Rafael Correa

By Teresa Bo in Americas on February 10th, 2010
Photo by Reuters

We need to strengthen the South-South approach to help Haiti. The North-South approach has failed. It creates dependency, and when a tragedy occurs, developed nations run to send aid that is generally mismanaged, inappropriate and brought into a country through NGOs. President [Rene] Preval tells me that every one dollar spent in aid only 1 cent reaches Haiti.

These were the words of President Rafael Correa in Quito during the UNASUR summit whose members met to find alternative ways to help Haiti.

The main criticism is that Haiti has been receiving aid for years and people continue to be extremely poor. Yes, after UN intervention security has improved but there have been no significant improvements in people's lives.

Haiti still imports 50 per cent of the food it consumes and much of it comes from the United States.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on November 28th, 2009
Photo by AFP
It was billed as a summit of presidents of Amazon countries. But most of the presidents didn’t bother to show up, making the ‘summit of presidents’ in Manaus one with few actual presidents in attendance.
 
About half of the mysterious place called "the Amazon" is in Brazil. The other half is divided between 8 other countries - Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
 
So Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, organised Thursday's one-day summit of Amazon countries as a chance for them to come together a forge a common agenda ahead of the all important Copenhagen climate change summit starting on December 7 - which is being billed as the biggest climate change meeting in generations.

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