Vol. 76/No. 4      January 30, 2012

Protesters gathered Jan. 11 outside parliament with hand-made signs. “I am 25 and I’ve never held a job,” read one.

Unemployment in Haiti is estimated at 60-70 percent. Most Haitians earn $2 a day or less. Two years after the earthquake 500,000 are still living in tent cities.

A cholera epidemic swept Haiti during 2010 killing more than 6,000 people. Half the population lacks clean water and 80 percent are without access to sanitation facilities.

The United Nations estimates that $3.6 billion has been sent to Haiti in relief and recovery aid over the last two years. Despite this “Haiti looks like the earthquake happened two months ago, not two years,” notes a Jan. 3 article in Counterpunch, a news website. It documents that much of this “aid” was used to pay the salaries of so-called non-governmental organizations from outside Haiti and to reimburse imperialist governments, especially Washington.

Less than 2 percent of the international funds have been channeled to Haitian organizations or the Haitian government.

Aid from revolutionary Cuba stands in stark contrast. Immediately after the earthquake, the Cuban government expanded its medical contingent in Haiti, focusing on the regions hardest to reach. It did the same as the cholera outbreak spread. By December 2010 Cuba’s contingent in Haiti was more than 1,200 people. Besides treating patients, Cuban personnel trained more than 15,000 Haitians on how to fight the outbreak.  
 
 
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