The casualty figures from Haiti are startling. The dead alone may surpass the '05 Tsunami and is looking like it's three or four times as bad as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. A third of the country are homeless, even more without utilities including water.
I've heard and read some nearly equally startling things about Haiti recently from people who seem to be making an excuse not to care or give about this disaster. I can only guess what lies underneath these kinds of statements. I'm not trying to start a spitball fight here, but it's important to counter such sentiments when they arise. "Donor fatigue" can be bad enough on its own without memes being floated that vaguely suggest Haiti is partly to blame for this catastrophe. More on the flip...
I'd also like to briefly pitch another way to help Haiti, that should be really easy: Soles4Souls, which collects gently-used footwear and sends them to people in need. They are doing a Haiti drive right now. There are dropoff locations everywhere and you can start your own shoe drive. Amazingly, I found one right next to where I shop and could drop off a half dozen pairs of my kids' still-good but-outgrown shoes.
"We've poured all this money into Haiti already." "Their government is so corrupt."
Haiti's our neighbor. We have close ties to Haiti by both history -- they were the second country, after the United States, to overthrow colonial tyranny by a revolution of the people -- and by proximity. Haitians are a part of the fabric of this country, and Americans part of Haiti's culture. And yes, I believe we have a special responsibility to our close neighbors.
For those who insist on this point: if your next door neighbor was an unemployed ne'er do well who constantly borrows things from you and can never get his act together, and his house was flattened by an earthquake, one hopes you would nevertheless be willing to dig him out from the rubble, give him water, clothe him, and get him back on his feet until, say, his family were able to do so. It is not for any person to judge the humanity of another but to respond to it.
And even if you think your neighbor is an idiot, wouldn't you dig out your neighbor's kids, who have merely the bad luck of being born to your neighbor? Or are you going to wait for somebody else to show up?
"Their government is so bad, if they're not prepared it's the Haitian people's fault."
Let's ignore the historical reasons why Haiti has suffered from bad governance. We can even omit the relative ineffectiveness of the government recently. There's a major difference here from, say, Indonesia in 2005-06. There, the national government was intact and was able to coordinate international relief; the same with Thailand and Sri Lanka. The devastation was immense but was limited to coastal areas. Families and other government units were intact in other parts of the country.
In Haiti, the government is gone. The quake happened midday; many of the government officials who have worked the hardest for Haiti in recent years were killed. The infrastructure for organizing is gone. The quake hit most of the most populace areas of the country; there's little capacity for backup. As a percentage of the population killed, outside of wars, this may be the worst catastrophe a society has undergone in modern history. As a percentage of the educated (doctors, teachers, government workers, small business people) the toll may be even worse.
This has NOTHING to do with whether Haiti had a good government or not. It's been wiped out.
"It's just another disaster." (Yes, I've heard this in conversation.)
To put this in perspective: the equivalent number of dead in the US as a percentage of the population would be six million. There would be as many as 12 million gravely injured people requiring medical attention. Over 100 million Americans would be homeless. Over 200 million people would be cut off from water and electricity supplies. Can any government, anywhere, cope with that? Could any people, no matter what their infrastructure and wealth before the devastation?