Haiti - OUR Responsibility

By Jason Brayda


It is easy to be a critic of development these days. No matter what you write you would be joining a host of other authors who have become so disillusioned with development and relief aid. With so much being said and discussed concerning this, one must start to wonder why things don’t seem to be changing. Perhaps it’s too soon. I doubt it. I’m not prescribing any answers here either, I do hope however, to share a harsh and heart breaking reality that ought to spur us all on to some kind of action.

I used to play a computer game called, “SimCity”, (I think it was one of the first computer games, after Oregon Trail, ever – at least as I remember it…). It was a development game in which you had to build a functioning city. You raised money through taxes and if people were happy, had electricity, had roads, had infrastructure; you would make more money and would be able to develop further until you populated the entire land. The interesting thing with this game though was an option that you had at the beginning to choose whether or not you’d allow disasters to happen. The game was an introduction for me and probably for many others, to our capitalist development system. We were able to be in control. But it was a game, if something went wrong and we didn’t like it we could restart or go back to a saved game. It may seem like this is as far from reality as one could possibly get but the more I think about it the fewer differences I am able to see.

Disasters happen and we cannot rewind time to change that, sadly. However, like in the game, if something goes wrong the best thing to usually do is start again: clean slate, new page, new game. Or so it seems. How terribly misguided we are!

Look at history and see what has followed nearly every disaster, natural or man made. We can go back really far! But lets take a few examples beginning in the 90’s. Rwanda. Genocide. The international community did nothing as nearly 1 million people were systematically killed. A “clean slate”. In moved the big businesses to create a new capitalism. Last year the World Bank hailed Rwanda as the #1 business reformer. English, the language of business, is beginning to replace French. Even Bill Clinton (admittedly feeling guilty about his inaction) and his foundation used Rwanda as a guinea pig for health care reform, (again big business). Sri Lanka. 2004, Tsunami. “In a cruel twist of fate, nature has presented Sri Lanka with a unique opportunity, and out of this great tragedy will come a world class tourism destination.”- Sri Lankan government. Hundreds of thousands of fisherman lost their land and their chance to rebuild their lives as large resorts pushed them out of the way. Big business once again, and quickly, capitalized on disaster. New Orleans. 2005, Hurricane Katrina. Following the devastation of the hurricane as people waited on lines for relief food, guarded by the National Guard, local politicians, business people, and the US government moved on what they saw as a clean slate, a new opportunity. A New Orleans developer said, “We finally cleaned up public housing. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Even the school system was revamped. Public schools were abandoned almost entirely for privately run charter schools; it became, like Rwanda, a guinea pig for a new capitalist based school system.

Following severe drought in the late eighties and early nineties, Somalia was a hot spot for international aid. Relief food poured into the country, yet people still starved. An Ethiopian businesswoman has said, “famine happens not because of lack of food but because of lack of access.” In Somalia relief food was controlled by the government and clan leaders. Starving people had no access when they most needed it. Those that controlled the relief food (aid) controlled how development happened. Like the days of colonialism, as European powers invaded Africa one of the first things they did was control food production by putting it under lock and key and making people now work for them in order to get the food they needed to survive.

In George Orwell’s incredible book, 1984, as Winston is under going electro-shock therapy he is told, “We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back… We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” Compare this to disasters. Compare this to aid. As people now turn our eyes toward the devastation that followed the earthquake in Haiti let us consider these things and what is happening. Most of us are aware of the mass amounts of aid being raised to help Haitians. We must ask ourselves who is getting this aid and who is controlling it? And most importantly what are we doing about it?

A very close friend of mine is a reporter and is currently in Haiti doing all he can and trying to tell a story of a silenced nation. He recently wrote about the absolute devastation of Port-au-Prince. Commenting on the presence of the US military “safe guarding” relief food. He also commented on one English phrase he heard every where he went, “I am hungry.” (if you’re interested in some of these articles they can be found at www.worldnextdoor.org).

All of this seems entirely overwhelming and incredibly heart-breaking, there is no easy direction to go. The harsh history of humanitarian relief and development is a sad one, but one which hopefully we can be learning from. Rather than remaining immobile, ignorant and uncaring, we must do something. We are all responsible for what we know. And though we all have different passions, gifts, and talents we must reserve a place for Haiti. For too long Haiti has been suppressed and discriminated against. This disaster appears to have broken a nation. Let us mourn and remember. Let us never forget what is going on. And as Haiti is bound to fade from the media let it never fade from our conscience. We must remember, we must pray, we must do all we can and the best we can to encourage our brothers and sisters in Haiti. There may be overwhelming problems, even unsolvable ones, but we must not lose hope. Haiti must not become another wholesale international privatization enterprise or laboratory for some western project. Haiti will rise as grassroots organizations, its public sector and the people are empowered. Let this be our wake up call. Let this also be our wake up call that the way our capitalist system has approached aid must begin to change. And that it must begin with us.