Response

The attempts to send aid to Haiti sound like a confused, misguided mess. In some ways, the recovery efforts were an even bigger disaster than the earthquake itself. Katz’s observations while in Haiti combined with the background he gives, further illustrates the point made in last week’s reading: aid and human rights work is a business. The fact that so many countries were able to pledge billions of dollars, that people in the U.S. were able to send money “for Haiti”, that celebrities were involved in the fundraising process, and yet very little of the promised/raised money seems to have actually needed it—and to whom it was promised. It wasn’t even given directly to the Haitian government because they weren’t trusted to handle it correctly. Fears about Haitian officials’ “corruption” is the reason given, but are they really more corrupt than other government officials, or is it just a perception? Katz seems to be saying it’s just a perception, and why does that perception exist? How much of it is about race and class? Katz points out that large sums of money were spent in the U.S., and still more went to just keeping NGOs running. Wouldn’t it make sense to just eliminate the NGOs completely, since giving aid money directly to the government reduces waste and gets things done faster?

            No-one in Haiti, aside from American celebrities, journalists, or government officials, seems to have been taken seriously at all. Rather than trying to find representatives for Haiti from within the country itself, to let Haitians speak for themselves, coverage of the relief efforts was dominated by people like Sean Penn and Bill Clinton. While they may have had good intentions, doesn’t focusing on them reinforce the image of Haiti as a country and Haitians as people who need help, as being incapable of thinking for it/themselves. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it certainly seems that way. If Haiti wasn’t generally thought of as a country in need of help anyway, would so much money have been pledged so quickly? If a disaster of that magnitude had hit a Western/First World country, would the response have been the same? And if it had, would the pledged money actually have gotten to where it needed to go, and would the people of that country actually have been consulted about their needs/priorities? And would long-term rebuilding efforts that benefited the country itself more than other, wealthier countries have been implemented?

            Where does trans-national feminism fit into this story? Is it going back to Mohanty’s discussion of the Third World Woman? Women occupy a very small space in Katz’s book, but his goal was to give an overall picture of the relief effort and how it went wrong. And yet, I think that could have been done with a broader focus. How did the earthquake and its aftermath affect women differently? How did gendered expectations play a role? Aid workers aren’t tourists, but there’s a similarity between them because both arrive with their expectations already in place. Yes, aid was needed, but how were the attitudes and expectations of aid workers influenced by already seeing Haiti was a place that needed help long before the earthquake?