Realizing Layers of Security in Haiti: A Conceptual Re-Think is Needed if Haiti is to Find Post-Earthquake Peace

Articles in this week’s New York Times and Globe and Mail highlighted calls for a massive scaling-up of disaster relief and development efforts in Haiti. However, leaders should be much more critical about the shortfalls of such missions in the past, as Haiti is no stranger to international interventions, in particular at the hands of the United Nations and the US government, and to a lesser extent, Canada. As security is often held to underpin relief and development efforts, policymakers need to reform their view of the provision of physical security and international law needs to reflect this process. Time and time again, Western powers have failed to assist the Haitian people address the wrongs of the past and meet their overall social and economic development goals.[1]

Sadly, it has become commonplace for developed nations to make big pledges when tragedies occur, but seldom are all funds collected to drive development strategies. Only 10% of funds pledged to Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake have arrived in Port au Prince thus far. Core funding is often lumped into ‘security programs’, while so-called ‘soft development’ strategies languish. Soft development aid dollars are often tied up in the activities of foreign NGOs. The amount of NGOs in Haiti is staggering. The presence of so many foreign personnel, who are often unaccountable to the Haitian government or people as a whole, is troubling and potentially destabilizing.…

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Haitians Seeking Refuge: Canada’s Obligations Under International Law

Since the devastating earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, Canadians have opened their hearts and their wallets, raising over $27 million during a recent two-day telethon, for a total of more than $50 million for victims of the Haitian earthquake. The Haitian community in Montreal is particularly sizeable and Quebecers have dispatched medical teams, emergency rescue squads and hundreds of soldiers from the Valcartier base. Canadians seem to feel a sense of unprecedented kinship and solidarity with the Haitian people.

It is little wonder then that phone lines have been ringing off the hook at Immigration Canada, with calls from well-intentioned viewers seeking to alleviate some of the pain and suffering they watch on their TV screens by adopting Haitian orphans. However, despite estimates that more than 50,000 children have become orphans as a result of the quake, many agencies are calling on governments to deliver aid, not adoptions.

While fast-tracking adoptions already approved by the Haitian and Canadian governments may be a humane and logical tactic to support Haiti, additional mass adoptions of children from the earthquake zone may in fact violate international law.  Haitians orphaned by the earthquake do not meet the traditional criteria of Convention Refugees, in that they are not subject to persecution based on their “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”, but there have been calls to expand the definition…

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