The scale of the human tragedy in Haiti is beyond imagining. Since the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on Tuesday evening, nearly every news report has emphasized the phrase “the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.” The words are said sympathetically, to explain that without urgent foreign assistance the country simply cannot organize a coherent response to the disaster. As the Haitian journalist Carel Pedra told a television interviewer: “We are weak, we don’t have the means with which to react, we can’t get everyone out of here, we don’t have enough food for everyone. There are people out there dying…” This feeling of helplessness is hardly surprising – anywhere else in the Caribbean would have been overwhelmed by a disaster of this magnitude – but as the full extent of the damage is discovered, and the death toll rises towards 50,000 it is also becoming clear no amount of foreign aid, however generous and rapidly deployed, will make much of a short-term difference.
Despite an outpouring of support from governments across the region – much of it offered within just a few hours – it has not been possible to muster anything close to the number of rescue teams needed to search for the thousands of people still trapped in the rubble of the ruined capital. Frustratingly, several disaster response crews have travelled in at short notice only to find themselves stranded in the Dominican Republic, waiting for the gridlock at Haiti’s national airport to be resolved. Other bottlenecks, such as the lack of proper docking facilities, have also created costly delays. On Thursday a BBC news team at a makeshift camp within walking distance of the airport reported that nobody in the nearby crowd of survivors had either seen a doctor or received any of the aid supplies. These shortcomings will surprise no one who followed the US government’s relief efforts after hurricane Katrina, but that does not make the appalling suffering of the Haitian people any easier to bear.
Before the earthquake, Haiti was a chronically unstable country with deep-seated social and political problems. Now, these have been compounded by the overnight disappearance of what little remained of its government and infrastructure. Many schools and hospitals have disappeared completely, along with thousands of homes, roads, public buildings and utility services. Without alternatives to these vanished institutions the tenuous security situation in the capital will almost certainly deteriorate further. Some commentators have begun to imagine the creation of a better capital on the ruins of the old one, but reconstruction will mean little if the human costs of the disaster are not contained soon.
Amid the gloom, there is some good news. Many charities have reported unprecedented success with their fundraising campaigns, especially those which use online social media networks. In America alone, celebrities who communicate with their fans via Twitter raised more than $5 million in a day. Millions more have been raised through online donations. In the days ahead this figure is likely to increase dramatically. Several countries have also promised to match their citizens’ private donations with government funds. All of this is very encouraging. In a year that has already seen race riots in Italy and xenophobic attacks on Indian students in Australia, it is refreshing to learn that most of us are still capable of reflexive charity towards complete strangers.
As with all disasters which strike the developing world, the level of sympathy elsewhere varies considerably, noticeably so in America. Pat Robertson’s obscene suggestion that Haiti’s chequered modern history was divine retribution for a “pact with the devil” is a fascinating distortion of historical truth. For if any other nation that should be profoundly grateful for the success of the Haitian revolution, it is the United States. Recent scholarship has shown that without the unlikely victory which Toussaint L’Ouverture and his successors secured over Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson would have been hard pressed to negotiate the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of his fledgling nation and helped to make it into a world power. A comparable historical myopia seems to have afflicted the conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh who made several patronising references to Haiti’s reliance on “the American taxpayer.” Revealingly, Fox News – currently America’s most successful cable news network – carried less than 7 minutes coverage of Haiti on its three top-rated shows just one day after the earthquake. (Its competitor MSNBC broadcast nearly two hours worth of footage, interviews and analysis.) But aside from these egregious exceptions, the American public has responded with its usual compassion, and looks set to continue doing so despite going through the financial insecurities of a major recession.
Although the Caribbean has suffered major hurricane damage in the recent past, nothing in living memory can be compared to the earthquake in Port-au-Prince. Once immediate rescue and relief operations are concluded, the rest of the region ought to play a cental role in the country’s reconstruction. Anything less would be shameful. Our long term assistance should not be limited simply to money, it should consider term trade assistance, closer economic integration, even the prospect of offering temporary housing for the thousands of internally displaced survivors. As anger mounts over the slow pace of the international relief effort, those looking on from other parts of the region must not stand by and watch the rest of the world improvise solutions to a disaster in our neighbourhood. If Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica or Barbados were ever to endure a natural disaster on this scale, the rest of Caricom would be falling over itself to lend assistance. Our response to Haiti should be no different.