Six years ago, Brazilian singer Caetano Velosa penned of the most haunting songs about Haiti ever written, “And no matter if the eyes of the world may be for a moment turned off,” he pleaded, “Think of Haiti, pray for Haiti. Haiti is not here.”
And it won’t be here anytime soon.
Over $54 million in loans promised to the Haitian government by a subsidiary of the Treasury Department in 1998 have been suspended, as revealed in documents released yesterday by four independent human rights organizations.
Critics have called the lack of oversight by the Machiavellian American government in the incident, “one of the most egregious examples of malfeasance by the United States in recent years.”
With a GDP decline of -2% a year, 7% (300,000) of its children considered enslaved by the United Nations, 40% of the population devoid of access to elementary health care, 76% of births delivered by non-qualified personnel and an illiteracy rate of 45%, Haiti is indisputably the poorest country on Earth.
The loans were approved by the Inter-American Development Bank in 1998, originally intended for to improve the country’s sanitation system in the Haitian towns of Cayes and Port-de-Paix. Only 30 percent of Haiti in direct access to drinking water, which has lead to a scourge of dysentery and intestinal parasites.
Yet the IDB, over which the U.S. Treasury holds considerable influence, have failed to initiate projects involving water improvement, which the report said is, “largely the result of aggressive attempts by the U.S. government to block the disbursement of these loans.”
According to the Corruption Perceptions Index, an institute commissioned by the University of Passau in Germany, Haiti is considered by international scholars as the most politically corrupt nation in the world. Certainly, Haiti’s political turmoil and financial difficulties contributed to the delays, as the report consistently reinforces.
With over 50 years of military dictatorship, the current puppet government is a subordinate of the United States. Jean-Aristide was Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, taking office in 1990 amid great popular support. Yet having weathered a bloody military coup and enduring economic crises, he was booted out in February 2004 when opposition to his rule grew increasingly vicious.