Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
The international community is faced once again with a massive humanitarian crisis in Haiti. A week of heavy rains unleashed floods that swept away entire villages. Two thousand people are dead or missing. Aid workers cannot reach many towns to deliver food, clean water and medicine. The United States and the Caribbean community should rush housing and disaster assistance to Haiti and work along a broad front to develop the nation's public infrastructure.
Ferocious rains swept away homes and uprooted crops, battering this poor island nation and the Dominican Republic, to the east. Some communities are accessible only by helicopter or boat, leaving the relief effort dependent on the U.S.-led multinational force in place in Haiti since its former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown in February.
The immediate challenge is to get supplies where they are needed, and to bolster security for those made homeless by the flooding. The Caribbean nations can give a hand by sending sheer numbers of trained personnel. The United States and Europe should donate boats, helicopters and other heavy equipment. With the rainy season just beginning, the floodwaters will pose a risk for months. This disaster should prompt the international community to help build new roads and flood control and drainage systems in Haiti and to create a competent emergency management agency.
Foreign donors need to contribute more to the effort and speed the delivery of emergency assistance. The United Nations has $380,000 in available funds. Last week, the United States said it would provide $50,000. Caribbean leaders, in response to Aristide's ouster, have not rushed to help. Penalizing ordinary Haitians suffering with the flood disaster for what happened to Aristide is indefensible. U.S. and Caribbean leaders should at least realize their self-interest in preventing another refugee crisis.
The recovery effort comes as the United States hands over security in Haiti to a U.N. security force, further complicating the transition of power to the post-Aristide government. The peacekeepers will need to maintain security amid a worsening state of civil society, even as Haiti's new authority struggles for ways to fund major capital improvements. The world community needs to see a plan in Haiti for moving this impoverished state forward. The scenes of death and desperation from the past week are as familiar as they are pitiful.