EDITORIAL – Clinton’s commitment to Haiti

THE ANNOUNCED decision by former United States President Bill Clinton to devote the next three years of his life focusing primarily on the rebuilding of earthquake-devastated Haiti, is as commendable as it’s timely.Millions of lives have been fundamentally disrupted in that ruined Caribbean nation. More than a million are still languishing in squalor in tents and shacks, deprived of basic needs and their dignity, while countries of the international community, among them the United States, fail to deliver on aid pledges six months after the nightmare earthquake of January 12. As one of the more enduring post-war popular presidents of America, Clinton’s demonstrated deep interest in Haiti during the troubling years of Jean Bertrand Aristide’s presidency had long identified him as a “friend” of the Haitian people. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon lost no time in appointing him as the United Nations Special Envoy on Haiti.As co-chair of the international commission established to oversee US$5.3 billion pledged financial assistance for Haiti’s reconstruction, Clinton would have felt a moral obligation to publicly bare his own deep disappointment over the agonisingly slow release of pledges made at an international aid donors conference last March.That, incidentally, was just below half of an originally estimated US$10 billion envisaged to “build a new Haiti”. But with merely about 20 per cent of the pledged US$5.3 billion delivered to date, there have been growing expressions of dissatisfaction and alarm of the negative consequences for the Haitian people. Clinton felt it was time to emphasise his own disappointment: “We (donor nations) have been slow to deliver on promises to aid Haiti’s reconstruction . . . I am going to call on all those governments who said they will give. I want to get a schedule for when the money will be released,” he said, conceding that the lingering global economic crisis might be partially responsible.What is of particular interest was the personal vow by the 42nd president of the United States to commit himself over the next three years to the rebuilding of Haiti.“I don’t want to be naive. It will be hard. But I am excited about it . . . enough so that after a couple of heart incidents and being 63 years old, I am prepared to spend three years on it (Haiti’s reconstruction).”President Clinton will find a very good ally in CARICOM’s Special Representative on Haiti, the former long-serving and highly respected Prime Minister of Jamaica, Percival Patterson. At the 31st CARICOM Summit in Montego Bay earlier this month, Patterson submitted, for the guidance of the community’s governments and stakeholders, why the building of a new Haiti from the ruins of the earthquake would be not only in the interest of Haitians, but the Caribbean as a whole.