Incentives matter

Haitians need permanent solutions, including jobs and education; but many now have no incentive to move.Ask people in these tent cities if they have been receiving regular aid and they will tend to tell you they have not. But, says Mr Bellerive, people always say that. He asked a woman he had seen receiving food the day before, who lives in a camp in the gardens of his quake-wrecked office, why she had said on television afterwards that she had received nothing. “Because it is the only way to make sure people will continue to help,” she replied. Tent dwellers, used to journalists and do-gooding foreigners, are now well-aware that they can play to the media.

Better a tent than a slum

A large but unknown number of people in the camps are choosing to stay in them. Life is better there than in the sprawling, gang-infested slums. Camp-dwellers pay no rent. Nor do they have to pay for sanitation, because latrines are often provided by the aid agencies, or clean water, since that is often supplied by the agencies or by the government. Medical services are also easier to find and, again, probably free, courtesy of agencies like UNICEF or charities like Médecins Sans Frontières. A cholera epidemic makes that all the more vital.

Nigel Fisher, who oversees the UN’s aid operations in Haiti, worries about this. Haitians need permanent solutions, including jobs and education; but many now have no incentive to move. Aid is filling a gap that should be filled by the Haitian state. Unless the government can take charge again, properly providing for its people, Haiti will remain chronically and disastrously addicted to foreign aid.