A continuación recopilo artículos y entradas que se han ido publicando estos días sobre Haití y que me han parecido interesantes.
Tyler Cowen y su historia con Haití.
Despite oppressive poverty (other than India, I've never seen anything comparable), there's simply a remarkable feeling there and most visitors to Haiti end up sharing this understanding with other Haitiphiles. I've long wished I could explain this. I've since been five times, though never to the north. I also started collecting Haitian art and reading everything I could about the country and going to Haitian concerts.
Más Cowen:
Just as it's not easy to pull out of Iraq or Afghanistan, it won't be easy to pull out of Haiti. (...) Mass starvation wouldn't look good on the evening news either. What does it mean to preside over the collapse of a country of more than nine million people? It's Obama who's about to find out, not the increasingly irrelevant Rene Preval.
1. Repeal tariffs on Haitian sugar and lower remaining restrictions on Haitian garment imports.
2. Give expedited approval, in terms of food safety rules, to the importation of Haitian mangoes.
3. Set up a Term Loan Auction Facility for Haitians, or alternatively apply quantitative easing to the market for Haitian mud cakes. It's worked for every other macro problem. Alternatively, get out the helicopter, I have heard worse ideas. Stabilize Haitian nominal GDP!
4. Find someone from the government to give a radio address.
5. In Port-Au-Prince and environs, define squatter's rights.
6. Invite Haitians to occupy the empty homes in the run-down parts of New Orleans.
7. Set up nearby charter cities which would welcome Haitian migrants.
8. Redefine the mission of Guantanamo to help Haiti.
9. Shift the capital to Cap-Haitean, if only temporarily, and build up Cap-Haitien in the meantime. That may be a better investment than PAP. As it stands, people will flow into Cap until living standards across the cities equalize.
10. Move Citigroup to St. Marc, which is underbanked (hat tip).
11. Offer special Haitian coffees at select shops, to boost employment in a more or less intact sector of the Haitian economy.
12. Continue military and special operations assistance. Reconstruct the port as quickly as possible.
13. Let more Haitians enter the United States and organize a consortium to accept refugees.
Eric Margolis, uno de los más enconados opositores a las campañas militares en Afganistán e Irak, defiende la intervención humanitaria en Haití: Haiti Must Be Rescued From Itself
Justin Raimondo critica en Antiwar.com la intervención del ejército: The Two Faces of Interventionism.
Regardless of the motivation, however, the objective and all too predictable consequences of long-term US intervention in Haiti will benefit neither the Haitians nor the US. No humanitarian effort can be successful in the absence of security, and the 10,000 or so US troops currently in or on their way to Haiti will doubtless have to assume the security functions of the mythical Haitian "government," which has collapsed along with most of the structures in the capital city of Port au Prince. This will inevitably lead to the US separating rival Haitian gangs, vying for power and advantage amid the ruins, and in effect becoming the de facto government of that tortured and luckless half of an island. In short, the logic of intervention will embroil the US in Haiti’s tumultuous and often murderous politics, and from that kind of quagmire there is no easy extrication. (...)
But of course this is all about photo ops, and revamping Washington’s image in the eyes of Americans as much if not more than those of foreigners. We may be dropping bombs on Pakistan and Afghanistan, but we’re also dropping food aid and millions of dollars on Haiti – as if the latter makes up for or obscures the former. These are the two faces of interventionism, and yet there is a crucial link between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who are, after all, the same entity, and this is what Margolis misses. (...)
Humanitarian aid is one thing: administering the country, under UN auspices or not, is quite another task, one that we should not take up – and are already taking up, even as I write these words of warning. Our "humanitarian" liberals cavil that Haiti has no government, but the problem goes much deeper: in its present state, the country is ungovernable. An inquiry into the reason for Haiti’s fate can perhaps be illuminated by asking why the other half of that Caribbean island, the Dominican Republic, is relatively stable and prosperous. Such a project, however, is far beyond the capabilities of the US military, which is a peerless fighting machine – and not so talented when it comes to advanced anthropology and sociology, in spite of its recent foray into that field.
