Finds that elimination of agricultural import tariffs hurts both agricultural and non-agricultural households, via adverse factor-market effects, but impacts vary substantially by workers' gender and country of origin. Females and Haitian immigrants tend to fare better than Dominican males, and there are ramifications for both market and non-market activities.
Provides data on socioeconomic indicators, and estimates terms of trade and interest rate effects associated with external shocks, 1980-92; Barbados, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.
In many of the lesser developed areas of the world, regional development planning is increasingly important for meeting the needs of current and future inhabitants. Illustrates how matrix assessment methodology was applied to produce a landslide-susceptibility map for the Commonwealth of Dominica, an island nation in the eastern Caribbean, and how with a follow up study the relative landslide-susceptibility mapping was validated. A second Caribbean application on Jamaica demonstrates how this methodology can be applied in a more geologically complex setting.
The current political and economic situation in Latin America is characterized by a marked difference between South American countries, on one side, and Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, on the other. In South America, capital still accumulates through the appropriation/recovery of a portion of its abundant ground rent. In Mexico and most of the Caribbean Basin, capital accumulates through the production, exploiting a relatively cheap and disciplined labor force, of industrial goods for the world market.
Argues that geography and geology sparked the Haitian earthquake, but the extent of the destruction was due to the massive failure of Haitian institutions, in particular the state, and international policy, which predated the earthquake.
Debates over the extent of graphic imagery of death in newspapers often suffer from generalized assertions that are based on inadequate or incomplete empirical evidence. Newspapers are believed to display death in very graphic ways, with particularly the tabloid press assumably leading a race to the bottom. This article reports the results of a study of tabloid and broadsheet images of death from the 2010 Haiti earthquake in eight Western European and North American countries. It shows that, far from omnipresent, graphic images of death are relatively rare.
Part of a special journal issue dedicated to strategies for societal renewal in Haiti., Fonkoze, "the bank the poor can call their own," is a bank that provides more than just loans. It also sees access to reasonably priced savings, remittance transfer, and currency conversion as a right of even the poorest. This article tells the story of how -- after the devastation of the 2010 earthquake -- Fonkoze found itself positioned to serve Haiti's rural population before other banks were back on their feet.
Examines economic dependency of Caribbean nations on the US, consequences of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, and likely effects of NAFTA and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) on the Caribbean region.
Examines the sources of domestic political will for intervention, particularly the role of partisanship, ideology, and public opinion on Congressional members' willingness to support US intervention for humanitarian purposes. Analyzes several Congressional votes relevant to four episodes of US humanitarian intervention: Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Finds that public support for humanitarian intervention increases Congressional support and that other political demands, primarily partisanship and ideological distance from the president, often trump the normative exigencies of intervention.
Part of a special journal issue focusing on the role of the U.S. Foreign Service in Haiti., Offers 21 stories describing American Foreign Service Association experiences in disaster relief in Haiti.
This paper begins by reviewing briefly at historical changes in the employment of geospatial technologies in major devastating disasters, including the Sichuan and Haiti earthquakes. It goes on to assess changes in the available dataset type and in geospatial disaster responders, as well as the impact of geospatial technological changes on disaster relief effort. Finally, the paper discusses lessons learned from recent responses and offers some thoughts for future development.
La Via Campesina asserts that sustainable, small-scale farming is more efficient at conserving and increasing biodiversity and forests than industrial agriculture.
The Navy and Department of Defense are working with the academic and crisis-response communities in a series of exercises to explore and experiment with new coordinated information-sharing tools, techniques and procedures based on social science research on social media. The response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti demonstrated the value of information sharing during a disaster, whether it be in real time via Twitter, standard messaging service text messaging or in imagery posted on YouTube, Flickr or Facebook.
Argues that the underdevelopment of Dominican social policies reflects the political impact of international migration flows, including both Dominican emigration to the United States and the immigration into the Dominican Republic from neighboring Haiti. These flows have inhibited the development of progressive political actors, including the partisan left and organized labor, and facilitated the adoption of an economic production model that erects additional obstacles to the expansion of the country's social policies.
This article analyzes the role of Haitian migration and Haitian transnational engagement in the past 20 years. Shows that dependency on Haitian migrants' economic flows into their country has historically not been met by public policy leveraging these flows and that under the current economic recovery period, opportunistic views aside, it is unrealistic to expect a strategy drastically different from that of the pre-earthquake period.
