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Boondoggle Haiti
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Report; Posted on: 2010-02-06 08:38:42 [ Printer friendly / Instant flyer ]
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Haiti will have to start almost from scratch.
During the 1990s, the U.S. government spent
$100 million trying to improve Haiti's police and justice systems, and
had little to show for it.
After a decade of such aid, the nation's law
enforcement and courts remained corrupt and ineffectual, a 2000
Government Accountability Office report said.
From 2005 to 2007, the USA tried again, paying a
contractor nearly $4 million to improve Haiti's judicial system. There
was "no measurable improvement," a government audit found.
Those programs were a small part of the river of
foreign aid that has flowed into Haiti in recent decades, even as it
has descended further into the depths of poverty and dysfunction.
After receiving $8.3 billion in foreign aid since 1969, Haiti is 25%
poorer than it was in 1945, according to statistics compiled by
Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute.
Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed at least 100,000 people,
three-quarters of Haiti's 9 million people lived on less than $2 a day,
the United Nations says.
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News Source: usa today
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