Main focus of Thursday, January 21, 2010

Uncoordinated help for Haiti

Aid for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti is pouring in from all over the world, but there is controversy about how efficiently it is being used. Commentators say the the EU's efforts are particularly lacking in coordination. They also criticise the way the international community treated the island state before the disaster.

Dagens Nyheter - Sweden

The EU still hasn't found a unified approach to its aid for Haiti, the daily Dagens Nyheter writes: "After all the pretty speeches about the role of the Union as a global player it was embarrassing to see how weakly and unclearly the Union has handled the situation. ... The member countries - including Sweden - are setting up their own aid operations although they are act above all as part of the EU. The statements made by EU representatives are in some cases contradictory. The new EU President Herman Van Rompuy explained on the BBC that he wanted to set up a special task force for humanitarian disasters. This is a controversial standpoint which the new EU foreign minister Catherine Ashton has made no reference whatsoever to in her statements. And it is Spain which currently holds the EU presidency and which brings together the ministers for disaster aid. It's no wonder the message of the EU - in as far as there is one - hasn't got through." (21/01/2010)

» full article (external link, Swedish)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » EU Policy, » Europe, » Latin Amerika, » Global
All available articles from » Annika Ström Melin

Sme - Slovakia

Europe's aid to earthquake victims in Haiti is not altogether on the up and up and comes far too late at that, writes the liberal daily Sme: "The Union has granted 429 million euros for Haiti's reconstruction and only a quarter of that is for immediate aid. The bulk of the sum was already earmarked for the country even before the earthquake, and now it's just being packaged differently. What's worse is that it's taken the Union almost a week to get its act together and do something. People in Brussels are saying the Spanish EU Council presidency first of all had to coordinate everything with Catherine Ashton, the new EU high representative for foreign affairs. But the whole point of having the new post was to make the EU's foreign policy more efficient and transparent. Unfortunately the facts are only corroborating fears that all that has been created with the post is a new impasse in the Brussels bureaucracy. ... If you're looking for aid, and for quick aid at that, it's better not to go looking for it in Brussels." (21/01/2010)

» full article (external link, Slovak)
More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Europe, » Latin Amerika
All available articles from » Peter Morvay

The Guardian - United Kingdom

The earthquake in Haiti was a natural catastrophe, but the scale of the tragedy is man-made, writes the daily The Guardian: "It is uncontested that poverty is the main cause of the horrific death toll. ... But Haiti's poverty is treated as some ­baffling quirk of history or culture, when in reality it is the direct ­consequence of a uniquely brutal ­relationship with the outside world - notably the US, France and Britain - stretching back centuries. Punished for the success of its uprising against slavery and self-proclaimed first black republic of 1804 with invasion, blockade and a crushing burden of debt reparations only finally paid off in 1947, Haiti was occupied by the US between the wars and squeezed mercilessly by multiple creditors. More than a century of deliberate colonial impoverishment was followed by decades of the US-backed dictatorship of the Duvaliers, who indebted the country still further." (21/01/2010)

» full article (external link, English)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Europe, » North America, » U.S., » Global
All available articles from » Seumas Milne

Delo - Slovenia

The international community as a whole has failed Haiti, both before and after the earthquake, the daily Delo writes: "Humanitarian aid is a dirty word for the inhabitants of Haiti. Eight days after the earthquake all the survivors have heard is promises, while slowly they die. With its slowness, inability to react, pursuance of parallel interests and bureaucracy, the international community is abandoning the inhabitants to their fate. Yet following the earthquake the global forces are merely continuing with the same policy they pursued before towards this long-since fallen state. It is not the earthquake that killed the inhabitants of Haiti. They died and are dying as a result of the economic, political and social collapse. The rapacious, 'doctrine of shock' based policies of certain states and international companies, which turned Haiti into their rubbish tip, are responsible for the collapse and violence on Haiti in the past decades." (21/01/2010)

» more information (external link, Slovenian)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Latin Amerika, » Global
All available articles from » Bostjan Videmsek

» To the complete press review of Thursday, January 21, 2010