Do Not Donate to Haiti

Horrified, like all of us, by the human tragedy of post-earthquake Haiti, a friend turned his birthday celebration into an event to collect donations for the Haitians. The money will never get to the people who lost whatever little they actually had. The money will be diverted to financial intermediaries between the world and the devastated Caribbean country: international NGOs, sometimes associated with the small, corrupt Haitian elite. It was already like this before the earthquake — and now even worse afterward.

Without state sovereignty, Haiti is a protectorate of the U.N., governed by NGOs. Of course, there are some well-intentioned NGOs, but this is not the point. The ultra-liberal experiment of abolition of sovereignty and self-governance is equivalent to the cancellation of the Haitian people’s citizenship. They have no rights, except to wait in line until an NGO official hands them a plate of food. It has been like this for years, well before the earthquake.

Haitian sovereignty ended with the recent, turbulent democracy in February 2004, when U.S. and French forces kidnapped President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and sent him to the Central African Republic. At that time, at the request of George W. Bush, Brazil assumed the leadership of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). The U.N. did not restore democracy, but it provided political cover and military support for the installation of a semblance of government emanating from elections without freedom. In six years, they have held one presidential election and two parliamentary elections. None included the participation of Aristide, forcibly exiled, nor his political party, Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti’s largest party, which refused to compete with the bureaucratic chicanery of the electoral committee. It’s the same as if the PT [Workers’ Party] were forbidden to contest elections in Brazil.

Politically, the current Haiti is the result of being a U.N. protectorate. Nine-thousand NGOs are operating in the country, a per capita rate unmatched anywhere else. In the “republic of NGOs,” even before the earthquake, there was nothing similar to a state and almost no sign of public services. Nearly 85 percent of children study in private schools. Public transport is private, as well as the distribution of water. Six-thousand police officers were counted throughout the country, but 15,000 security company agents. Health services are mostly operated by private companies. The General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, one of the few public institutions, is surrounded by private clinics and pharmacies, owned by the hospital physicians. None of the companies dedicated to providing public services are subject to state monitoring agencies, but virtually all act as direct or indirect arms of the NGOs.

What passes for a national government is nothing but a collection of private international agents. All the Haitian ministers have connections with local councils of NGOs. Many of them act as advisers to several NGOs. Viva Rio, a Brazilian NGO far less powerful than British Oxfam or American Care, relies on the services of a minister. A nation without a state, a government or democracy has become a hunting ground for these organizations, which aim to get funding from multilateral institutions and international donors. No one really knows the budgets of foreign entities engaged in humanitarian work for the salvation of the Haitians.

A senior officer in the Brazilian forces of MINUSTAH recounted, at an academic meeting, a particular and revealing example. Years ago, an NGO had decided to clear a channel for rainwater in Port-au-Prince that had been clogged by household waste. The military official argued that the initiative would be useless, because a garbage collection service was nonexistent and the residents, crowded in houses of 13 square meters, had no alternative to get rid of trash. The head of the NGO operation retorted that, after cleaning, the community would work to keep the channel clear. The underlying theory is that Haiti does not need its own state, but rather, cooperation between NGOs and the people. Months later, the canal was once again clogged.

The Haiti shown through television images is a homogeneous mass of miserable people dotted with criminal gangs. But Haiti is actually different. The country has intellectuals, writers and a press without money, but with plenty of ideas. Among the Haitians are skilled professionals in almost all areas, from medicine and engineering, to education and literature. They only have work when they can break into the network of NGOs.

There is social differentiation in Haiti. On one hand, in enclaves patrolled by private forces, is a very rich elite, which does not directly participate in political life but has power through positioned personas and that benefits from the hauntingly pervasive corrupt officials. On the other hand, in the United States there is a middle class composed of Haitian exiles who left in response to the utter lack of legal security in their homeland. The approximately 600,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States do not invest in Haiti, because they fear losing their modest assets, but they do send money to relatives. The miserable people in the countryside still seen on television survive, essentially, on money sent by the exiles — whose income represented about one-quarter of Haiti’s GDP — and from the surrounding system of diverting funds from the NGOs.

In the European empires of the 19th century, the colonial administrations were devoted to subduing the natives, but they at least installed basic public services, although generally of low quality. In Haiti under the U.N. protectorate, this is not even done. The people must plead with the NGOs whose headquarters are in Washington, Paris, Ottawa or Rio de Janeiro. Do not donate to Haiti. You will actually be donating to NGOs.

Editor’s Note: Though many have proposed it, Haiti is not legally a U.N. protectorate.