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An interesting piece in today's WaPo. I've also heard less positive appraisals of the HNP, but those came from Cité Soleil, where the HNP barely penetrated before the earthquake. Still, it does all...

Rumsfeld, not Cheney. What can I say--I hadn't had my coffee yet.

Of course, that should read "To paraphrase that great sage, Donald Rumsfeld" ... and how often to you get to say that? :D

An interesting piece in the NYT on the communal dynamics at work among Haitian IDPs:

Fighting Starvation, Haitians Share Portions

By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 25, 2010

I think you're rather making my point for me, Tom--which, as you'll remember, had to do with Marc's understandable concerns about the cost-effectiveness of front-line humanitarian agencies and NGOs....

I don't want to continue diverting the discussion away from Haiti, but yes I'm aware of how the Secretariat finances the international staff positions (which account for only 0.4% of all UNRWA staff,...

Yes--but as it happens, none of those things apply to this case.

As for whether the aid community may overpay staff and (even more so) consultants, yes it can be a problem. However, having done...

Well, it could have been mine, had there been any--I was on the international advisory committee for the last UN internal oversight report on UNRWA. Certainly in that case there was no creative...

I can't help but notice a certain irony to this entire "harsh in Haiti" thread. While much of the discussion has focused on overblown coercive measures for dealing with problems of looting and public...

Part of the confusion here was the way in which UNICEF structured its budget, which made it look like less money than was going into programming than was actually the case. Moreover, the egregious...

I think it was more than wishful thinking (as the HDI indicators suggest), but at the same time very, very modest and very fragile progress.

Part of the problem has always been, frankly, national...

...and with that sensible suggestion, back to the original topic:

Canada prepares to host Haiti recovery meeting
By KATHLEEN HARRIS, PARLIAMENTARY BUREAU, QMI AGENCY
Toronto Star
Last Updated:...

As jmm99 so eloquently put it--no comment necessary. Perhaps a mod might want to close the thread before someone gets the impression that the Small Wars Journal has become the Mass Lynching Journal?

Sheesh, Tom--we're talking about an aid-to-civil-powers, post-disaster reconstruction and development effort here. As a general rule, killing and terrorizing large groups of folks isn't what we're...

Rather less than a hundred years ago--by most measures, Nigeria's infant mortality rate is higher than Haiti's.

In any case, unless we're going to take a morally unsustainable Malthusian position...

Deforestation tends to also be an issue of poor access to alternative energy supplies (including sparse rural electrification), land tenure and inequality, education, disposable income and government...

It is really easy to be cynical about the prospects for development in the so-called "third world"--especially if you ignore the actual data on third world development over the last thirty years or...

I think this is a rather difficult policy issue, and I'm not surprised that the government hasn't made a decision yet. Would this policy then apply to all places that suffer humanitarian disaster...

Yes, agreed!

I may be a cynic too, Wilf, but I'm one that also believes that states can occasionally rise beyond self-interest (narrowly-defined) to--on occasion--do the right thing for normative reasons.

It...

As long-term missions go, I would be happy to see us take it on.



There's no doubt that immigration saved Canada from political collapse in 1995, since most immigrants to Quebec vote...

Opening Thread explanation:

Moderators Note

Created to house some recent postings on another thread, which discussed the Haiti-Canada linkage:...

Presumably part of the problem occurs when buildings pancake downwards, leaving a semi-intact roof but several crushed floors below.

UNOSAT has some imagery on the diasaster (most notably,...

Air-dropping pallets (or even even loose bags of some foodstuffs) into secured drop zones can work fine--this is sometimes done by the WFP, for example.

Air-dropping supplies directly onto...

Haiti: Earthquake Situation Report #6

Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Date: 17 Jan 2010



full report here

UK Channel 4 has a good short video report on the security challenges of delivering assistance (first video on the page).

Also, from DoD:

Security Role in Haiti to Gain Prominence, Keen Says
...