Hell on earth: The earthquake in Haiti
Why the outside world—and especially the United States—must respond
The Economist | Jan 14th 2010
EARTHQUAKES can be measured and mapped, but it will be days and perhaps weeks before the scale of the human suffering unleashed on Haiti this week by the collision of the Caribbean and North American plates can be known. The pictures reaching the outside world are horrific and heart-rending: whole districts reduced to dust; the trapped, the dead, the wounded, the dazed, in their hundreds and thousands, jumbled together in the rubble and in the streets. The hope is that many more people than expected have survived. The fear is that it turns out to be the worst natural disaster since the Kashmir earthquake of 2005, when 86,000 died, or even the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 that killed 230,000.
Haiti is unusually ill-equipped to cope. That is partly because the earthquake struck the capital, Port-au-Prince, knocking out such institutions as the country possessed. The devastation included the parliament, the cathedral, the only two fire stations, hospitals and schools, the tax office, the prison and the headquarters of the United Nations mission, which had been trying to build a nation out of a failed state (see article). So Haitians are almost entirely dependent on what the outside world can do. The priority in the coming hours must be rescue, medical care and emergency feeding. It helps that the airport is just about open, and that Haiti is close to the United States.
But Haiti’s vulnerability—and hence its suffering—is not just an act of God. The poorer, more crowded third of the island of Hispaniola, it was once the heart of the world’s richest sugar colony, providing France with a quarter of its wealth in the late 18th century. That wealth came from 700,000 African slaves who made up 85% of the population. Their war for freedom brought independence in 1804. But the legacy of slavery has scarred Haiti ever since. It is a place of subsistence farming, where four-fifths are poor and a few are very rich. Long misgoverned, it was meddled in by the United States, often with the best of intentions but the worst of outcomes. The latest outside intervention came in 2004 with the ousting of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, an elected president turned despot. Since then, under the care of the UN, Haiti made modest progress. A Brazilian-led peacekeeping mission brought a fragile security. At a cruel stroke, nature has now undone all this.
Common humanity and self-interest
Haiti’s emergency will continue long after the last survivor has been lifted from the rubble. Millions will need help for years. Some outside will object that decades of foreign aid has achieved little except to enrich a few of the politicians. But there are two reasons for outsiders—and especially the United States and Haiti’s neighbour in Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic—to do as much as possible to help the stricken country start afresh. One is common humanity. It is not Haiti’s fault that geography has been so cruel. The other is self-interest.
A failed state of 9m people in the Caribbean is a danger to its neighbours. Haiti was already a source of illegal migrants and a crossroads for drugs. Unless the rudiments of government and a modern economy can be swiftly set up, both problems will only get worse. That means a massive aid effort, focused on more robust housing, hospitals and schools. Help from the diaspora of 1m Haitians in the United States will be vital. (Barack Obama rightly promised Haiti “unwavering support” and halted the deportation of Haitians living illegally in America.) But Haitians themselves, and especially their political leaders, will have to pull together. Elections due this year will have to be postponed; René Préval, the president, remains popular, and should lead the reconstruction. But all this is for the weeks ahead. Just now the task is to save lives.
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