Children and women are particularly vulnerable in Haiti. Many children are living in extreme poverty with limited access to education and not enough food to eat. While government programs and policies are aimed at increasing gender equality and the well being of children, much work is needed in both areas.
Economy
Haiti's economy has been damaged by economic and trade sanctions put into place during the 1990's. Since the sanctions and embargoes began, 60% of Haiti's private sector jobs have been lost. The impact of the embargo on the business environment will have negative long-term repercussions, e.g., Haiti's export assembly industry has been effectively shut down, with many of its plants closed permanently.
Creation of jobs has been a key element from Haiti's democratic government. A number of labor-intensive projects, such as street cleaning, tree planting and erosion control, have been realized.
These are serious problems and many international leaders while expressing public support for newly minted Haitian President "Sweet Micky" Michel Martelly privately consider him not up to the job. In fact, there is a growing sentiment that the real power in Haiti and the country's new Viceroy Overlord is none other than the former United States President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama's special envoy to Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.
For the millions of Haitians living abroad these are very difficult times when the need for strong, informed and positive leadership is a major priority and necessity. President Martelly is an untested, inexperienced leader thrust on the national stage due to a fundamental weakening of a corrupt Haitian political class. He has to instill confidence in the estimated 800,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic -- some in conditions of slavery in the Bateys; the approximately 600,000 in the United States, the 100,000 in Canada, 80,000 in France and the same number in the Bahamas.
Haitian suspicion of Bill Clinton is not unfounded or baseless. One of the singular accomplishments during his presidency was to strong-arm Haiti into joining NAFTA (the now discredited and defunct North American Free Trade Area). Haiti was forced to drop tariff protections and embrace cheap imported and US subsidized goods that killed the local Haitian agricultural industry and eventually its already weak social structure.
Out of office Clinton was remarkably candid when he described the NAFTA/Haitian deal as "we made a devil's bargain." Within months of NAFTAs implementation, unable to sell their organic rice any longer, an internal reverse Diasporan drift began with hundreds of thousands of starving, unemployed Haitian people converging upon Port-au-Prince to find jobs and set up slum dwellings as makeshift homes mushroomed all over the place.
Formal census tallies counted the population of Port-au-Prince at some 900,000 in 2009. However, that tally only reflects the "real" people that anyone actually cared about. Meanwhile, the shacks and shanties that had arisen blanketing all the hills surrounding the amphitheater-like geography of Port-au-Prince had in fact increased the population to perhaps as much as 3.7 million. On January 12th, 2010 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck with an epicenter some 16 miles to the West of Port-au-Prince. The current revised death toll is a range of between 250,000 and 300,000 people.
Since the earthquake the UN, United States and other Western nations moved in to Haiti. Their biggest contribution to date appears to have been the introduction of a previously unknown (to Haiti) strain of Southeast Asian cholera. Seven thousand Haitians have perished over the past twelve months in this epidemic. An additional 500 hundred people are dying monthly, with no end in sight from the carnage in the foreseeable future. Almost 500,000 people -- some 5% of the population - have been infected by this cholera since the outbreak started in October 2010.
As President Michel Martelly remains powerless to handle these huge problems, former President Bill Clinton has not fulfilled his promise either and has failed to collect even a small fraction of the $10 billion pledged by the United States and the International community for Haiti's reconstruction. Despite that the United States and international media today still portray Clinton as the friend and savior of Haiti.
The former US president, who inflicted great harm to the Haitian people while in office, now acts as a kind of regent, "promoting sweatshops, tourism, and export-oriented agriculture." A primary actor in stripping Haiti of its sovereignty, Clinton "is putting Haiti up for sale to multinational capital." Indeed, Clinton is no different to former US presidents that have meddled in Haiti in one way or another over the country's 207 history.
Remember now, it was Clinton who jailed Haitians fleeing atrocities at home in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and then pressured former Haitian Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a socialist leaning politician, to embrace and adopt free market economic solutions that proved to be very bad for Haiti and eventually aided its downward spiral. He then bullied Aristide's successor Rene Preval to further deregulate Haiti's economy that made it the poorest in the western hemisphere. Even with this record Clinton was named co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission by President Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, the international media is singing the praises of President Martelly as Haiti's new "bad boy" president. It remains unclear exactly what Martelly's plan of government consists of. One thing his supporters are united on is the need to rebrand the country's ugly image. Martelly's song-and-dance carnival spirit should certainly enliven the country, and maybe restore some pride in Haiti's rich cultural traditions.
What he lacks in political savvy and policy smarts, he is said to make up for with force of personality and exuberance. "Haiti has always needed someone to make a decision," gushed former US President Bill Clinton. "This man will make a decision."
However, while political boosters may be encouraged by Martelly's instincts, few are blinded by his weaknesses. For example, he was not able to form a government because of his clumsy political skills. His first two choices for prime minister were summarily rebuffed by Parliament; one was deemed unqualified, and the other was opposed by human-rights activists. His third choice and present prime minister is Garry Conille--a former aide to Clinton.
You draw your conclusions.
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