SIPA students wait for UN helicopter transport in Haiti

By Marcy Hersh

It’s seven in the morning and our UN helicopter is soaring over Port-au-Prince on the way to the northern region of Haiti. Looking down at my pink dress, the skirt of which is accidentally draped across the fatigue-clothed knee of the Uruguayan peacekeeper sitting next to me, I realize I’ve probably selected the wrong outfit to wear on a UN helicopter. Accompanying me are my five, more appropriately dressed, SIPA researchers, and our fearless leader, Professor Elisabeth Lindenmayer, the Acting Director of the UN Studies Program at SIPA.

The helicopter ride and northern field visit were the activities of just one day of a weeklong mission in Haiti, part of a research project that began back in September at SIPA. The six students involved, Sean Blaschke, Andrew Cramer, Alejandro Gomez Palma, Marcy Hersh, Carina Lakovits and Leila Makarechi, are researching the UN Peacekeeping Operation in Haiti and its role in moving the country forward. Our fall semester was filled with extensive desk research and interviews with UN staff here in New York, all of which served as preparation for our trip in early January.

Professor Lindenmayer, with the support and coordination of MINUSTAH (the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti), packed each of our days with meetings and interviews with the heads of the various sections of the Peacekeeping Operation, UN agencies, civil society leaders, Haitian government ministers, and the Prime Minister herself, Michele Pierre-Louis. When not meeting in conference rooms, we traveled on field visits to each corner of the country includingdeep within the slums of Port-au-Prince, to get a better sense of this troubled nation.

Our experience in Haiti felt confusing, unsettling and heart wrenching. Approximately eighty percent of the population subsists on less than $2 each day,and have little opportunity to improve their destitution, hunger and misery. This poverty contrasts sharply with the highly visible wealth of the country’s elite, inhabiting the old colonial estates of the Port-au-Prince suburbs. The evidence of extreme deforestation and environmental degradation undercuts Haiti’s breathtaking landscape: a mixture of sandy beaches along the turquoise water of the Caribbean Sea and rolling mountain ranges. The ever-present international community, manifested as UN peacekeepers and international aid workers, drive sport utility vehicles through the ruined city streets highlight the Haitian government’s weakness and the state’s instability.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere and struggles with high levels of violence, drug trafficking, kidnappings and disease. It survives largely on foreign aid and remittances from its American and Canadian Diaspora.

However, there was optimism in the country at the prospect of increased future development.The UN Security Council established MINUSTAH in 2004 and since then, the mission has made significant security gains, including regaining control of sizable swaths of Port-au-Prince from armed gangs. Along with these gains in security, economic growth surpassed population growth in 2007 after nearly 20 years of negative growth.

Yet 2008 was not kind to Haiti. In April, the global food and fuel crisis arrived, making staple food commodities impossibly expensive for most Haitian families. Riots broke out because of the high cost of living, and led to the overthrow of the government, which could not calm the population. Just as a new prime minister was sworn in in August, four massive hurricanes swept through the island, devastating economic and social infrastructure and rendering thousands homeless. The rebuilding effort since then has been slow going because of the global financial crisis, which has served to limit foreign aid and remittance flows into Haiti.

It is our task as researchers to grapple with the circumstances that created this challenging situation and understand the possible ways forward for the Haitian government and the international community. We presented our initial findings in a recent conference, attended by several members of the Security Council and are now crafting a report that we will publish and share with a broad audience at a conference on April 7th. That evening on the 15th floor, we will discuss and debate with a distinguished panel of guests and celebrate the country’s unique culture and cuisine. We invite all of SIPA to attend.

A UN soldier guards a street in Haiti