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Violent Protests in Haiti

stj

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
A perfectly expectable and rational turn of events.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11772283

...the UN "stabilisation force" is unpopular because it is widely seen as the public face of the Haitian government. That government is perceived to have done little to help the population since January's devastating earthquake. On a wider level, the UN force is seen by many Haitians as a foreign occupation force, little different from previous operations by the US military.

Choosing to be ignorant is not the same as being innocent. The occupation forces are intent upon propping up a government subservient to a small group of foreign economic interests, largely indifferent to the interests of the Haitian people. This policy should be opposed.
 
The sad thing is, many of the individual people involved in the UN genuinely want to help, with little concern for politics. Unfortunately, the UN itself is an organization at odds with its supposed ideals. It's ultimately little more than another power bloc with an agenda. It's a closed system of intellectual and political elites and, as with all political and ideological groupings, works on the basis of power relations. They either align themselves where the power is or bend under pressure from the powerful. They offer support to those who have a claim to attention via accepted social norms and ignore those who have comparatively less power to recognition. Their primary goal is to maintain their own power structure and ideological supremacy, as becomes the case with any organized ideological/political group. The actual original goal or ideal therefore becomes less important, or subject to revision as political and intellectual goalposts shift. And it's the well-meaning humanitarians on the ground who suffer the consequences, along with the local people the UN insists it wants to help. Angry locals fight well-meaning humanitarians and peacekeepers while the organizations involved fight for political capital and manipulate affairs to push through ideological agendas.

This isn't the first time outside ideology has intefered with the rebuilding process. The entire Haiti operation has been continuously undermined by attempts to push political agendas onto what should have been simple presentation of aid. I can think of several other complications to the Haiti situation resulting from political agendas creeping into - or worse, defining and guiding - humanitarian efforts.
 
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