The saddening and horrific pictures from Haiti after its devastating earthquake brought back vivid memories for me. I lived through an earthquake when I was a young boy in Morocco, and I know how harrowing it is. At that time, there were forty thousand casualties -- nothing close to what has happened in Haiti -- but I still recall the traumatic scenes of collapsed buildings and mourning families.
Haiti has now been devastated on a far larger scale. The earthquake -- the worst in the region in more than 200 years -- is the latest in a series of natural and man-made disasters that have, over the years, turned the Caribbean country into the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Some 80 percent of its nine million people live below the poverty line.
The earthquake has flattened much of the capital, Port-au-Prince. According to the International Red Cross, three million people, nearly a third of Haiti's population, will need emergency food, water, and shelter for months to come.
Two hundred years ago, Haiti was the "Pearl of the Antilles." Its amazingly rich soil then produced four crops a year. It is not unrealistic to imagine that the country can be rebuilt as a prosperous nation. But it needs help over a prolonged period.
That's why I'm proposing a type of Marshall Plan -- an international effort to support the Haitian authorities in rebuilding the country and back its democracy, much as the United States helped rebuild Europe after the destruction of World War II.
The IMF has the capacity to provide urgently needed cash resources very quickly, and we -- along with separate contributions from other international agencies -- aim to make $100 million available to Haiti in the next few days as a bridge that will get Haiti through from today's humanitarian needs to tomorrow's reconstruction. The Fund, in close coordination with other donors, is assisting the authorities in getting cash to circulate in the economy so people can buy food, and civil servants can be paid. Banks will reopen shortly but the payments system is not fully operational yet.
That will take care of short-term needs but we should also plan now for the future. A first donors' conference is scheduled to take place in Montreal next week, in preparation for a larger conference in the spring that will mobilize financing for Haiti. I hope the contours of such a plan will start to take shape through the process begun in Montreal. In the coming weeks and months, the Fund will participate, by providing money and expertise, in the reconstruction plan that will be coordinated across the international community.
Part of the goal will be to restart private activity, rebuilding businesses and encouraging guarantees for the banking sector so that lending can get under way again. It is also critical to support the creation of jobs in rural areas, where large sectors of the population have moved because of the quake.
With victims still being dug out of the rubble, Haiti's needs are massive and immediate: the international community is working together to mobilize all available resources and to deliver them as quickly as possible. Once again, in tragic circumstances, the rescue and reconstruction effort highlights that only the international community, acting in concert, can meet challenges that go beyond individual governments. And we must emphasize that the focus on Haiti must not result in the diversion of aid at the expense of other poor countries.
For now, and for at least the next couple of years, Haiti has no payments to make on its existing debts to the Fund, while the emergency loan we are providing is interest-free, with no repayments due for five years. Looking beyond the emergency phase, and as part of an international plan to rebuild the country, there will be a need to reassess Haiti's debt situation in light of the catastrophic damage to its economy. At that stage, the international community needs to be ready to provide comprehensive debt relief.
Today, the urgent immediate priority is to save the people of Haiti. In a few weeks, it will be reconstruction. We must be prepared to think on as massive a scale as then U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall did after World War II. If we seize this chance, we can help the people of Haiti escape their cycle of poverty and deprivation fueled by merciless natural disasters that plague the Caribbean nation. The international community owes it to them.
From the iMFdirect blog.
Infact in my estimation the IMF owes Haitii millions for their scandalous loan sharking in the country
What about Afghanistan ?
They need a ' Marshall Plan ' too.
Boris
All this money that purportedly will go to the people will end up in the pockets of the commercial interests and the wealthy families that own the majority of Haiti. The people? Why they're just tools to be used in the media to gain a public acceptance of the rape of these people.
"That didn’t begin to happen in Haiti until the 1970s, when aggressive neoliberal measures
(backed up by local paramilitary pressure) forced many small farmers to abandon ship."
1970s -> Papa Doc Duvalier, and he was NEOLIBERAL??? Are you associating liberals like Naomi Klein or Nancy Pelosi with the Duvaliers?
"Tariffs that allowed Haitian agriculture to compete with imports were removed, "
Nope. Tariffs on ALL imports increased, never decreased. What Haiti had and still have is crony capitalism, where a business man make a deal with the government (the president and selected others getting their piece, of course) and have a nation-wide monopoly on some imported commodity, usually meaning a tariff often as high as 100%.
Sugar in Haiti suffered because of tariffs in the US, so the canefields cannot be harvested (loans are based on next year's harvest and are used to pay the workers; so once a loan cannot be repaid, it has a cascading effect). Rice in Haiti suffered because of drought and also corruption: the electricity is supplied by the Peligre Dam on the Artibonite river which irrigates the rice fields. Often the oil to be used for the lubrication of the turbomachinery is sold and the machinery grinds to a halt. No electricity. No harvest.
"publicly owned assets sold off" Nope. Public own assets were possessed by members of the Haitian government. It may appear to be "sold" just for appearance sakes.
