By Jean H Charles:

Dr Gary Conille, the prime minister of Haiti, in an address delivered in Varsovie, Poland, recently informed the world that 99 percent of the grants, gifts and help offered to Haiti after the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, went to the NGOs; the government received the remaining one percent.

The result is clear to the naked eye. Haiti is almost as fragile before and after the earthquake under the republic of the NGOs. Once more Haiti is providing a lesson to the world: surrendering your economy to the NGOs might be a sure way to kill it. 

In a previous essay: “The entrenched business of the NGOs”, I laid down the modus operandi that the NGOs operate under. They define their own needs that may or may not be in sync with the needs of the country they are trying to save. Those perceived needs became entrenched policy options and the country is derailed for the foreseeable future.

It was the story of Rwanda, which was an NGO republic before the intra-tribal genocide. 

It is now the story of Haiti, which is the republic of NGOs par excellence. 

According to Bill Clinton, there are 10,000 NGOs in Haiti, making that country with more aid groups and charities per capita than any place on the planet.

Timothy Schwartz in his book Travesty in Haiti stated: “My own research on this matter suggests that at least 90 percent of the money are rife with corruption, functionally inert or give money intended for the poor to people who do not need it.”

The NGOs are private business relying on carcasses such Haiti to remain alive. 

In a feature story related by Kenneth Kidd, Eric Klein, one of those flower children of America, landed in Haiti after Sri Lanka. His frustration was expressed in these words: “I am so sick and tired of the NGOs coming up with excuses; there are no excuses for them. They are bloated with money, staff, and yet daily life for 1.3 million homeless Haitian has not much changed in the two years since the earthquake.”

Item -- The American Red Cross in a policy option chose to ally itself with the merchants providing drinking water to the refugees. The same amount of money could have be used to render the city municipal water system – DINEPA -- more functional in providing drinking water from the tub to the home as it is done in New York City or any civilized city of the world. The funding for water having run out, Haiti finds itself worse off than before.

Item -- The CRH in a policy option under protest from the very Haitian government has built a giant favellas named Canaan on the skirts of the capital city with building no larger than slave cages to house refugees from the earthquake. That amount of money could be used to rehabilitate the rural villages, reinserting those refugees in the villages, as such contributing to building a stable and strong Haiti.

Item -- Action against Hunger has established a successful food stamp program for those in need. The organization could have promoted clean energy use by providing stamps for gas cooking instead of coal made from trees that are soon becoming endangered species in Haiti.

Item -- Red Cross International has been building identical homes for people in the mountains of Jacmel that are not larger than a cage that could accommodate 20 chickens according to the account of a peasant of the locality.

I have attended enough Clinton Global Foundation forums to conclude in spite of the good faith of President Clinton in gathering NGOs and celebrities to come to the aid of the non developed countries, the best aid any mogul of development can provide to a country is to usher in good governance and the sentiment of appurtenance. With good governance and the sentiment of appurtenance, the country can pull itself by its own bootstrap and produce as such sustainable development.

Haiti is awash with development aid, yet it was much better off when, as a young lad, there was no aid a go go as I am observing now. International aid for Haiti is like welfare to a child who should go to school and learn to become a responsible citizen.

The genesis of the NGOs republic can be traced to the same Clinton administration that made the policy option to earmark all the USAID funding to the NGOs, where the documentation is in the dots and the comma instead of the purpose and the meaning and the coordination of the funding. It is still the policy of the US administration today. 

The story of the developing world has proven that China is now a global powerhouse because the state has taken clear and visible objectives to lift millions of Chinese out of poverty. The story that China is using low wages to reach that objective is a fallacy because wages are lower in Africa, South America or Haiti than in China. The truth is the government not the NGOs is in the driving seat.

The secret to spread development in the world is to usher in good governance with clear set objectives of facilitating the distribution of wealth with equity.

Haiti should start at least instituting the Ministry or Under Ministry of the Coordination of the NGOs. As such, the vision of the government will be filtered down and implemented in a coordinated fashion for the benefit of the nation, making the need for the NGOs incrementally obsolete.

February 13, 2012

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