Starvation is Agonizing--March 2021
"Starvation is agonizing and degrading. You lose control of your bowels. Your skin peels off, your hair falls out, you hallucinate and you may go blind from lack of vitamin A. While you waste away, your body cannibalizes itself: It consumes its own muscles, even the heart.
".... because children who are starving don’t cry or even frown. Instead, they are eerily calm; they appear apathetic, often expressionless. A body that is starving doesn’t waste energy on tears."
Nick Kristof
New York Times
January 2021
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Brian Concannon wrote an excellent article in 2008 explaining Haiti's food crisis. He compared Haiti's food crisis to the "great famine" in Ireland in the mid-1800s.
"Haiti has been in the news lately, for people eating cookies made of salt, butter and brown dirt to hold off starvation. Like Ireland’s Great Famine, Haiti’s hunger is part natural disaster, but also partly man-made.
"For decades, the World Bank and the Inter-America Development Bank (IDB) propped up Haitian dictators with generous loans. The notorious “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” -- Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier-- received almost half of Haiti’s current outstanding loans. The Duvaliers used the money to buy warm fur coats and fast cars, and to fund the brutal Tonton Macoute death squads. In return, the international community, especially the United States, received a reliable vote against Fidel Castro in the United Nations and the Organization of American States.
"The Haitian people received very little from these loans. Since 1980, when Haiti started receiving the Bank’s help in earnest, it’s per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has shrunk by 38.3%. Haiti became the poorest country in the Americas, and one of the hungriest countries in the world. Today, about half of school-age kids in Haiti are not in school. Over half of all Haitians struggle to survive on $1 a day or less, and life expectancy is in the mid-’50s. Many of those who can flee do so, including cities like Boston and New York, that sheltered the refugees from Ireland’s famine.
"The loans lavished on the Duvaliers and other dictators are now due, so Haiti’s elected government is sending almost a million dollars every week to the well-appointed offices of the World Bank and the IDB in Washington. Like Ireland exporting beef while people starved, Haiti is exporting money while people die of poverty.
"The World Bank and the IDB are not commercial banks. They are funded by our tax dollars, and were established to fight poverty, not make a profit. Like the British in Ireland, the Banks have their “relief programs” for Haiti, including programs that will eventually forgive a portion of Haiti’s debt. But like the British response to Ireland’s famine, the Bank programs do not rise to the seriousness of the situation.
"The Banks’ programs are too late -- they will not provide full relief for months, perhaps years. The Banks started their programs in 1996, but did not admit Haiti until 2007, so Haiti has just started jumping through the many hoops required to receive relief. Like the British declaring the starving Irish theoretically able to work, in 2000 the World Bank declared Haiti theoretically able to pay its debts, and therefore ineligible for its help: “[d]espite being very poor and having a relatively significant external debt level, …. after taking advantage of other sources of debt relief, Haiti’s debt …. will be reduced to a sustainable level.
"The Banks’ programs are too little – they stop where the requirements of helping poor people conflict with the requirements of the Banks’ economic theories. The Banks could simply cancel Haiti’s debts, especially those from loans given to dictators, which would immediately make a million dollars a week available for important government programs. But the very institutions that gave generously to the Duvaliers, knowing how the money was being spent, now demand “accountability” from Haiti’s democratic government before canceling the dictators’ debts. Accountability means, in part, that the government has an economic plan that satisfies the Banks’ free market theories. Haiti’s plan is not yet available, but the Banks have required other poor countries to demonstrate accountability by slashing public health and education spending. For now, accountability means keeping the $1 million coming every week, while the citizens of Haiti eat dirt.
"The citizens of the United States could put a stop to this injustice immediately. We pay the largest share of the Banks’ costs, and have the largest say in the Banks’ governance. If our leaders made cancellation of Haiti’s debt a priority, the debts would be cancelled.
"So this St. Patrick’s Day, as we sing about long-ago starvation and injustice in what is now a wealthy island, let us also think about the current misery in Haiti that we can do something about."
Human rights lawyer Brian Concannon Jr., brian@ijdh.org, directs the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH).
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My Comments in 2021—
When I examine kids in the clinic, and they look frail or sick or both, I often wonder if their mother sitting close by has any idea why her kid is sick? Do they know it because they are poor, through no fault of their own, and are not able to give their children enough to eat? Do they blame Duvalier, like I do?
I know that they don't blame anyone except possibly for themselves. They are too busy surviving the day to waste time blaming anyone.
Not having enough to eat is a multifactorial process. Any break in the chain can cause food insecurity from production to delivery to purchasing the food.
After Hurricane Matthew struck Haiti in October of 2016, I saw firsthand how trade and delivery routes had been destroyed due to the storm. Much of the south’s coastal infrastructure including crops were damaged thanks to Matthew. Bandits were stopping trucks because they were hungry, too. And when the roads were blocked by potholes or some other barrier, large trucks with food could not pass in the southern provinces of Haiti. If you cannot deliver food down the road to where it must go, people go hungry.
Inflation has also risen, making it difficult for people to afford even the basics. In the past year alone, the price of rice, beans, and sugar has increased by 34 percent. Haiti ranks 111 out of 117 countries on the 2019 Global Hunger Index.
The rise in food prices in Haiti is a death sentence to 95 percent of the population that is poor, because food spending represents more than 50 percent of a family’s budget, and more than 50 percent of the family’s basic staple food is imported and no longer affordable. So many of Haiti’s children are dying every day.
During the last three years, Port au Prince and other large cities have had great civil unrest. Haiti has been locked down due to protests for so many reasons. And during these lockdowns, if you cant get to market, you can't buy. And if you do get to market, the Haitian dollar is weak and food prices remain high, and so you are able to buy less.
So, how are things regarding food in Haiti during 2020-2021?
From Direct Relief:
Between August 2020-February 2021, 42% of the analyzed population (around 4 million people) are facing high acute food insecurity and are in need of urgent action. That includes 905,471 people classified in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and 3,083,497 people classified in Crisis (IPC Phase 3).
For the projected period, March-June 2021, 46% of the analyzed population (around 4.4 million people) are expected to face high acute food insecurity. That includes 1,156,915 million people in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and 3,198,820 people in Crisis (IPC Phase 3).
Among the 28 areas analyzed, two are in Emergency (IPC Phase 4): Gonâve (West HT01) and the Upper North-West (North-West HT02). The rest of the country has been classified in Crisis (IPC Phase3).
Among the zones classified in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) the areas experiencing the highest levels of food insecurity, with around 15% of the population in Emergency are: the Haut Artibonite (Artibonite HT01), the lower North-West (HT01), the coastal areas of the South (South HT08), South-East HT01 and Cité Soleil.
John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org