This week is off to a good start—in part because I’m slightly ahead in reading for classes, but mostly because I have new hope for institutional goodwill (and I need periodic fresh doses). The US is actually supporting international debt cancellation for Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake, including the conversion of emergency aid loans into grants. The US weighing in on Haiti’s behalf in this way is a leap from a few short years ago when Paul Farmer of Partners In Health wrote:
“The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), for example, had approved four loans, for health, education, drinking water and road improvement…In July 2003, Haiti sent more than 90 per cent of all its foreign reserves to Washington to pay off [ever-expanding arrears on its debts]… As of [April 2004], less than $4 million of the four blocked loans—which totaled $146 million—[had] reached Haiti in spite of many assurances from the IDB…On 7 March, the Boston Globe wrote: ‘Today, Haiti’s government, which serves eight million people, has an annual budget of about $300 million—less than that of Cambridge, a city of just over 100,000.’”
In discussions following a Haiti-recovery panel BU Law hosted last week, I brought up economic sanctions to underline reasons for Haiti being under-resourced coming into the earthquake, and I’m grateful to Dean Marx and the Student Government Association for making space for the BU Law community to consider the backdrop to recent events and informed ways to move forward.
One fellow panel-member helped start Healing Hands for Haiti ten years ago while still a BU Law student, and though the facilities, sadly, did not survive the earthquake, the organization is committed to rebuilding. Two others were part of a team just returning from Haiti, and I felt proud of BU as a whole for supporting this team in a strategic urban planning effort with the Haitian government, exploring ways to rebuild smarter, instead of ad hoc along the fault line.
I’m no one to scoff at small beginnings. Yet I can’t discount a side comment from J. Jackson’s Duckworth v. Arkansas opinion that we read in Constitutional Law with Professor Baxter:
“[The] sluggishness of government, the multitude of matters that clamor for attention, and the relative ease with which [decision-makers] are persuaded to postpone troublesome decisions, all make inertia one of the most decisive powers in determining the course of our affairs and frequently gives [sic] to the established order of things a longevity and vitality much beyond its merits.”
I like to imagine a government weighing the clamor of political action against the interests of those with less access—not silent but overextended, in survival mode, viewing political participation as a distant luxury. Reality is less thoughtful. But I do have the encouragement of small beginnings when inertia is interrupted. I also have the encouragement that, in the end, people not institutions make decisions and a law degree is one way to become one of those people.
One Comment
Christopher Greco posted on February 9, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Inertia could be viewed as an expression of passive aggression, an intentional putting off of the inevitable out of fear of making the wrong choice and leaving somebody else to pick up the tab, as it were. I’m beginning to think that most inertia may have more to do with distraction and personal inefficiency. Smart and capable people do not always work in the smartest and most capable ways because we can get distracted answering our e-mails, for example. Put that on a global scale, and it’s daunting: the simple and understandable inefficiencies that most of us experience as we procrastinate our way through our complex and busy lives – if we’re in certain positions of power – can be devastatingly consequential to other people (and in the case of Haiti, lots of others). Gives me pause as I lead: Leader, lead thyself.