Skip to footer

Where does Haiti stand three years after its 7.0 earthquake?

After billions of dollars in aid spent to help Haiti 'build back better' from its devastating earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, hundreds of thousands are still without homes.

3. What role is the government playing?

Alan Diaz/AP
President Michel Martelly talks to reporters during a news conference, in this Dec. 10, 2012, photo, in North Miami Beach, Fla.

  • By Ezra Fieser Correspondent

After a postponed, controversial general election, Michel Martelly, a musician-turned-politician, took office as president in May 2011. Political turmoil followed – including five months without a prime minister – leaving the government sidelined from the reconstruction process. 

Just 10 percent of the $6 billion in aid has gone to the government. Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe recently told reporters that routing aid money to NGOs “weakened our institutions.”

That may be changing. The government and NGOs say they are working together more closely. “In 2010, there was very little [government] engagement,” Mr. Pugh says. “We see more capacity at the ministry level.… They’re taking an active leadership role.” 

"No country will get out of poverty living on charity," President Martelly's administration told The Christian Science Monitor. "True, Haiti still needs help, but Haitians need … jobs and sustainable development." 

3 of 4
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.