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Haiti: Aid racket increases suffering | Green Left Weekly

It is more than a month since the January 12 earthquake that laid waste to Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and thrusting millions of people into desperate conditions.

But according to the US government, Haitians have a lot to be thankful for. On February 12, the US Ambassador to Haiti Ken Merten boasted to the press: “In terms of humanitarian aid delivery … frankly, it’s working really well, and I believe that this will be something that people will be able to look back on in the future as a model.”

What are the facts? the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in a February 12 statement: “Over 1.1 million people are homeless, many of them still living under sheets and cardboard in makeshift camps. the government of Haiti estimates that at least 300,000 people were injured during the quake.”

So far, the relief effort has only managed to provide 270,000 people with basic shelters like tents. More than 1 million people still have little access to food and water and have to scrape by to find sustenance.

Even worse, because the relief operation is so inefficient, Haitians report that some of the food spends so long at the airport it is rotten by the time it gets to the hungry.

On February 7, thousands of Haitians marched in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville to protest their desperate circumstances and the failure of aid delivery.

Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF) summed up the grave situation in a February 11 statement: “It’s hard to believe that four weeks after the quakes, so many people still live under bedsheets in camps and on the street …

“One can only wonder how there could be such a huge gap between the promise of a massive financial influx into the country and the slow pace of distribution.”

Some NGOs, such as Partners in Health, have done and are doing amazing work to provide services for quake victims. But the catastrophe in Haiti has revealed the worst aspects of the US government and the NGO aid industry.

The US has used its “relief” operation to disguise a military occupation of Haiti, intended to prevent a flood of refugees reaching the US, impose even greater sweatshop development and signal to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean that it aims to reassert its power in the region.

The NGO-centred aspect of the US response is an important part of its strategy. instead of aiding the Haitian state and building up its capacity to handle the crisis, the US is funneling US$379 million in aid through its own agencies and then through NGOs.

Associated Press said on January 27: “Each American dollar roughly breaks down like this: 42 cents for disaster assistance, 33 cents for U.S. military aid, nine cents for food, nine cents to transport the food, five cents for paying Haitian survivors for recovery efforts, just less than one cent to the Haitian government …”

The big NGOs, which are getting the bulk of the money, see the crisis as an opportunity to raise funds and their profile. Thus, instead of a centralised relief effort, something only a sovereign state could provide, the NGOs are competing with one another, literally branding areas they serve with their logos.

On January 22, the British Telegraph quoted British medical journal The Lancet as saying that NGOs are “jostling for position, each claiming that they are doing the most for earthquake survivors … the situation in Haiti is chaotic, devastating and anything but coordinated.

“Polluted by the internal power politics and the unsavory characteristics seen in many big corporations, large aid agencies can be obsessed with raising money through their own appeal efforts.

“Media coverage as an end in itself is too often an aim of their activities. Marketing and branding have too high a profile.

“Perhaps worst of all, relief efforts in the field are sometimes competitive, with little collaboration between agencies, including smaller, grassroots charities that may have better networks in affected counties, and so are well placed to immediately implement emergency relief.”

The NGOs are businesses in their own right. They sport well-paid bureaucrats that raise money from the disastrous impact of neoliberalism around the world.

They are not accountable to the local populations they supposedly serve, but instead to the international donors that fund them — most often, corporate-backed formations like George Soros’s Open Society Institute and capitalist governments.

Moreover, given that NGOs can pay local leaders more than either the government or social movements, they often recruit people who would traditionally lead leftist movements.

They play a role very similar to the one that missionary religious institutions played in the earlier history of empire. They provide moral cover — a civilising mission to help the hapless heathens — for the powers that are plundering the society.

And just as religious institutions justified imperial war, many NGOs, abandoning their traditional standpoint of neutrality in conflicts, have become advocates of military intervention.

Nowhere is this pattern clearer than in Haiti.

In the 1980s, the US convinced the dictator Baby Doc Duvalier to implement a neoliberal development plan that Haitians call “the plan of death”. this dropped tariffs on US agriculture, encouraged sweatshop development and opened tourist resorts for the international elite.

The plan increased absolute poverty by 60%.

