Published for Yahoo News, December 22nd, 2010:
The stakes are high as Haitians struggle to resolve disputes over the accuracy of preliminary vote tallies from the November 28 national election. Haiti’s next president and its parliament must be able to lead the nation from catastrophe to prosperity. But it is equally important that the international community helps Haiti’s new leadership establish an environment in which the nation can thrive.
Amid this latest crisis and the persisting pains for millions ofearthquake victims, the approaching one-year anniversary of the January 12 disaster is a reminder of all that must still be done. The world must redouble the efforts of the past year to tend to the many remaining urgent needs. At the same time, we must not lose sight of a need just as critical: creating the building blocks for long-term, vigorous economic expansion and job growth — the only real path to a stronger and better Haiti.
Indeed, the goal of the donor community should be to put itself out of the Haiti aid business. To do that, we need to be laser-focused on helping Haitians create and build their own livelihoods. There are no straight lines from pain to promise in this equation, but Haiti has one important thing on its side: despite the devastation, the Haitian people are ready to write a positive new chapter in their country’s troubled history. We must help them do so by promoting job growth and economic opportunity— and then by getting out of the way.
As Paul Farmer, Partners In Health’s founder and United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti said in a recent Foreign Policy column: “Haiti has 9.8 million people, and at least half were unemployed even before the earthquake. If we focused our efforts on the singular task of getting them jobs — even if we did nothing else – Haiti’s reconstruction could be a success.”
