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The horrific earthquake that struck Haiti on the 12th of January, and has left perhaps 150-200,000 people dead, is another cruel act of nature, similar in terrible scale to the seismic movement and tsunami of 2004 which killed nearly 200,000 people in Indonesia alone. Yet while last week's earthquake was a ‘natural disaster’, ‘man’ must take much of the blame for the sheer scale of the human suffering it will bring.

It is beyond question that poverty will be the main cause of the horrific death toll to come: the product of jerry built structures, teeming shacks and the absence of health and public infrastructure. And Haiti's poverty, like most, is largely man-made, the consequence of a history of brutal colonialism by the French, the US and other western powers— stretching back centuries. To quote Seamus Milne in the U.K’s Guardian:

"Punished for the success of its uprising against slavery and self-proclaimed first black republic of 1804 with invasion, blockade and a crushing burden of debt reparations only finally paid off in 1947, Haiti was occupied by the US between the wars and squeezed mercilessly by multiple creditors. More than a century of deliberate colonial impoverishment was followed by decades of the Western backed dictatorship of the Duvaliers, who indebted the country still further.”

More recently, “global financial institutions have imposed a relentlessly neoliberal diet, pauperising Haitians still further. Thirty years ago, for example, Haiti was self-sufficient in its staple of rice. In the mid-90s the IMF forced it to slash tariffs, the US dumped its subsidised surplus on the country, and Haiti now imports the bulk of its rice. Tens of thousands of rice farmers were forced to move to the jerry-built slums of Port-au-Prince. Many died as a result last week”.

“The same goes for the lending and aid conditions imposed over the past two decades, which forced Haitian governments to privatise, hold down the minimum wage and cut back the already minimal health, education and public infrastructure. The impact can be seen in the helplessness of the Haitian state to provide the most basic relief to its own people. Even now, new IMF loans require Haiti to raise electricity prices and freeze public sector pay in a country where most people live on less than two dollars a day.”

“What this saga translates into in real life can be seen in the stark contrast between Haiti, which has taken its market medicine, with nearby Cuba, which hasn't, but suffers from a 50-year US economic blockade. While Haiti's infant mortality rate is around 80 per 1,000, Cuba's is 5.8; while nearly half Haitian adults are illiterate, the figure in Cuba is around 3%. And while 800 Haitians died in the hurricanes that devastated both islands last year, Cuba lost four people.”

The rest of the worlds response to Haiti’s suffering has been heart-felt and it has been impressive. Cuba, which already had hundreds of doctors in Haiti, and the Chinese, were some of the first to arrive. Britain, France, Iceland, Taiwan, Spain, Canada, Israel, Germany, Mexico and Venezuela have all sent in rescue and aid personnel from the United States, Barack Obama (at the urging of Bill Clinton) has ordered a massive response And already, from all around the world, there are pledges of cash: From the World Bank, $100m and a pledge to "consider" a reconstruction trust fund; a similar sum from the US; from Britain, $10m, Australia ($9.3m), Norway ($5.3m), Japan and Canada ($5m), Spain ($4.3m), Italy ($1.4m), China and India ($1m). (Source: David Randall, The Independent, UK).

I visited Banda Aceh several times in the years following the 2004 tsunami. Huge amounts of aid money poured into the place – to the point where some aid groups were giving out wads of cash - as the rest of the world sought to respond as compassionately as it could. It is right and proper that we should do all we can for the people of Haiti – pray, give, and if we have the right skills, go.

But because the impoverishment and suffering of Haiti have not been caused only by a short term catastrophe (the earthquake), but by centuries of abuse and mistreatment, so too the solutions must be long term. It will not be good enough to pour in billions of dollars ‘that must be spent in the next financial year or two’ as was often the case in Aceh.

It will not be good enough – in fact it will probably be a ghastly mistake – to try and ‘rescue all the orphans’ by tearing them away from their surviving relatives and bundling them aboard planes to the US, as some groups are trying to do. It will not be enough for us to have acted compassionately while this disaster is still fresh on our TV screens, but to then move on to another more dramatic hot spot in a couple of years time.

No, the rebuilding of Haiti will take decades, and must involve an honest effort by the West (and by the rich in Haiti itself) to reverse years of colonialism, exploitation and support of corrupt ruling elites. There must be a real effort to do not just disaster relief, but over the years ahead help the country rise out of poverty. This will require a jubilee approach to Haiti's billion-dollar debts (perhaps outright cancellation); democratic political reform; well thought through investment in health, education (especially literacy), and agriculture. And it will also require people with the right gifts to go and live in Haiti, incarnating Jesus and his presence there (long term!).

Let us keep praying for and giving to the people of Haiti. But in every place God has called us to work, let us do our best to understand the historical and systemic causes of the suffering we witness; and let us commit ourselves to thinking, praying and acting long-term, in order to see the eventual transformation of unjust social structures, release for the oppressed, liberation from poverty, and the coming of the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19).

[written by Kristin Jack]