"public spending slashed" Absolutely true. And the Duvaliers and company stole the teachers' pension fund and left no trace by having the building with the pension data burn to the ground.
"Dispossessed farmers ", YES in the sense that land property rights are often violated and the beneficiaries are often local crooked lawyers. NO, in the sense that most farmers had no possession to be dispossessed. Most farmers subsist on a "du-moitier" system, where half of a farmer's output goes to the landowner. Bad agricultural practices, soil depletion, soil erosion, deforestation cause the output to decrease to such an extent an individual farmer cannot live. But the landowners can live on the overall decreased output. The migration of farmers to Port-au-Prince is not due to some nefarious plot from the IMF or Americans.
"popular self-defence against the army and the Macoutes.. " Not quite true. The low-ranking Macoutes just dissolved into the general population. Some have banded together and clashedwith Aristide's "chimeres". The highest ranking Macoutes were courted by Aristide, since these members know where the skeletons lie.
The Macoutes were more disciplined that Aristide's chimeres. Macoutes were free to do whatever outside of Port-au-Prince but restrained in the capital because of the presence of foreign journals. With the chimeres, it was/is the Wild Wild West everywhere.
The rest can also become Jetties for them to fish from and even Marinas...
There was an area of Port-au-Prince where mud flowed down the road after a heavy rain; then, a few years later, no more mud but rocks were then washed down the road.
So first thing first. Solve the deforestation, primarily due to lack of land propery rights (tragedy of the commons and all that jazz) and coastal ecology will improve. Then one can experiment with artificial reefs and all that.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=20009
http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/19/humanitarian-aid-or-occupation
After so many years of throwing money at problems, why does anyone, including yourself, actually think that it changes anything?
How about amnesty, then elimination of the IMF?
http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/19/humanitarian-aid-or-occupation
"We do not want to inherit the problems of Haiti."
Even Cuba is not that stupid.
You are right, Castro was not that stvpid.
http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/19/humanitarian-aid-or-occupation
There is a possible solution for at least one of the problems that Haiti offers its population. We can help them build housing with excellent survival odds against hurricane or earthquake.
A company in Texas produces a form of housing called Ecoshells. They've been tested in India, Africa and Indonesia, and offer not only durability, but economic flexability and quick construction.
An Ecoshell is concrete, layered onto either the exterior or interior of an inflated Airform, a single one of which can be used anywhere up to 100 times! It's the best, thin-shell concrete structure currently available. It can withstand natural disasters, fire, termites and rot. In underdeveloped areas with hot climates, EcoShells make permanent, affordable, low maintenance, sturdy housing.
Haiti will need food storage facilities, particularly for grains. Almost 50 percent of all stored food grown in developing countries is wasted because they don’t have proper storage. Rice, wheat and other foods get infested by vermin. A concrete structure prevents that. They make attractive shops as well.
EcoShell construction can boost the economy of a developing nation by creating jobs. Much of the construction can be done by hand, and locals can be quickly trained to build them.
Go to the Monolithic site -- and then contact them about donations.
What Haiti - and the rest of Latin America - needs is for the US to stay out of its affairs. I certainly hope to see the world collaborate in helping Haiti rebuild from this earthquake, but it shouldn't be an excuse to create another Papa Doc state.
If a new Marshall Plan for Haiti is developed in the same manner - to fund programs that the Haitians themselves believe are needed and important - it is most likely to succeed.
http://lists.gp-us.org/pipermail/laborgreens/2002-September/000243.html
Why? Because the Dominican Republic allows foreigners to buy land and invest. The Haitian government does not allow foreigners to buy land and invest in Haiti.
The Haitian government has a corrupt abusive import tax system. The cost of propane is triple in Haiti compared to the Dominican Republic. The reason why Haiti is deforested is because people can't afford to by propane to cook with.
Haiti should be a free port. They should let anyone import anything tax free. There are 1 million Haitians in America. If they want to build their relatives a house - they should not have to pay taxes on the building supplies when they ship them to Haiti.
Incorrect. Foreigners are allowed to own no more than 2 rental units per district. I know many foreigners who own property in Haiti. One thing that, at least in the books, foreigners cannot own:
beachfront property. But I doubt the law is enforced.
"The Haitian government has a corrupt abusive import tax system." True. Many imports, like cars, have a 100% tax. If you are coming to Port-au-Prince and a customs officer asks you the price of, say, your camera, tell him/her the price/4: do not insult the intelligence of the agent.
Income tax on foreigners is arbitrary. I know a Jamaican man who immigrated to Haiti, bought
property (as a Jamaican citizen), became a millionaire but was taxed to the yazoo. So he became
a naturalized Haitian, thinking his tax burden will decrease. It did. But in 1964, he had to fork over
more than 5 million dollars (US) to the Duvaliers.
Haiti is deforested primarily due to lack of land property rights: the tragedy of the Commons come into play.