Don’t forget that, socially, when Haiti was struck by the devastating earthquake, most of the population was virtually destroyed economically, and young people were left more or less to their own devices. What we have to do now is bring them back to school, train them and try to put them on the labour market.
When the State is not necessarily able to act with its own means – because unfortunately it has a budget financed 50 per cent by international funds; but the projects are there. We are slowly but surely reaching out to this most vulnerable of populations.
We must make progress because we have a situation, a population whose situation is CA TA STROPH IC. If we do not invest in social protection, we will lose these people, who have always had a tendency in this country to be in transit. Because if they are not protected, if they are not healthy, if they cannot look for work, they will lose hope, they will leave the country, no matter what the price, as you know.
We have no choice: the State must take the first step, it must sacrifice some of its resources to invest in people, in its population. Since we have partners like the ILO, partners to help it invest in this solution, we can say we’re going to rebuild. But where should we start? We’re going to rebuild people, the family first, and then we’ll reconstruct the big buildings. Those who fight hunger every day cannot understand big total airport projects, because they know very well that ten years from now they won’t be alive and their children may be in jail.
We have to ensure this guarantee for the people before carrying out other projects, we have no choice, we have to try. We have to try, even if this means asking all the partners to try to understand us, to advise us and to share the wealth with us. We have to try.
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