Haiti reaction: one month on

09/02/10

THEY were a bedraggled group with shoulders slumped from exhaustion but they stood out nonetheless. I spotted them on my way back from Haiti, they were a cluster of NY firemen, their race to find bodies in the rubble of the quake was over. They had however responded magnificently – when the call was made, and their contribution was significant.

Can the same be said as the International Community at large?

More than three decades visiting disaster zones teaches you not to be overwhelmed, to stay focused and keep your eye on how you can help. But I defy anyone who sees the devastation and pain endured by the Haitian people not to be moved.

The spine of the country has been snapped, the government is paralysed, the media are pulling out and soon many of the emergency services will follow. Who then will take care of the one million homeless and 1.5m who need to be fed? The poorest people in the western hemisphere were in no position to deal with disaster. With the majority of the population scraping by on less than two dollars a day, there was nothing to spare.

Now with so many of their schools, hospitals, and factories, buried under tonnes of debris, who can they turn to rebuild their shattered country and to take care of their injured? GOAL, thanks to the unique kindness of the Irish people, is feeding 150,000 people; this will shortly reach 250,000. Other agencies are also doing heroic work, but this is a job too far, this is a disaster of Biblical proportions.

The scale of the catastrophe is simply outside the scope of aid agencies and an international global response is required. It is beyond the power of any civil society to manage. The scene is apocalyptic. Port-au-Prince resembles a mini Dresden that has been bombed from above and below simultaneously. The tragedy has been compounded by the fact that two weeks later there is no-one to take responsibility.

While aid distribution is improving there is a dire need to get food to where it is needed and to provide sanitation in the overcrowded camps. Here thousands of people are packed in closely together, and with so many recovering from amputations, the danger of infection and the spread of disease is a grave concern. When the rains come the risks will only be multiplied.

The security fears and clogged up roads dictate that many in the poor Caribbean country are still not receiving emergency supplies. It is no surprise that some of the food handouts in the capital have turned unruly. These people are desperate and with the clock ticking ominously it is imperative that an over-arching command structure be established to coordinate and control relief efforts.

GOAL’s work has brought me to most of the world’s flashpoints over the past 32 years. Bitter experience teaches you not to look to the horizon for the arrival of the international fire brigade, because it never comes. From the sickening aftermath of Pol Pot’s atrocities, to seeing the armies of walking skeletons in Ethiopia, the searing question has always been; who will take responsibility?

The big battalions never stay the course; instead you get a disparate number of highly trained and deeply motivated aid groups who with the missionaries, roll up their sleeves and get stuck in to do what they can. Impressive and critical though this work is, it can never rise to the level of need that it confronts. Most NGOs are already overstretched and put to the pin of their collars maintaining programmes in other Developing World areas.

Their time in Haiti will therefore be limited.

That is why the establishment of a rapid reaction force with the requisite infrastructure, budget and international standing must be established. It is monstrously unfair to rely on ad hoc solutions when it comes to dealing with overwhelming humanitarian disasters.

Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive believes that it will require 10 years of assistance to put his country back together again, but who is to take charge?

The US military has already said that it could scale back its involvement within six months.

When there is a global strategic military or material interest in a country, the international community invariably responds decisively and promptly through the UN.

Thus when an oil supply is threatened the Security Council can be convened and armies put on standby. Sadly, when there is a humanitarian emergency there is no such spontaneous and immediate reaction. As you read this, millions of lives are on the line in a disaster zone and there is no single entity with the authority or the wherewithal to mount a meaningful intervention capable of delivering sufficient impact to contain the suffering.

God forbid were a country like Ireland, one of the most highly developed in the world to be hit by a similar cataclysm the Government phones would be ringing out for help. If there were 1.5m in our streets in need of food and shelter, we would be still completely at the mercy of others to survive. Imagine therefore how impossible is the predicament for the people of Haiti, where poverty is endemic and corruption rampant.

The international community must stay until the job of rebuilding Haiti is complete, oversight, control and coordination are key and can only be guaranteed by the establishment of an entity empowered to take responsibility. In the short term this is a role that the Americans can take on.

Logically, the setting up of a humanitarian emergency response task force would be no different to the dispatching of UN peace-keepers, so it is hard to understand why it has yet to be done. They would be on hand to deliver a rapid impact response and crucially stay on to see the job through, when disaster strikes.

Looking to the future however, one would hope that the world’s conscience might be sufficiently touched by Haiti’s suffering to see it as a defining moment.

Because of Ireland’s missionary tradition and in respect for the extraordinary generosity of the Irish people, I would implore our Government to spearhead a global campaign to ensure that the UN or some such body, might be given the remit and resources to respond swiftly and decisively so that the next time that catastrophe strikes, there is an international fire brigade on hand to answer the call.

- John O'Shea