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2. End indirect aid to Haiti. Foreign aid should go to Haiti directly to strengthen the Haitian government not the churches and NGOs.
a. US foreign policy undermined Haiti's capacity to respond in emergency situations because it forced Haiti to privatize state assets, funneled all foreign aid to NGOs and not the Haitian government.
A recent article reported the Haitian government has not seen one cent of that money that has been raised for Haiti. I presume that that means the money is going to NGOs," he said, referring to non-governmental aid groups. He said a Puerto Rican group had presented him with a shipping receipt showing it donated $3.5 million of food aid to feed Haitians. Preval said he asked, "Where is the food?" and was told it had already been given to aid groups. (Coordination needed for Haiti aid: Aid flows to charities, but Preval hasn't seen a cent.)
It is the Clinton and Bush neo-liberal policies or US support for coup d'etat that has severely weakened the Haitian government, Haiti's already limited infrastructure, public health and economy that is needed to provide services in times of disasters like this. Neo-liberal policies posits that governments should not provide social services to the people community policing, electricity, food, clean water, health care, schools, roads, irrigation canals, literacy programs, agricultural assistance. That these things should be privatized and let the marketplace provide. This is the policy that has been imposed on Haiti by both the Bushes and Clinton. And Obama has enlisted these two to further "help" Haiti.
b. The Obama administration must support an international response that respect Haitian sovereignty, not boost NGO profits and power in Haiti .
This US foreign policy effectively forms a shadow government enchaining Haiti that undermines Haiti's sovereignty, emboldens and empowers NGOs with no public responsibility or accountability to Haitians or Haiti's long term well-being. The idea that Haiti is too corrupt to absorb aid or get it to the most needy applied during US-supported Haiti dictatorships not, in general, when Haiti has a duly elected government. Besides this fear does not support self-reliance but dependency. There should be accountability measures to assure the aid reaches its intended constituency.
Haiti can no longer countenance World Relief NGOs in the country whose method of doing business is inappropriate to Haiti's reality, doesn't respect Haiti's Vodouist/Konbit/Lakou culture and puts in place programs to exclude the majority of Haiti's people from decisions affecting their every day life.3. Support the institutionalization of the rule of law
a. Return former president Aristide to Haiti so he may assist Haiti's majority at this agonizing time and help in the relief and rebuilding of the nation. No one can be made stateless. It's a violation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
b. Support community organizing, community policing, transparency and participatory democracy.
4. Value life - Value life over political
and economic interests. Value the lives of the survivors not the
interests of the US and the international community.
Haitians,
both in Haiti and in the Diaspora, who are historical immune to
adversities along with mobilized Black America and our collaborators
from all the nations and races, are ready to help, with our bare hands,
walking anywhere, doing anything, to get the distribution done. Still
are. The military takeover and their alliance with World Relief
Organizations who prioritize not saving lives and providing disaster
relief with dignity and human rights but their bank accounts, is
blocking this.
Eyewitnesses in Haiti report that aid trucks are filed to the brim with supplies blocked at the border and sitting idle at the ports. Once the US got to Haiti on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010 they privatized the airport and blocked humanitarian aid in favor of: 1) landing military planes and 1) evacuating foreign nationals. Food, water, medicine and doctors could not enter through the airport, were diverted to the Dominican Republic and trucked or drove in. One US retired general said USAID and the State Department are not a rapid response entity and ought not to head this mission. Even two weeks after the earthquake, there still has not been widespread distribution of food, medicine and water.
"The next morning after the earthquake, as a military man of 37 years service, I assumed " there would be airplanes delivering aid, not troops, but aid," said retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore ,..I was a little frustrated to hear that USAID was the lead agency," he said. "I respect them, but they're not a rapid deployment unit" In the first two days after Tuesday evening's quake, "we saw national media in, but we didn't see Air Force airplanes taking in food and water," Honore said. Nor were military doctors on the ground treating the injured, he said. (Retired general: US aid effort too slow.)
