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Zachary McGinnis Instructor; Malcolm Campbell English 1103 9/30/2013

Relief Spending after Haiti Disaster

Some of the most devastating events that have been cast upon mankind in the past few decades have come from the treacherous natural disasters. Areas that are made up of third world countries and very perish areas receive the worst of the trauma. According to The Guardian, in the last decade alone, there have been thirteen major natural disasters around the world which include the infamous earthquake in Haiti in 2010 and the tsunami that struck south Asia in 2004. When an event such as these strike part of a community, people from all over the world stop what they are doing and pitch in and contribute to whatever relief is being sent to that area. But a big issue that surrounds the relief is the topic of how the relief should be given to these poverish countries. As it is these areas are ridden with poverty, and after such a natural disaster; the country is left with nothing. The question is how governments supply enormous amounts of relief to a country that is left with nothing and has a long road ahead of them to overcome these obstacles. The answer to these questions are vital to the successful reconstruction of the impacted areas.

Before understanding what the government is doing with the millions of dollars in relief they are receiving from around the globe, we must first understand the government itself. When the earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, the country was already in a bad situation. Over the past decade, the government had been subjected to conspiracies, rigged elections, and corruption throughout the government. According to the Corruption Percentage Index, Haiti is in the top 150 most corrupt countries of the entire world. This is largely because of a man named Rene Preval. Preval took office in 2006, and only lasted until 2008. There were massive food riots throughout the capital because of how Preval was running the country which led to Haitis parliament throwing him out of office. Although this achieved the goal of getting the dictator out of office, it led to a country that lacked a defined government. This led to a decline in the economy, crime spread throughout the country, and it left Haiti in pieces before the earthquake had even struck. An unnamed earthquake victim had this to say about the government during the disaster to a CBC reporter; The government was largely absent during the earthquake. Many citizens doubt that there was much of a government at all. (CBC News) Possibly the most infamous disaster is the massive earthquake that struck the capitol city of Haiti two years ago on January 12, 2010. This earthquake which measured a 7.0mw destroyed 70% of the buildings in Port-au-Prince. Relief started that very day by starting to save survivors from the rubble that was left over. Many countries around the world saw the need suffering that the Haitians were going through and in total, Haiti received almost 2.2 billion dollars in foreign aid. $466,879,506 of that 2.2 billion dollars came from the United States alone; which was the highest amount given by an individual country (Foreign Aid). where does all of this money go? How is it used by the government in terms of giving relief to its people? A lot of this money has gone to private contractors who are hired to help

rebuild houses and communities around the country. This money can do a lot of good in a third world country like Haiti. The president of Haiti imagines a city that is nothing but construction and rebuilding in a few years. He dreams that his people can be up on their feet in a short amount of time. But is this money being spent wisely? The president of Haiti reported in an NPR article in May 2013 that most of the relief money that he was promised has not been seen. Although the United States did give the government almost half a billion dollars, they had previously promised to send 1.2 billion dollars. This shows that somewhere along the line the U.S. stopped funding the relief program. Anastasia Moloney of trust.org believes that this fraction of money that the Haitian government actually revived is not being spent wisely. She says that way that these large amounts of money are being put into contractors are actually hurting the Haitian community by not allowing them to rebuild their own homes. She goes on to say; One of the biggest complaints about the aid response and effort in Haiti has been the lack of community involvement. Haitians dont know who aid donors are supposed to be helping and what they are actually doing. This shows that even though a large amount of foreign aid is coming in, it isnt doing anything beneficial to the community itself; it is more impairing them than anything. It is impossible for the Haitian government to help out in any way with the construction efforts if it doesnt know where the money is being spent. An NPR report interviewed multiple locals that were just a few of the millions that were left homeless after the earthquake. They say that three years after the earthquake they still do not have any housing. Relief camps are now sending them back in the community to find housing on

their own without any support. Jonathan Katz, author of the book Big truck went by goes on to say that a lot of money went to vital things such as food and tarps for shelter. But he explains how all of these resources get used up quickly; food gets eaten, tarps get taken down. And in the end, the people are left with nothing to build onto, nothing to drive them forward. Nothing that was obtained through the relief money was durable which in the long run is not valuable to the people that are suffering. Michel Martelly, the President of Haiti, once said in an interview stop sending the money, lets fix it, lets fix it. He claims that the money that is being spent is actually poaching my best workers. Instead of letting the best and brightest of Haiti come together and fix their own problems, they are being undermined by contractors who cause the problem to be much more complicated. The president of Haiti largely does not agree with how the money is being spent, or the fact that money is even being sent. But Joel Rubin, writer for the Los Angeles Times, says that the aid that has been sent has mostly been positive. Rubin argues that without the rush of aid that was sent right after the earthquake, medical supplies would not have been able to be rushed across the country and many more people would have lost their lives without it. He goes on to say it is impossible to assess all aspects of the relief effort in Haiti, but markers of progress can be laid down on key issues being addressed on a large scale by the United Nations and other leading organizations. This is very true considering all of the problems that have surfaced in Haiti the past few years. With corruption in the government, poverty, lack of sanitization, and many other issues, progress in Haiti has been moving slowly but steadily. Gerard Gomez, a humanitarian aid leader in Haiti realizes this problem too. All of the relief that has come to Haiti has been a huge help to the country and to the communities all over the country. There has been

no rioting over food, and we avoided people dying of hunger or thirst, this is no small accomplishment.

Many people believe that disasters like the earthquake in Haiti have a quick fix solution to it. The rush of millions of dollars to Haiti may have been out of good heart, but ultimately hindered their progress towards rebuilding. A good example of this is something more close to home; hurricane Katrina. This hurricane was on American soil and millions of dollars were sent to help with the relief, but there is still a lot of work to be done. It is a solid example of how nothing has a quick fix. In order for Haiti to fully rebuild itself, it must put its funding towards allowing their citizens to do the rebuilding. They must work to rebuild their own country to achieve success or they will be trapped unable to get a grasp on their own community.

6 Works Citied "Foreign Aid to Haiti." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_aid_to_Haiti>. Martelly, Michel. Telephone Interview. 14 Mar 2013. Provost, Clair. "A decade of Disasters - Get the Key Data." Gaurdian. n. page. Print. <http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2011/mar/18/world-disastersearthquake-data>. Rubin, Joel. "Haiti Quake Response Largely a Request." Los Angeles Times. (2010): n. page. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/12/world/la-fg-haiti-report-card12-2010mar12>.

Schwartz, Daniel. "Where is Haiti's Government?." CBC News. (2010): n. page. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/where-is-haiti-s-government-1.966579>.