But the Haitian poor rose up and overthrew the dictatorship in 1986. They elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide president in 1990 on a platform of anti-neoliberal reform.

Aristide was overthrown in a US-backed coup in 1991, with the coup regime carrying out a reign of terror against his supporters. Aristide was again elected in 2000, and overthrown by another US-backed coup in 2004.

Haiti now has the most neoliberal economy in the region.

The US, other powers and international donors responded to the subsequent collapse of the state by funding NGOs. Soon, the World Bank reported that there were 10,000 NGOs in the country, doing everything from trash collection to health care and food provision in a chaotic patchwork of services that have replaced the incapacitated state.

These NGOs are non-governmental only in name. the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other similar government-funded agencies from other countries provide 70% of NGO funding.

The NGOs have proliferated in lockstep with the collapse in the Haitian standard of living.

When the “plan of death” was implemented in Haiti, undercutting peasant agriculture, it flooded the market with subsidised US products and caused a food crisis. Peasants became dependent on food aid.

USAID funded CARE International to feed the impoverished peasants. the NGO began to distribute US crops as food aid, during both bad and good harvests, further undermining Haitian peasants’ ability to compete for the market.

Often, the food aid was taken by local elites and sold on the market, with the CARE brand still affixed to the packaging.

The US also manipulated NGOs to build political opposition to any reform movement. In the run-up to its second coup against Aristide in 2004, the US enforced an embargo on Aristide’s government for alleged electoral manipulations and escalated funding for anti-Aristide NGOs.

Many, if not most, of the NGOs that supported the coup were on the US payroll.

In 1935, retired US Major General Smedley Butler famously concluded that his role at the head of the US military had been to serve as a “racketeer for capitalism”. the same could just as easily be said of many NGOs involved in humanitarian aid today — it is a racket for empire.

Haiti: Aid racket increases suffering | Green Left Weekly


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Posted by - May 8, 2010 at 1:00 am

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Hope survives even as Haitians struggle to rebuild

People are anxious to work and ready to rebuild their country Join the discussion

Additional insights and behind-the-scenes excerpts are posted on my blog today. Join the discussion about this column series at http://blogs. post-trib.com/davich/

gallery online

To see more photos from Jerry’s trip to Haiti, visit www.post-trib.com.

To help

Living Hope Church in Merrillville is hosting a Haiti relief fund for its sponsored churches and volunteer work in that country. to donate, visit www.lhcweb.org or call 769-3601.

Since the quake, she found a security guard job with the United Nations, and she’s thrilled to have it. but she has a more pressing need.

“Excuse me,” she politely told Christian Rath in her native Creole language, a mixture of French and West African. “Would you happen to know where I could find a tent to live in?”

Rath, a deacon with Living Hope Church in Merrillville, told her he will search for a tent and return later in the day.

“Thank you very much,” she told Rath, who was visiting Haiti for the third time to inspect damaged churches there.

Weekend before last, I traveled with Rath to Port-au-Prince to see the devastation first-hand and up-close in a 28-hour whirlwind tour. my Sunday column set the stage for today’s column, where I promised to explore what prompted Northwest Indiana residents to donate to Haiti relief funds — hope or hopelessness?

In Haiti, I met dozens of residents with different stories to tell, just like here. but the stereotype is someone such as Vincent, a middle-aged Haitian man who approached Rath and me at the airport, begging for money.

“You help me?” he asked in broken English.

All I had left was spare change in my backpack, which I gave him after I tried conversing, to no avail.

He wandered away counting the change. I wondered away how many Vincent-types approached me during my visit. not too many actually, considering the thousands of Haitians I encountered.

Instead, I met more Marie France-types who worked for a living yet also politely asked for help. or Haitians such as Shirley, a hotel desk worker who lost a few relatives in the quake.

Shirley, 27, has dreams of traveling to the United States someday to attend college and get a better-paying job. her mouth said so, in broken English, but her eyes didn’t believe she could pull it off.

During our chat in the middle of the night at the hotel front desk, we determined she should start a college fund of sorts, saving money to someday use for a university in this country. She smiled politely but, again, her eyes didn’t believe the plan would ever become a reality. And I couldn’t blame her.

Before I left for Haiti, I studied media articles on TV and in print regarding that country since the quake.

