![]() ![]() The group felt a divine call to intervene without authorization by the Haitian state in order to save the children, some of whom still have living parents. The group claims it was rescuing children from the chaos of postquake conditions and was taking them to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic where they would be adopted. ![]() The struggles of the Government of Haiti to protect its citizens and assert its sovereignty are no better demonstrated than by the actions of an American missionary group recently charged with child trafficking. Armed gang members who had been imprisoned have reportedly returned to slums they once ruled to reassert their sovereign power. Some of these escapees undoubtedly orchestrated the destabilization of democracy and security in Haiti in the 1990s and in 2004. Thousands of former prisoners are currently at large. The earthquake damaged the national penitentiary. military forces are currently attempting to restore order and provide humanitarian relief, security remains of paramount concern. Many of these individuals were killed during the earthquake, and others are still missing.Īlthough additional UN and U.S. Since the political upheaval of 2004 following Aristide’s second ouster from the presidency, thousands of UN military peacekeepers, international police, and international and local staffers have worked to arrest crime and promote security, much as was the case in the period following the restoration of democracy in 1994. While the abbreviated tenure of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, initially raised hopes of peace and security in the nation, his ouster by military coup in 1991 and three subsequent years of repression thwarted those aspirations. Since the ouster of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, the Government of Haiti has had only limited capacity to protect its citizens and has struggled to establish security apparatuses that operate transparently and are accountable to Haitian citizens. ![]() Other parallels that raise the uncanny specter of déjà vu are the lack of donor coordination, widespread frustration with the distribution of humanitarian resources, and the escalation of violence among the internally displaced.ĭemocratic Insecurities was authored by Erica James, associate professor of anthropology at MIT and member of CIS. Nonetheless, the physical and psychosocial aftershocks have created eerie parallels to events analyzed in this book-from accusations that Haitian culture and religious practices are responsible for this tragedy and hamper efforts to remedy it to the outpouring of concern for Haitian victims and the influx of aid to the nation. ![]() The scale and nature of the recent devastation are unprecedented. The fate of most of the poor pro-democracy activists who shared with me their lives of suffering and resilience remains unknown. A few in positions of power, wealth, and security have survived. As of this writing I have had little word of the fate of the people with whom I worked. Current estimates are that 80 percent of the capital has been destroyed. Between 19 I worked with survivors of human rights abuses from the 1991-94 coup years and studied the interveners that attempted to rehabilitate them as part of my project analyzing the role of humanitarian and development assistance in postconflict reconstruction. The epicenter of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake was mere kilometers southwest of the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where the ethnographic research discussed in this book was conducted. On January 12, 2010, as this book entered the final stages of production, Haiti was struck with a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, the latest in a long series of catastrophes that have afflicted the nation and its people. The excerpt was reprinted with permission from University of California Press. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |