Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

severe toll on a population already living in abject poverty.
Haiti also has other deep-rooted endemic problems: an
unskilled population, lack of resources, maldistribution of
wealth, marked disregard for social justice among traditional
power holders, a dysfunctional judiciary, growing scarcity of
productive land, lack of off-farm labor opportunities, paucity
of investment in human and social capital, deficits in capital
and credit markets, an ingrained tradition of corruption,
unemployment and underemployment of unskilled labor, an
entrenched and inefficient bureaucracy, and — perhaps most
important—a lack of will on the part of the country's leaders to
stop the political infighting and start implementing whatever
reforms have been legislated.
Both the United Nations secretary general and the United
States secretary of state have voiced on separate occasions their
concern over the Haitian government's inaction, which caused
the suspension of badly needed international aid. In urging
Haiti's political leaders to "resolve their differences," the secretary
of state said in April 1998 that the Haitian people "deserve
the ability to have the fruits that the international community
is trying to give them." Similarly, in early 1998 members of the
Foreign Relations Committee of the United States House of
Representatives warned that United States funding for Haiti
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