Поучительная история для Украины
Украинцы (да и некоторые российские либералы) уверены, что добрые дяденьки-американцы и тетеньки-европейцы прилетят в голубом вертолете и всё им сделают красиво. Но пример "восстановления" Гаити америкамцами говорит об обратном.
Haiti shows how wealthy countries 'continue to cause disaster'
Workers get paltry wages at foreign firms that 'extract the profits from their labour,' researcher says
Then secretary of state Hillary Clinton, centre, speaks to Haitian President Michel Martelly, right, during the inauguration of the Caracol Industrial Park in 2012. Clinton encouraged foreigners to invest in Haiti but a Canadian researcher is questioning who really benefited from the economic intervention. (Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated Press)
An aid project in Haiti brokered by U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is having unfortunate and unintended consequences, according to new research from a Western University scholar that questions the merits of wealthy countries' economic interventions in the developing world.
Recent PhD graduate Marylynn Steckley spent nearly six years with her young family living in Haiti, both as an aid worker and as a researcher.
"I'm now struggling to see what the good ways of helping are," Steckley says. "Wealthy nations continue to cause disaster, poverty in Haiti. And the path to understanding is looking at how we contribute to that destruction."
Haiti is ranked the most food-insecure country in the Western Hemisphere.
In the wake of the 2010 earthquake that claimed the lives of up to 300,000 people, more than $10 billion was pledged by the international community. Of that, only about $4 billion has been allocated, but not all of it spent.
And of the money that was allocated toward economic development, Steckley says, it tends to benefit the giver more than the receiver.
She cites the Caracol Industrial Park, on Haiti's northern coast, as a prime example.
In 2012, then U.S. secretary of State Hillary Clinton - along with Bill Clinton, who was the UN special envoy to Haiti - oversaw the official opening of Caracol. The industrial park was financed by $224 million US in subsidies from mostly American partners. The factory zone was estimated to provide upward of 60,000 jobs. The biggest employer at the park is Sae-A, a Korean clothing manufacturer that supplies major U.S. retailers like Walmart, the Gap and Old Navy.
"What is happening here in Caracol is already having ripple effects that will create jobs and opportunities far beyond this industrial park," Hillary Clinton said at the opening ceremony, which included film stars Sean Penn and Ben Stiller among its guests.
But in the post-earthquake urgency to get the industrial park open, 450 farmers who relied on the land for subsistence had to be removed from their fertile plots. Some were only given five days' notice before the bulldozers moved in to clear the land on the one-year anniversary of the earthquake.
"It is one of the most heart-wrenching stories you can hear," says Kysseline Chérestal, a Haitian-American lawyer who works for ActionAid, an organization working to end poverty and improve human rights. She and her team interviewed about 150 of the farmers since their displacement.
"I don't mean to be dramatic, but from the perspective of an individual life, it's a horrific situation."
Sae-A currently employs just over 5,000 factory workers - mostly women under age 30 - at minimum wage, which is roughly $5 US per day. Chérestal says a living wage that would provide three square meals a day in Haiti would be at least double that.
The entire Caracol Industrial Park currently employs 5,500 people - far short of the original goal.
"People take these jobs because there are no other options," says Chérestal, who points out that many employees don't last more than a year or two. Some of the women she spoke to took the job out of desperation.
"This is not a job to lift themselves out of poverty. It's just a job that is allowing them to survive right now."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/haiti-shows-how-wealthy-countries-continue-to-cause-disaster-1.3228695
Haiti shows how wealthy countries 'continue to cause disaster'
Workers get paltry wages at foreign firms that 'extract the profits from their labour,' researcher says
Then secretary of state Hillary Clinton, centre, speaks to Haitian President Michel Martelly, right, during the inauguration of the Caracol Industrial Park in 2012. Clinton encouraged foreigners to invest in Haiti but a Canadian researcher is questioning who really benefited from the economic intervention. (Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated Press)
An aid project in Haiti brokered by U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is having unfortunate and unintended consequences, according to new research from a Western University scholar that questions the merits of wealthy countries' economic interventions in the developing world.
Recent PhD graduate Marylynn Steckley spent nearly six years with her young family living in Haiti, both as an aid worker and as a researcher.
"I'm now struggling to see what the good ways of helping are," Steckley says. "Wealthy nations continue to cause disaster, poverty in Haiti. And the path to understanding is looking at how we contribute to that destruction."
Haiti is ranked the most food-insecure country in the Western Hemisphere.
In the wake of the 2010 earthquake that claimed the lives of up to 300,000 people, more than $10 billion was pledged by the international community. Of that, only about $4 billion has been allocated, but not all of it spent.
And of the money that was allocated toward economic development, Steckley says, it tends to benefit the giver more than the receiver.
She cites the Caracol Industrial Park, on Haiti's northern coast, as a prime example.
In 2012, then U.S. secretary of State Hillary Clinton - along with Bill Clinton, who was the UN special envoy to Haiti - oversaw the official opening of Caracol. The industrial park was financed by $224 million US in subsidies from mostly American partners. The factory zone was estimated to provide upward of 60,000 jobs. The biggest employer at the park is Sae-A, a Korean clothing manufacturer that supplies major U.S. retailers like Walmart, the Gap and Old Navy.
"What is happening here in Caracol is already having ripple effects that will create jobs and opportunities far beyond this industrial park," Hillary Clinton said at the opening ceremony, which included film stars Sean Penn and Ben Stiller among its guests.
But in the post-earthquake urgency to get the industrial park open, 450 farmers who relied on the land for subsistence had to be removed from their fertile plots. Some were only given five days' notice before the bulldozers moved in to clear the land on the one-year anniversary of the earthquake.
"It is one of the most heart-wrenching stories you can hear," says Kysseline Chérestal, a Haitian-American lawyer who works for ActionAid, an organization working to end poverty and improve human rights. She and her team interviewed about 150 of the farmers since their displacement.
"I don't mean to be dramatic, but from the perspective of an individual life, it's a horrific situation."
Sae-A currently employs just over 5,000 factory workers - mostly women under age 30 - at minimum wage, which is roughly $5 US per day. Chérestal says a living wage that would provide three square meals a day in Haiti would be at least double that.
The entire Caracol Industrial Park currently employs 5,500 people - far short of the original goal.
"People take these jobs because there are no other options," says Chérestal, who points out that many employees don't last more than a year or two. Some of the women she spoke to took the job out of desperation.
"This is not a job to lift themselves out of poverty. It's just a job that is allowing them to survive right now."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/haiti-shows-how-wealthy-countries-continue-to-cause-disaster-1.3228695