Most seemed to focus on the hopelessness of Haiti, I thought. And yes, the poverty, despair and desperation were obvious and impossible to ignore.

But what I didn’t expect to find was all the hope, faith and even joy in the Haitians.

David Wagner, founder of Builders International, the charitable builders group Rath works with, summed it up best while we drove through the slums. “Too many people only see the doughnut hole,” he said, pointing out the piles of rubble, the collapsed buildings, and a refugee camp’s handmade sign in bright red lettering: “WE NEED HELP.”

“But too often they don’t see the doughnut,” he said, pointing out the happy smiles, the bustling workers, and faith-based hope in the eyes of many.

This prompted me to wonder which one touches the hearts of outsiders more, or prompts them to help others at all — the victims’ hope or the hopelessness of their situation?

For me, it’s hope. but I didn’t know this until I met Shirley, Marie and dozens of other Haitians struggling to survive in the slum of the world.

Rush to judgment?

Before I left for Haiti, several readers contacted me, asking me to investigate “where all our money is going down there,” as one told me in a huff. they have a point. Billions of dollars and millions of pounds of food and medical supplies have been pumped into that country these past three months. but to where exactly? And to whom?

Plus, it’s no secret Haiti is infamous for rampant graft, bribes and corruption. The country also has been raped, pillaged or plundered for centuries by other countries, including the United States.

Still, is that reason enough not to donate to myriad relief funds since the quake? For me, yes, and I wrote about this a few weeks ago, catching hell from many angry readers.

But I’ve since changed my mind after meeting some of the people who’ve been receiving relief aid. Collectively, they put a face on what was a faceless relief fund.

“Until you visit here, or other countries in similar situations, you really have no right to pass judgment,” said Wade Gayler of Salt Lake City, who visited Haiti on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I bumped into Gayler at a Home Depot-like warehouse in Port-au-Prince, loaded with (albeit overpriced) rebuilding and construction tools.

“The Haitians I met all craved to work and to begin rebuilding their country,” said a volunteer from Christian Service International Ministries, based in Muncie.

This was a common theme among volunteers, missionaries, and even businessmen I met in Haiti.

“It’s an intellectual ignorance based on nothing,” explained one Northwest Indiana businessman who conducted a $500,000 deal under the shade of a tree, not an office.

Just like that blind man who feels parts of the proverbial elephant, thinking he knows what it is, we too often believe we see the big picture and of course we don’t.

And just as Haiti is a so-called “developing country,” most outsiders (including me) have developing perceptions of that country.

Haitian officials are expected to ask for another $11 billion to rebuild their country. And although relief aid fundraising may have waned, it’s still a possibility.

I’m not blindly endorsing every relief agency. however, I can vouch for the relief aid I witnessed from Assemblies of God World Missions, Builders International and Living Hope Church.

I also watched Rath track down a new tent for Marie France from a Convoy of Hope warehouse, and return to her workplace to surprise her. but she had already left for “home,” whatever that means.

Rath left the tent with her Christian co-workers, reminding them that if she doesn’t get it, “you will have to answer to God,” he said in French, pointing to the sky.

Finally, I may have finally paid my penance for not donating to a relief fund. before I checked out of my hotel, I gave Shirley $25 with a scribbled note: “This is the start of your college scholarship fund.”

Will she ever make it to a college here? I don’t know. but that’s not the point.

Hope survives even as Haitians struggle to rebuild


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Posted by - April 26, 2010 at 10:00 pm

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Haiti needs everything, earthquake eyewitness tells Rotary members

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* Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

* about 54 percent of its more than 9 million residents live in abject poverty.

* Haiti is slightly smaller than Maryland and shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

* The population is 95 percent black and 80 percent Roman Catholic.

* French and Creole are the official languages.

* about half the population practices voodoo.

* The nation has four airports with paved runways and is favored by Columbian drug dealers for routing cocaine shipments, in part because of widespread corruption.

