To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?The signs are read­ing pos­i­tive: the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is tak­ing Haiti's dis­tress se­ri­ous­ly and seems to be pre­pared to as­sist with the coun­try's re­con­struc­tion.

Over the last week, the Paris Club of in­ter­na­tion­al cred­i­tors, a group of high­ly in­flu­en­tial, eco­nom­i­cal­ly ad­vanced coun­tries, the Group of 7–an­oth­er in­flu­en­tial group of rich and pow­er­ful coun­tries–along with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and the World Bank have reached agree­ment that Haiti's bil­lion-dol­lar debt can­not be re­paid and should be can­celled, wiped free from the slate. The groups are now call­ing on coun­tries and in­ter­na­tion­al cred­i­tors out­side of the ones that have al­ready tak­en and an­nounced their de­ci­sions to fol­low suit and clear the deck of debt owed by Haiti. "The UK has al­ready can­celled all debts owed it by Haiti and I strong­ly wel­come the G7's com­mit­ment to for­give Haiti's re­main­ing mul­ti­lat­er­al debt. We will work with oth­ers to make sure this is de­liv­ered," says Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown.

The stip­u­lat­ed in­ten­tions of the coun­tries and the groups are im­por­tant sig­nals that sig­nif­i­cant mem­bers of the world com­mu­ni­ty, both coun­tries and in­sti­tu­tions such as the Paris Club and the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem, have un­der­stood that re­pay­ment of the debt by Haiti is sim­ply not pos­si­ble. The coun­tries and in­sti­tu­tions are recog­nis­ing that giv­en the cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences of the earth­quake, Haiti could not con­tin­ue mak­ing an­nu­al pay­ment of up­wards of US$50 mil­lion to ser­vice its debt. It is a recog­ni­tion too that Haiti's non-pay­ment of the debt will do no se­ri­ous harm to the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem, so small are the sums owed by the coun­try. But for­giv­ing the debt is on­ly one small part of the trans­for­ma­tion work on Haiti which needs to be done by the world com­mu­ni­ty in con­junc­tion with the peo­ple of that coun­try.

Notwith­stand­ing the ob­vi­ous lo­gis­ti­cal and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with the im­me­di­ate need for re­lief, it can­not be said of­ten enough that what is need­ed in Haiti is com­plete trans­for­ma­tion. The trans­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary has to do with the re­con­struc­tion of the cap­i­tal city, Port-au-Prince, stim­u­la­tion of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, the de­vel­op­ment of new in­dus­tries to fit the skills ca­pac­i­ty of the work­ers, and in­deed the train­ing of work­ers for new jobs. In­sti­tu­tion build­ing and con­struc­tion, in­clud­ing a po­lice ser­vice and a pub­lic ser­vice, the ju­di­cia­ry, a vi­able schools sys­tem, some­thing ap­proach­ing an ad­e­quate health ser­vice and all the oth­er in­sti­tu­tions nec­es­sary for a func­tion­ing coun­try. In the past, the de­vel­oped coun­tries, in­clud­ing the US and coun­tries in Eu­rope, set out all kinds of un­achiev­able pre-con­di­tions to be met by the gov­ern­ment in Port-au-Prince be­fore mean­ing­ful de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance could be ad­vanced. Clear­ly to­day, a so­ci­ety in ru­ins–the ab­sence of an ef­fec­tive­ly func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment, a pop­u­la­tion shat­tered and trau­ma­tised and the com­plete ab­sence of an in­fra­struc­ture of build­ings in the cap­i­tal city–can­not be asked to meet stip­u­la­tions.

The hope is that the ear­ly signs are in­dica­tive of a change in ap­proach to the Hait­ian sit­u­a­tion. But along with the re­lief of the mo­ment, the as­sist­ing coun­tries and in­sti­tu­tions such as the Unit­ed Na­tions and the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States must be suf­fi­cient­ly proac­tive to pre­pare against the ex­pect­ed tor­ren­tial rains, even a hur­ri­cane, which can strike lat­er in the year. It would com­pound the present dis­tress two hun­dred­fold if the pop­u­la­tion is left de­fence­less against the rag­ing wa­ters which would set the re­cov­ery back many years. In all of this Cari­com, while do­ing what it can to bring re­lief, must be deeply in­volved in mak­ing the case for the re­con­struc­tion of Haiti in­to a coun­try and so­ci­ety which will be­come hab­it­able. The al­ter­na­tive is to have Haiti as a failed state, in­evitably lead­ing to eight mil­lion refugees flee­ing the coun­try. Haiti has too proud a his­to­ry to end its ex­is­tence in such a man­ner.