Nearly two weeks later: The policy debate begins

Now that the Haitian government has decided that the earthquake has moved from the rescue to the debris clearance phase, news attention has turned away, to some extent, from the individual suffering of people in the disaster, and has moved more toward longer-term policy questions. A typically-snarky satirical piece in The Onion seems to poke fun at North Americans' attitudes toward--and knowledge of--Haiti, although it also, at the end, drives home the point that the United States hasn't really done as much as it could for Haiti; as I mentioned in an earlier post, the U.S. foreign aid budget for Haiti is rather small compared with the overall federal budget, and is not large compared to what we give to our largest recipients. 

Click to enlarge. Table from the US Federal budget via http://diplopundit.blogspot.com/2009/11/snapshot-top-10-recipients-of-us.html


Even if the United States increased its aid by a factor of five, Haiti would not be in the top ten list for FY 2010. I could very well be wrong on this point, and welcome corrections. But we cannot say that, in the past, the US has been a hugely generous provider of aid. Indeed, in coverage of a major donor conference in Montreal, the New York Times notes the size of the Haitian community in Montreal and the Canadian's claim that Canada, per capita, provides more aid to Haiti than any other donor.


Foreign Policy magazine maintains a useful web site, and there are two articles worthy of note. One is a simplistic treatment of where the next big earthquakes in the world may strike. The other, much more useful article, suggests that social media--Twitter, in particular--coveys little information of any particular news value--that the hashtag #Haiti yields numerous statements of sympathy and solidarity, but very little news. The article's author suggests that established news outlets are using Twitter as a complement to their news product, but not as a source of supplemental information. Indeed, how can it? Twitter is a burst of 140 characters at a time--not much depth there. Twitter may be useful for communicating with other survivors, and for sharing information, but I wonder what cell phone penetration is into the Haitian market given the relative poverty of the country. According to the CIA World Factbook, Haiti's "telecommunications infrastructure is among the least developed in Latin America and the Caribbean; domestic facilities barely adequate; international facilities slightly better; mobile-cellular telephone services are expanding rapidly due, in part, to the introduction of low-cost GSM phones in 2006" Still, no more than 30% of the population appears to have a cell phone, and the number may be less. While some rescues were initiated because of text messaging, it's unlikely that all but the more affluent will have  access to mobile phones. Interestingly, there are far more mobile subscribers than land-line subscribers in Haiti, as is typical of other developing countries where it is much easier to expand access through wireless than through landlines. Even the much-repeated story of a person surviving in the rubble of the Hotel Montana through the use of an iPhone app for first aid is about an American--not a Haitian--and is about a phone app, not the phone network.  Still, this Foreign Policy article concludes with a selection of solid sources of information in the Twittersphere, which may well be useful.


With this in mind, Wired magazine has jumped in with its interesting new Haiti Rewired blog. I fear that this will be the usual "gee whiz" that has made Wired the Popular Science of the information age (flying cars! Everything with an IP address!), but a cursory look at this blog suggests that, if nothing else, interesting ideas will be debated, such as this comment on "hackable" but safe housing.