Source: CIA World Factbook

Several local organizations are accepting donations or asking for volunteers to help with the relief effort:

*New Salem Baptist Church in Soddy Daisy, Tenn. is accepting donations of medical supplies through Saturday to be sent to a medical clinic operated by Global Outreach Haiti in the village of TiTanyen, 15 miles north of Port-au-Prince. The list of items needed include: bandages and surgical tape of all types; antibiotic creams; Sulfadene or Silvadene burn cremes; supplies to assist open reduction of broken bones; surgical instruments of any type; slings; ace bandages; IV fluids; IV supplies (needles, tubing, etc); non-absorbent and absorbent sutures 3/0 and 4/0; gloves (sterile and non-sterile); splints; casting materials; portable x-ray machine (digital if possible); surgical lights, headlights, etc.; linens, blankets; disposable sheets, pads, etc. for more information, please contact Rev. Alan Rogers at new Salem Baptist Church, 423-842-3078.

* Signal Mountain Bible Church, 4872 Shackleford Ridge Road, Signal Mountain will hold a 1-mile walk and 5k run at 9 a.m. Saturday to raise money for Haiti. Race materials and late registration will be from 7:30 – 8:30 a.m. at the front of the church. Entry forms are available at www.smbible.com or at the church. Entry must be postmarked no later than Sunday for pre-registration. Entry fee is $15.

*On Feb. 12, there will be a container at the SCORE office on Ringgold rd to collect donations of canned goods, clothing, medicines, and other items to ship to Haiti. it will be sent directly to Haiti by Fed ex. Anyone wishing to collect items to send to Haiti please take them to SCORE international, 5512 Ringgold Road, East Ridge, TN 37412 on Feb. 12. Items needed: Canned food, clothes (summer clothes for children), medicines and medical supplies, water, generators, personal hygiene items and school supplies.

* Haiti Gospel Mission, a faith-based organization that does education and medical missionary work in Haiti, www.haitigospelmission.org.

* The Greater Chattanooga Area Chapter of the American Red Cross is accepting contributions to the organization’s Disaster Relief Fund that will go to Haiti relief efforts. Donate online at www.chattanoogaredcross.org/donate or send them to the local Red Cross chapter office at 801 McCallie Ave., Chattanooga, TN 37403.

* Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti, call 495-1122 or visit http://cnphaiti.org

* Score International, call 423-894-7111 or visit https://scoreinternational.org/give. Specify Help Haitians Rapid Response.

* American Haitian Foundation, checks can be mailed to: 3602 Anderson Pike, Signal Mountain, TN 37377 or visit www.americanhaitianfoundation.org.

* The Salvation Army is accepting monetary donations via www.salvationarmyusa.org, 1-800-SAL-ARMY and postal mail at: The Salvation Army World Service Office, International Disaster Relief Fund, P.O. Box 630728, Baltimore, MD 21263-0728; or donors can text the word “HAITI” to 52000 to automatically give $10 to the Salvation Army’s relief efforts. Note that the money will go directly to the Salvation Army’s World Service Office.

*The Center for Rural Development of Milot Foundation (CRUDEM) is accepting support for the Hospital Sacre Coeur, a hospital in the north of Haiti. The foundation, based in Ludlow, Maine, was set up in 1968. for more information or to donate, go to www.crudem.org.

* The Samaritan Center will host a matching gift campaign for the disaster relief efforts in Haiti. since Hurricane Katrina, that account has grown to $8,000, and the Samaritan Center is going to use that money to match any gifts that come in for Haitian disaster relief. Visit www.thesamaritancenter.net or call 423-238-7777.

* Habitat for Humanity International is gathering funds for rebuilding efforts. Area residents can give through www.habitat.org or send donations to: HFH of Greater Chattanooga, 1201 E. Main St., Chattanooga, TN 37408. Please note that the donations are for Haiti.

* Bright School students will decorate wooden bells which will be sold for $5, proceeds going to the Children’s Nutrition Program in Haiti.

* Vision Ministries of Chattanooga, a local church with a multicultural congregation, including Haitians, is accepting donations to coordinate with other organizations. To donate, visit www.visionministries.webs.com or call 423-475-5563.

* Bi-Lo Charities launched a donation program where shoppers can donate to the American Red Cross to assist those in Haiti and, in turn, they will match customer donations up to $25,000. The in-store donation program continues through Feb. 9 at stores in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

* AMG International, visit www.amginternational.org

* The Jean Cadet Restavek Foundation provides direct relief and education opportunities for children in restavek (children who work as household servants because their parents can’t afford to support them). it also funds advocates for these children throughout Haiti and raises global awareness of the system, which takes advantage of the poorest of the poor. Donations can be made at www.restavekfreedom.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donate.start&destination=G or individuals can help raise relief funds by forming a group and inviting friends and family to help: www.restavekfreedom.org/event/restavek.

* Rotary International has set up a fund that anyone can donate to. The fund will be directed by Rotarians who will work with local Rotary Clubs and districts, as well as emergency relief agencies, to meet the most pressing needs of people in affected areas. Anyone can make a $5 donation by texting ROTARY to 90999. or visit www.Rotary.org to make larger donations.

* Local artist Larry Swetman will donate all the proceeds from his art sales to the relief effort in Haiti. Visit his Web site at www.larryswetman.com.

Volunteers may travel to Haiti with Score International for $1,200, which includes airfare, meals, lodging, supplies and ground transportation overseas.

Dates include: Jan. 30-Feb. 4 and every Saturday through Thursday for the following six weeks.

For more information, contact Trey Bailey at trey@scoreinternational.org or call 423-894-7111.

TIPS FOR CHARITABLE GIVING:

* Research charities before you contribute. Use sources such as the Better Business Bureau (www.give.org) and GuideStar (www.guidestar.org).

* be wary of telephone solicitors asking for contributions.

* Never give your credit card, debit card or bank account information to a telephone solicitor.

* if a tax deduction is important to you, make sure the organization has a tax deductible 501(c)3 status with the IRS.

* Watch out for organizations that use questionable techniques such as sending unordered merchandise or invoices after you have turned them down for a donation.

* Citizens can file a complaint against a charitable organization at www.sos.ga.gov/securities.

* for more information, call Georgia Secretary of State’s Securities and Business Regulation Division at 404-656-3920.

Source: Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp

* The Department of Homeland Security set up a system to document all offers of aid for Haiti from local and state governments so they can be properly utilized as the disaster response effort progresses.

* Civic groups, businesses and individuals are being asked to submit their offers of donations to the Center for International Disaster Information at www.cidi.org.

Haiti needs everything, earthquake eyewitness tells Rotary members


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Posted by - March 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm

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Gov.-Gen. tells Haitians they 'are not alone'

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Gov.-Gen. Michaelle Jean on Monday called the destruction in the town where she was born “unbelievable,” but expressed optimism that the Haitian people can rebuild their quake-shattered country.

“We are here today to tell you that Haitians are not alone,” Jean told reporters at a news conference with Haitian President Rene Preval.

The Governor-General’s remarks came as she kicked off a two-day trip to Haiti to offer her support for Haitians and the Canadians assisting in the relief effort.

After being greeted at the airport by Preval, Jean travelled by helicopter to the National Palace, where she met with the Haitian president and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

“It’s as if the city has been bombarded. the magnitude of destruction is unbelievable,” said Jean, adding that she was anxious and impatient ahead of the trip.

“The images that we received in Canada with the disaster were just unbearable, but already what I see is people really trying to overcome that incredible ordeal. I was amazed to see how many people were on the streets.”

The Governor-General said Canada is ready to support the reconstruction plan developed by the Haitian government.

“There was a plan, there was a national strategy ready for sustainable development and to fight poverty in Haiti. and I believe that already, even though the circumstances have changed and the situation is more difficult than it was a year ago, something is there,” she said.

“I believe it is feasible (to rebuild). It takes vision. Haiti’s not alone. We’ve heard Canada say it and we’ve heard the international community say it, and we will support that plan.”

The Jan. 12 quake left more than 200,000 people dead and more than a million homeless. Although there have been small signs of progress in the almost two months since the disaster, many of the capital’s residents continue to take refuge in makeshift tent cities.

The Canadian government has allocated $555 million over five years in aid for Haiti, making it the second largest recipient of Canadian foreign aid, after Afghanistan.

Since the quake, the government has pledged also to match at least $128 million in individual donations to an earthquake relief fund.

Jean was born in Port-au-Prince, but her family fled to Canada to escape the brutal regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier when she was 11.

All the living members of Jean’s immediate family in Haiti survived the quake, but the godmother of her daughter Marie-Eden died in the disaster.

