The long neglected nation of Haiti is finally the focus of the world’s attention, even if a 7.0 magnitude earthquake is in tight competition with ten centimetres of snowfall for UK headlines. I’ve just heard a prominent Republican advocating turning Haiti into a UN protectorate on a BBC World Service Newshour special on the country’s humanitarian needs. The idea of establishing Haiti as a UN protectorate has been circulating for some time, but the notion of revoking the independence of the first truly postcolonial country, which was won only at the cost of 35,000 lives, is tainted.
The fear is that otherwise crisis led pledges will last only as long as the attention of the news media. But for all the gestures of support donned by the international community, one genuine remedy is yet to be prescribed; the relocation of United Nations’ headquarters from uptown New York to the ruins of Port-au-Prince. Such a move would, without impinging Haitian sovereignty jealously guarded since independence, signal the necessary commitment and investment to rebuilding that which was destroyed and much more, while bringing beneficial byproducts to the wider global community.
The two cities are clearly worlds apart, regardless of suburban American intellectual’s virulent paranoia of the third world creeping into America’s urban centres. UNHQ would bring massive economic stimulus to one of the world’s most deprived cities. It has in total 15,000 employees, while 2,230 diplomats are on permanent assignment in New York. In 2007, renovation plans were announced for the New York compound at a cost of $1billion. By comparison, the UK has so far pledged just £6million to help rebuild Haiti. In a country with a GDP, before the earthquake struck, of $6.9billion, the influx of such sums would be of huge consequence.
Dear Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal,
I think you'll find that even by this early stage the UK's contribution is many times the £6m pump-primer.
Good point though about the running costs of the UN
Yours
Roger-Edward Prentice-Prentice
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