Jul 20 2008
The consequences-of-poverty iceberg
Arthur Fournier, on the Huffington Post, responded to Dan Harris’ investigation into child slavery in Haiti in a recent Nightline special (see previous post on Human Goods).
Slavery, he says, is only the “tip of the ‘consequences-of-poverty’ iceberg”:
Given how little most Americans understand about Haiti and how this lack of understanding during the early years of AIDS led to stigmatization of Haitians that persists to this day, this is no small point - exploitation of vulnerable people has nothing to do with ethnicity or culture and everything to do with poverty and the survival choices poor people are forced to make …
Solutions, therefore must address conditions that make rural life insufferable - poor agricultural productivity, lack of education, high maternal and child mortality and lack of health care. Such models do exist.
Fournier is correct in identifying the scope of the problem (a scope so large that it’s questionable that Harris could have covered it in that much depth in a brief episode about Haiti).
