Who can offer the most help to the desperate children of Haiti? Is it Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Sachs, the World Bank or the UN? Is it the many experts who are calling for a Marshall Plan to “fix” Haiti once and for all, or the donor nations that have pledged billions for the task?
Personally, I would choose people like Eric and Nicole Pauyo. The Haitian-Canadian couple, who live in a prosperous suburb of Montreal, have taken in eight nieces and nephews left orphaned by the Jan. 12 earthquake. “I didn’t think twice,” said Nicole, who’s 62. The Pauyos have already raised three kids of their own. One of them is at Harvard.
For Haitians, the best way to improve their lives is to leave Haiti. More than a million Haitians now live abroad, including 100,000 in Canada. Life in Haiti, meantime, has become worse. Children go hungry, and barely a third finish primary school. About a 10th are restaveks (from the French reste avec , or stay with) – virtual child slaves who are sent to work as unpaid servants in the city by their impoverished parents.
And child trafficking is alive and well. One journalist, Ben Skinner, recently flew to Port-au-Prince – just five hours by air from New York City – and negotiated in broad daylight to buy a 12-year-old girl for household and sexual services. The price was $50. “The trafficker told me that he could easily convince parents to send their children from the grossly underdeveloped highlands of southern Haiti,” he wrote in his book, A Crime So Monstrous . Some families are so desperate, they beg foreigners to take their children, no questions asked.
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Is the “problem” that so many have given up and moved away, it being easier to ” … send money home”?
The Montreal man who has taken in his relatives is not really contributing to Haiti’s survival because his intellect and efforts are in Canada not in Haiti. My take is that he should return and fight the good fight against all the problems that Haiti has … one person at a time!
I’d say that as long as anybody representing the UN is allowed inside Haiti’s territorial limits its fate is sealed.
If Haiti were not a failed state the UN would not be there.
As in most failed state as in most successful states look at the primary philosophy behind the way the people view their place in the world and the way they should interact with each other. Change that and you will change a failed state back to a successful state. Conversely change the philosophy of a successful state and in short order it will be a failed state. Tinkering with the institutes of power will change nothing.