In Haiti, children recovering from gunshot wounds are lying on cardboard beds outdoors. The Coast Guard intercepted more than 7,000 people from October 2021 through September (compared with 1,527 the previous 12 months) trying to escape hell on Earth. Rival gangs kill husbands in front of wives and rape mothers in front of their children. Cholera is raging and babies are dying. Streets are war zones.
Nearly 20,000 people are facing imminent starvation. An additional 2.9 million are suffering acute malnutrition. Almost 2 million are suffering very acute malnutrition. If more food isn’t made available immediately, people will die.
There is zero sense of urgency by the television media or politicians in the United States that our neighbor nation’s people are suffering unbearable hardships. The media, especially televised media, should report on Haiti’s crises. Show gang brutality, highlight people clinging to rafts made from rotted wood, make videos of dehydrated, choleric children fighting to live.
We need to send in 2,000 armed law enforcers who can protect the people attempting to deliver aid. Send in a couple hundred at a time, over six months, with little fanfare. There seems to be talk behind closed doors of what cannot be done. Good men and women, stop doing nothing. Evil is triumphing.
Pamela A. White, Orr’s Island, Maine
The writer was U.S. ambassador to Haiti from 2012 to 2015 and a junior officer in Haiti from 1985 to 1991 for the U.S. Agency for International Development.