getting much better. Back on January 15th, 2010, I had this to say:
…We have to let go of a false morality which says that a nation, as such, has a right to complete self-determination. Most nations do – but most nations can also ensure that buildings are constructed with at least minimal safety in mind. It is also false morality to state that we dare not judge the society of Haiti by our own standards – that is just a cowardly dodge by which we pretend we don’t have an obligation, when we actually do. We must embrace the truth – and the truth is that millions of our brothers and sisters in Haiti are suffering, quite needlessly, simply because of the failure of good people to act in time…
I said we had to step in and set up a protectorate in Haiti back then, and I’ll say it again, now: the people of Haiti have, for a variety of reasons, been unable to secure for themselves a government capable of providing even such basic things as an enforced building code, or a water supply which will prevent things like the cholera epidemic. Haitians, themselves, are wonderful – this is demonstrated, daily, by the hard work and glowing success of Haitians who live in the United States. Given reasonably decent government, Haitians thrive – but for whatever reason, they can’t get that in Haiti. And, so, we should impose it upon them.
As I noted last year, this does contravene two modern lies – that any nation has absolute sovereignty no matter how badly it is misgoverned; that no society is any better than any other. Well, gross misgovernment does, in my view, justify better government to intervene, and some societies do things better than others. A good society can exist in Haiti, but not under its current morass of corruption, mismanagement and violent animosities. Make Haiti a UN Trust Territory, place an American governor over it with an advisory body of Haitians and start to rebuild Haiti – with a mind towards Haitian independence in 2061.
Or, we can just pour in more money, allow things to drift, and be right back in Haiti helping out in the next disaster to come down the road.
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