The Obama Administration must do better. It must
prioritize relief, rebuilding and development initiatives for everyone
in Haiti harmed by the earthquake, especially the poor Black majority,
not just the wealthy, the foreign citizen, charity workers and their
hotels or other properties. Infrastructure rebuilding should be
conducted simultaneously in the poor as well as wealthier areas of the
capital and southern areas damaged by the earthquake. Rich and poor,
foreign or Haitian national ought to be similarly treated.
The
Obama administration must support an international response to the
tragic Haiti earthquake that prioritize humanitarian assistance, not
security and that makes every effort to allow relief assistance from
Haitians abroad and from other nations and providers to enter Haiti. In
addition to stopping the blockage of assistance coming from Haitians
abroad, Black Americans and from other nations and providers in favor
of the major corporate charity organizations, it must also prioritize
the distribution and promote and allow Haitians to set up an
international coordination of international assistance so that relief
supplies, medical treatment and the necessary emergency help actually
gets to the most excluded majority in Haiti reaching the maximum
number of earthquake victims immediately. The Haitian people, in Haiti
and abroad, with families victimized by the earthquake are the best
ones to know where the most urgent needs are still to be met and
allowed to direct medical and psychological assistance and other relief
to those areas.
5. Respect Haitian human rights and
dignity. Stop criminalizing the poor in Haiti. Stop the aid bureaucracy
and security restrictions that harms and insults the earthquake victims.
Stop
USAID/State Department and the world relief corporate charities from
criminalizing the people of Haiti with their dividing of Port au Prince
into color-coated security zones (red, orange and yellow depicting
criminal zones to less criminally-prone zones) and inevitably parading
around Haiti in vehicles with tinted or rolled-up windows accompanied
by an entourage of armed security that distances them from the poor
they are supposed to be helping, sending a menacing message of
dominance and greater authority over the suffering Haitians in their
own country. World Relief NGOs or aid providers working in this crisis
should always hire a local Haitian interpreter at an equal wage to the NGO worker's salaries
who will act as translator to better communicate with the victims and
beyond the immediate need for food, water, shelter, medical and
psychological assistance, assess, not guess or make racists
presumptions about the people's needs.
If USAID and the major
charities cannot let go of their fear of Blacks, and are letting
Haitians die while they wait for their required UN or US military
escorts, than let the Nation of Islam, Haitians and their
non-hysterical partners, from all the races and nations, take care of
the aid delivery to peoples in their " red and orange zones."
6. Value Family - Help reunite displaced families
The
Obama administration must support an international response to the
tragic Haiti earthquake that values family and is sensitive to the
human agony of family lost and separated in Haiti.
Stop
separating Haitian families, or exacerbating family separations with
insensitive US emergency relief policies and procedures at a time
family members most need to be together. For instance, lift up the ban
that prohibits Haitians with permanent residency, who live in the US
with their husbands, wives or children, but who are not US citizen from
returning to their families in America. Similarly, allow the entry and
return of Haitians living abroad, including those who are not US
citizens but legal US residents, into Haiti so they may give aid,
monies and moral and bereavement support to their families. Respect the
earthquake dead identify the unclaimed corpses, even if through
taking a picture before putting them in mass graves, so their love ones
may, at some point see that they are gone and have more closure. The
mass displacement of the population in the capital and in the South
also means the injured and dying are harder to locate and families have
been separated from their loved ones. Stop dropping food and water from
the air. Haitians are not livestock.
7. Rebuilt Haiti
The
Obama administration must support an international response that use
its power to uphold Haitian-led, Haiti-capacity building relief and
rebuilding efforts that sustains human rights, healing and dignity. And
that helps save and protect the lives, lands, property and human rights
of the Haitian survivors displaced by the 2010 earthquake. Show respect
for the people of Port au Prince and in the destroyed Southern areas,
who, on the first three days after the earthquake were mostly alone,
and who spontaneously organized themselves to save each other with the
help of those foreigners who got there to help and set up over a
thousand refugee camps to house over two million people throughout
Haiti, sharing with each other whatever they had. Show respect. They
should be a central and integral part of the redesigning and rebuilding
of Haiti.