This paper provides a cross-cultural analysis of the experiences of Oxfam GB in supporting urban community-based disaster risk reduction in Haiti, Guyana and the Dominican Republic. The paper focuses on the efforts of Oxfam GB and its local partners to overcome the determining influence of local governance on who benefits from interventions, and the longevity of positive outcomes.
A benefit-cost analysis was performed on varying levels of standard buildings codes for Haiti and Puerto Rico. It was found that in the two areas studied, the expected loss of life was reduced the most by use of high seismic building code levels, but lower levels of seismic building code were more cost-effective when considering only building damages and the costs for code implementation.
Hamburg, Germany: Institut fur Iberoamerika-Kunde (IIK), GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies/Leibniz-Institut fur Globale und Regionale Studien
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
With the intensification of economic relations between the People's Republic of China and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, Beijing's role as a development donor has expanded in the region. The transparency of the Chinese donor services are limited since the transitions between development aid, investment and trade credits and direct investments are flowing. Focal points of Chinese engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean are upgrading the infrastructure projects in the extractive and energy sectors, education and training.
Hamburg, Germany: Institut fur Iberoamerika-Kunde (IIK), GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies/Leibniz-Institut fur Globale und Regionale Studien
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The economies of Latin America and the Caribbean have quickly recovered from the global financial crisis. With growth rates exceeding 6 percent from the previous year in 2010, the economies outpaced the OECD, which grew only by 2.3 percent. The growth prospects for the region are further analyzed.
Hamburg, Germany: Institut fur Iberoamerika-Kunde (IIK), GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies/Leibniz-Institut fur Globale und Regionale Studien
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Most economies in Latin America and the Caribbean were supported primarily by exports in 2005, and economic growth, though slower than in 2004, was at more than 4 % and still above the average annual growth rate from 1996-2005. While slower but still relatively robust growth is anticipated for 2006, the outlook is not particularly favorable for approaching the remarkable growth in other developing nations and regions as serious economic risks threaten development.
Countries in this region have been able to maintain good growth rates over recent years; however the outlook for inflation has worsened and the area's dependence on foreign borrowing has grown markedly. The ability of these countries to adjust in the future will depend critically on good economic management.
Includes discussion of the beneficial impact on host countries in terms of employment creation, contribution to export earnings, and economic diversification.
The privatized, top-down approach to aid delivery in the camps for displaced Haitians has made possible all manner of abuse and coercion. Haitian activists are responding by demanding their human rights, even as they challenge dominant conceptions of those rights.
Recent mass death incidents in Japan and Haiti have again focused attention on the challenge of dealing with large numbers of dead. Focusing on mass death incidents involving large numbers of Canadian victims, including the Titanic, Halifax explosion, Air India bombing and the 2004 Tsunami, the paper researches incidents dating back to the beginning of the 20th Century. By examining each stage of the process including initial response, identification, funerals, communication, religious services and inquests, the paper identifies key changes in the way that mass death incidents are handled.
Part of a special journal issue dedicated to strategies for societal renewal in Haiti., Provides an account of the efforts by a humanitarian organization's efforts ot reestablish connectivity for other humanitarian organizations working in Haiti after the recent devastating earthquake. It outlines its plans for continued efforts to bring better infrastructure to the rest of the country, accelerate disaster preparedness efforts, improve the quality of education and health-care training and delivery, enable business development, and improve accountability and transparency for local government and organization.
"The state of Afro-Latin studies is reviewed, starting with questions about terminology and racial classification, then exploring issues of racism and the relation between race and class. The impact of black (and indigenous) social movements on the field of study is then examined and this raises the question of how ideologies and practices of mestizaje have changed in the wake of ethnic mobilization and challenges to nation-building narratives of mestizaje. Finally, some of the implications of the concepts of diaspora and globalization are examined in relation to approaches to black culture. Adapted from the source document." (author)
When the earthquake of 7.0 on the Richter scale struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, the forcibly displaced on and off the island were the object of emergency planning, but so too were the host populations in Haiti and the neighbouring Dominican Republic. This article seeks to examine the emergency response to the earthquake and ongoing challenges through the lens of critical mobilities, with special reference to forced migration island-wide. Who (men, women, boys and girls) is able to move, how, where, for how long and through which networks? What is the legal framework, if any, governing these movements? Who wants visibility and who prefers to move 'incognito', in the context, for example, of ambiguous migration policies in the Dominican Republic towards impoverished Haitian immigrants?
The case of Haiti's devastating earthquake and the reactions it has elicited sharply illustrate an array of seemingly dichotomous ways of understanding obligations of "international assistance and cooperation," which are taken up by authors in this issue.
