In Haiti, rhetoric trumps human rights

THE US-INSPIRED peacekeeping approach being utilized by the United Nations in Haiti is a failure. Members of Boston's growing Haitian community should not get their hopes up for a shift in US policy, following the recent resignation of US Ambassador to Haiti James B. Foley. Major donors, like the United States, have confirmed time and again their unwillingness to experiment with new methods that put human rights of the Haitians first.

At present, the international community intervenes in a crisis using two tools: The first is sending in the UN's blue helmets. These missions are approved by the Security Council and paid for by member states according to a pre-agreed payment schedule. It is only natural that the states paying the most, like the United States and Japan, seek to limit the number and breadth of these missions.

To that end, the United States limits UN peacekeeping missions to putting blue helmets on the ground. Thus, peacekeepers normally spend over 99 percent on themselves. The result is situations like Haiti, where the peacekeeping mission's annual budget for its personnel's health care is greater than the annual budget of the Haitian Ministry of Health.

While security does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, many cling to the idea that the international community needs to establish security first and then undertake development. This might work for the conflicts of the past, where a ceasefire between competing armies could achieve a modicum of security. Today, chaos is common, so simultaneous work on security and development is needed.

Realizing this, US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are working in cooperation with USAID and others in an attempt to do ''nation-building." In Haiti, UN peacekeepers have provided no real support to community development or implemented projects to build the capacity of institutions needed to bolster the respect for human rights. But have no fear. The international community's second tool is ''voluntary contributions."

How generous we are when we know that the money pledged will never actually be disbursed. Traditionally, the central government is required to develop a useful and sensible plan, to demonstrate the capacity to receive money and execute projects in a timely fashion. Under ideal circumstances, this process takes at least two years from conception to disbursement. This may work well for functional government, but for dysfunctional governments in chaotic countries it is not viable. Thus, no money arrives, fueling suspicion and undermining the efficacy of the blue helmets.

While many in the UN have spoken about the need for a new integrated peacebuilding approach highlighting human security, the bureaucracies of donor countries are stuck in their dated methods, and the people of Haiti, Liberia, et al. continue to suffer.

The new UN reforms propose a Peacebuilding Commission that would force peacekeepers and UN agencies to work together -- but unless we change how money flows to countries in crisis, the crises will continue to recur.

Peacekeeping missions should measurably improve the full spectrum of human rights and be given the budget to do so. The UN already has a Peacebuilding Trust Fund that can be used to fill the funding gap in countries like Haiti. Some of the voluntary contributions should be diverted to this fund to support projects using a human rights-based approach. Peacekeepers and agencies should work with communities to prioritize, define, and implement projects.

Communities have already defined small projects like fixing an access road to a regional hospital and tree planting to avoid further erosion and contamination of drinking water. While modest, they would create a completely different relationship between the UN and the Haitian people based first and foremost on human rights.

The US-inspired UN failure in Haiti has numerous causes, but the US unwillingness to change its outdated money-flow modus operandi to peacekeeping operations in order to maximize their transformative potential highlights shows that it is not just the UN that needs reform.

Todd Howland is director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington.