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Letter to the Editor, Irish Times,
20th April 2010
Madam,
HOMELESS Haitians awakening to the damp
of the first rains of the season have got a glimpse of a silver
lining from behind the dark clouds of despair with the recent $9.9bn
pledged by the international community to rebuild the shattered
country.
The size of the amount is a potent signal
of intent in alleviating the suffering of the poor, but given the
problems that the earthquake survivors are now facing, our assistance
must not end there.
The sum surpassed expectations and showed, in the most meaningful
way possible, that the West does care about the poor. The contribution
of €9m from our own government at a time of such financial
turmoil is also to be welcomed.
It is difficult if not impossible to imagine the misery on the ground
in Port-au-Prince a world away from the UN donors’ conference
in New York, where this package was agreed. What this money means
is that a blueprint can now be put in place to put the pieces of
this broken country back together.
The significance of this historic commitment is that it presents
an unrivalled opportunity to get it right. And there is a huge onus
on all concerned to guarantee that this potential watershed be exploited
fully. It will require a logistical army to see that the money is
used to maximum impact.
This is a long-term reconstruction project and it is vital that
it be managed. Ideally what I would like to see happen is that donors
take responsibility for different sections of the rebuilding. Were
donor countries to adopt specific areas such as roads, health, sanitation,
schools etc; accountability and value for money could be policed.
We mustn’t forget that in the teeming squalid quake survivors'
camps of Port-au-Prince; thousands still clamour for basic necessities
that many in the world take for granted: shelter, food, water, medical
care, electricity and toilets.
Welcome as this package is; let us not lose sight of the fact that
the world has turned its back on Haitians for long enough. The descendants
of former black slaves who overthrew French colonial rule to create
the world's first independent black republic in 1804 have been abandoned
to their cruel fate practically ever since. So there is a moral
imperative now that there is a meaningful chance of progress, for
the global community to rise to the challenge.
Speaking from one of the countless tent cities that house hundreds
of thousands of homeless victims, one survivor summed it up well
recently: “We need water, food, toilets, healthcare, light
and tents – shelter, soon it will be too late with the floods
and the spread of disease that may follow.”
GOAL is currently feeding well in excess of 300,000 people in Haiti,
and is in the process of building thousands of transitional shelters.
But aid workers have warned that unless more adequate and secure
shelter is provided quickly to more than one million left homeless
by the quake, Haiti could face another humanitarian disaster from
the frequent floods and landslides that strike the country during
the imminent rainy season, so this package could not have come at
a better time.
Aid agencies are making inroads on the ground today but what this
injection of funds will do is to move beyond handouts to secure
livelihoods for tomorrow. UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon said that the
aid package was a “down-payment” on Haiti’s future.
But a down-payment is only a first instalment, we must follow through
and guarantee that this time at least we do not fail the people
of the developing world. Donor countries must not renege on their
pledges. In the Congo millions have died and the world stood by
and did nothing, the same shameful inaction has facilitated the
butchery in Darfur and in Somalia.
Perhaps Haiti can be different; it is to
be hoped that this aid package may herald a new deal for the world’s
poor.
John O’Shea
GOAL
PO BOX 19
Dun Laoghaire
Co Dublin
01 280 9779
© 2010 The Irish Times
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