Paul Romer dice que crear una "ciudad charter" en territorio haitiano no es una buena solución, pues acabaría traduciéndose en una ocupación militar a largo plazo. Una alternativa, con serias limitaciones políticas, sería permitir la inmigración de haitianos (o crear ciudades charter a las que pudieran desplazarse).
There is a natural complementary approach that is a much better bet than giving colonialism another chance—letting Haitians migrate somewhere with better governance and rules. This is the surest answer to the question posed in the beginning. It can give them access to the urban infrastructure, buildings, equipment, and the know-how that can support jobs in areas like garment assembly.
Competitive pressure from emigration might also speed up progress toward better governance in Haiti. Demonstrated successes for Haitians who live together in other places with better rules might offer a model for reform that people in Haiti could follow. Even then, good governance may not emerge there. But if there were places where all Haitians could go, no one would have to be trapped by this failure.
There are clear limits on the number of Haitian immigrants that nearby jurisdictions are currently prepared to accept. But if nations in the region created just two charter cities, they could accept the entire population of Haiti as residents. There are many locations close to Haiti where these new cities could be built, but for now, Haiti itself is the one place we should not consider.
Un buen blog sobre ayuda internacional y consejos para donantes: Good Intentions Are Not Enough. Se presenta así:
As a leading expert in the post-2004 tsunami recovery efforts in Thailand, I have seen the impact of aid from all perspectives: villagers, government officials, religious leaders, aid agency staff and directors, the United Nations, and various donors. Through these interactions I found that donors are key to improving the delivery of aid, yet they lack the knowledge necessary to make funding decisions that positively impact that delivery. The goal of this blog is to help individual donors give in ways that match their good intentions.
Destaco varias entradas:
- Do look at a variety of agencies before giving
- Do look for organizations with prior experience and expertise
- Don't donate to a project just because it's "sexy"
- Don't earmark funds
- Don't evaluate an organization based on the amount spent on administration cost
- Don't expect the funds to be spent immediately
- Do consider holding off some of your donations until later in the rebuilding process
- Don't take up a collection of goods to send over
- Don't go over individually to volunteer
- Do consider donating an equal amount of money to disaster preparedness programs.
- Don't assume there is a body overseeing and regulating the aid
- Do take the time to make informed decisions
- Choosing organizations to donate to after the Haiti earthquake
- Charity Ratings Based on Administration Costs can do More Harm Than Good
- Not enough orphans for all the orphanages
- Practices that are less expensive may appear more expensive
- Taking advantage of the lack of communication between aid agencies
- Why the focus on administration costs?
- Changing how we rate aid agencies will change aid agency practices
Editorial de The Lancet (vía Aid Watch) sobre el comportamiento poco escrupuloso de algunas ONGs y la necesidad de monitorizarlas más de cerca:
Large aid agencies and humanitarian organisations are often highly competitive with each other. Polluted by the internal power politics and the unsavoury characteristics seen in many big corporations, large aid agencies can be obsessed with raising money through their own appeal efforts. Media coverage as an end in itself is too often an aim of their activities. Marketing and branding have too high a profile. Perhaps worst of all, relief efforts in the field are sometimes competitive with little collaboration between agencies, including smaller, grass-roots charities that may have have better networks in affected counties and so are well placed to immediately implement emergency relief.
Given the ongoing crisis in Haiti, it may seem unpalatable to scrutinise and criticise the motives and activities of humanitarian organisations. But just like any other industry, the aid industry must be examined, not just financially as is current practice, but also in how it operates from headquarter level to field level. It seems increasingly obvious that many aid agencies sometimes act according to their own best interests rather than in the interests of individuals whom they claim to help.
Reportaje fotográfico del Boston Globe: Haití 6 días después.
