Rebuilding Haiti

Difficult as it is to look beyond the acute misery of Haiti’s current crisis, Paul Farmer proposes that aid agencies and others concerned with rebuilding focus on the nation’s “old, chronic problems.” There’s no shortage of recovery ideas, he says, but these will go nowhere if they do not also advance the long-neglected, basic rights of Haitians. Farmer describes efforts to respond to Haiti’s disastrous earthquake of January 2010, which killed hundreds of thousands, left 1.3 million homeless and much of the capital in ruins. Today, nearly a year later, the generous pledges of international aid have yet to materialize, says Farmer, and the peril has expanded to include a cholera outbreak. This picture is all the bleaker for the deaths of many of Farmer’s collaborators. The earthquake destroyed invaluable “human infrastructure”, says Farmer, including all the nursing students at Haiti’s one public nursing school. Farmer has been working in Haiti for more than a decade, attempting to address not just malnutrition, HIV and tuberculosis, but larger issues such as Haitians’ lack of access to clean water, public education and healthcare. He would like to see international aid groups and foreign powers involved with Haiti recognize these issues in a meaningful way. Farmer’s long-standing strategy has been to engage Haiti’s public sector, or what remains after years of military and U.S. proxy rule, in the fight for these rights. He says, “There is always a role for the promotion of basic rights The question is how to do this in the field, not just win an argument in seminar.” The earthquake has profoundly deepened Haiti’s need for essential public institutions. The 1,000-plus tent cities housing more than a million people in Port-au-Prince are swelling, not diminishing, because people cannot find potable water anywhere else, and most have no idea where their next meal will come from. Yet there is a push to expel people from their tents and tarps, says Farmer, a...

Channel: MIT World Video Length: 0s Date Found: Wed, Dec 15 2010 9:28 PM Category: Science Date Produced: Wed, Dec 15 2010 12:00 AM View Count: 1