On Monday, Jean once again walked the streets of her native country — this time surrounded by plainclothes RCMP officers and television cameras.

There were echoes of her childhood as she visited the Cathedrale Episcopale, the church where she was baptized. After leaving a wreath amid the crumbled ruins, the Governor General took a chunk of the church with her as a keepsake.

To commemorate International Women’s Day, Jean addressed a women’s rally at the ministry of the status of women and women’s rights.

“Women of Haiti, the entire world knows that you are the pillars of your society,” said Jean, alternating between English, French and Creole.

“It is women who have to find the food and water, while caring for the children and the survivors . . . and it is the women who are the most subject to violence, including sexual violence. we must demand that women’s dignity be respected.”

Dressed in olive and khaki military-style fatigues, Jean then danced on stage with some of the women at the rally. in the crowd, a number of women wore T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “Many women fell, but we will persevere. Haiti will not perish.”

Jean later travelled to the town of Leogane, where she thanked Canadian troops who have been assisting with the relief efforts. the military has begun to draw down its operations in the country, and is expected to have all its troops withdrawn by mid-April.

“You’ve demonstrated not just your courage, but your strength of spirit,” said Jean. You’re a source of pride to the country you represent.”

To cap the day, Jean briefly toured a camp for homeless people in Leogane, making her the first Canadian dignitary to visit such a camp in Haiti since the quake.

On Tuesday, Jean heads to Jacmel, the seaside town where her mother was born, and where the Governor General spent much of her childhood.

Jean was accompanied by her husband, Jean Daniel Lafond. her daughter, who was adopted from Jacmel, did not make the trip.

Gov.-Gen. tells Haitians they 'are not alone'


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Posted by - March 11, 2010 at 7:00 am

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Commission starts preparing plans for Haiti’s rebirth

In a loft of architectural offices, a map of greater Port-au-Prince promises a reordering of the country’s historic capital, overtaken long ago by sprawl and slums and struck last month by a cataclysmic earthquake.

“Expressway” is etched along the city’s winding seaboard. “New Housing Area” is written over a swath of undeveloped land far from the detritus of downtown. And “Debris” is written in several spots where it is to be put to constructive use.

Presiding over the map, and over the massive reconstruction effort that will define the country for generations, is a Haitian-born Howard University graduate who serves as Haiti’s tourism minister.

Working out of spare space far from his destroyed downtown offices, Patrick Delatour must sell a future for Haiti to his own people and an audience of international donors, who will help fund an urban rebirth starting from virtually zero.

“This,” he said, looking out the window as his police driver navigated the swells of a ramshackle back alley, “is urban development without urbanism, architecture without architects, engineering without engineers.”

Although the international response to the Jan. 12 earthquake was swift, the international role in reconstruction is still taking shape, slowed by the scale of the humanitarian crisis and freighted by the often prickly relationship between the Western hemisphere’s poorest country and the foreign actors who have loomed so large in its history.

The earthquake has spurred talk of remaking not only the capital and the country, but those complicated ties between Haiti and the rest of the world. Foreign governments, concerned about corruption, have long channeled much of their aid through nongovernmental organizations. That arrangement, some Haitians say, has stunted the Haitian government’s own development and given the NGOs an outsize role that comes with little accountability for the country’s persistent poverty.

Since the earthquake, foreign government and international organizations have been trying to send a different message, noting, at almost every opportunity, the role that the Haitian government has played in the rescue and relief operations and the leading role that it will play in the reconstruction of the country.

Next month in New York, the international community’s commitment to Haiti’s reconstruction will face its first big test. At a meeting of donor nations and international organizations, the Haitian government is to present its preliminary reconstruction plan, which it hopes will set the stage for a large and lasting commitment by the rest of the world.

Even before he knows precisely what sort of help his country will receive, Delatour has been talking to, among others, the French government and a number of American universities about providing technical assistance in planning and other disciplines critical to this early phase of the reconstruction effort.

Still, he said, Haiti’s reconstruction must be shaped by the Haitian government and the Haitian people. “I’m confident in Haiti’s ability to offer the leadership that is necessary.”

Commission starts preparing plans for Haiti's rebirth


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